Admittedly, i have only been in 1 ever, but it seemed much larger than any of these firms. It was a 20-25 million dollar building 7 stories tall with hundreds of people running around on every level because most of the building was glass. The firms on this show seem to be in dinky buildings with small offices and board rooms that are meh.
shareI think that's sort of the point. They want small firms competing against each other for big business. The firms on this show mostly have small clients, and only list their big well-known ones when introduced on the show. That's why its a huge deal on the show when they win one of these clients. Big firms are used to clients coming to them.
shareI think they're companies that used to be prestigious or enjoyed a bit of notoriety, but have since fallen onto hard times. Bozell is the agency responsible for "The Other White Meat" and "Got Milk." and Wong Doody (WDCW) used to be pretty big, too, with billings in the several hundred million dollar range.
Ha ha, made you look.
I assume that they have to be.
What major professional organization wants to send the message to clients that they are so desperate for big league business that they are reduced to going on a reality show?
[deleted]
A lot of the best work comes out of smaller agencies, especially if you're not looking to immediately spend a million bucks just walking in the door. Smaller agencies many times think more outside the box and have less of an attitude that says just feed the client more of the same that has made us a successful big agency to date.
Larger agencies can be great but much of the time they just churn out huge TV and print campaigns that are not very interesting. More quantity than quality. But that quantity leads to big money for them which is the catch 22. They don't think outside the lines because it threatens the huge retainers they have churning out uninteresting ads for CBS and USAToday.
The last point I'll make, which this show isn't really showcasing, is that the cutting edge tech in advertising/branding is almost always starting at the smaller agencies and then eventually adopted by the bigger guys.