ANA/Agency Relations Study - All is quiet on the Western Front

A newly released ANA Agency Relations Study indicates that things are pretty hunky-dory in Agency La-La-Land (I have gracefully cut, pasted and indented the additional insights which counter the previous ones)

Here are the highlights:

• 93% of advertisers surveyed feel that their relationship with their lead strategic and creative advertising agency exceeds or meets their expectations
  • 32% of advertisers think integrated communications ideas are most important to receive from their lead agency and 21% do not believe this expectation is being met.

  • (Update 9/21) Just to be clear...the question was as follows, "how would you describe the status of your relationship with your lead strategy/creative agency, compared to a year ago" - so the fact that 58% said "same" does not necessarily indicate satisfaction, does it? It could just mean that the relationship was strained then...and nothing has changed.

• The overall state of the client/agency relationship is positive, with 36% of advertisers indicating that their relationship has improved from a year ago (58% believe it has remained the same)
  • 42% of clients have considered or have already added an additional agency to increase branding and creative efforts
• 72% of clients said that interactive services has increased in importance
• Advertisers felt that agencies are not meeting expectations in the following areas:
  • Ability to handle or add new services (26%)
  • Integration across multiple disciplines (21%)

New Marketing Nugget: While 67% of advertisers define "creative development/execution" as an absolutely critical dimension of agency creativity, only 14% rated creative use of technology as essential. Hmmmmmmmmm.