Branding agencies slow to adapt to new media

As promised in the last post, I am sharing the ratings of branding agencies on a variety of measures from overall quality of work to creativity, from innovation to the level of understanding the client’s brand.  While advertising agencies ranked last and branding agencies first, there wasn’t really much difference between them (5% vs. 11% respectively).

The headline is that branding agencies are seen as slow to adapt to multi-platform communications.  In the one of the top 3 priorities of marketers– integrating new media and traditional — branding agencies are lagging behind.

This data has never been published before.  It is from a study Verse Group commissioned with Jupiter Research among CMOs and marketing executives at 101 corporations.

A word of caution — the ratings that follow are for branding agencies without naming names.  Marketing executives were asked to rate their agencies but were not asked for the name of their agency(ies).

The short answer is that branding agencies are only moderately strong on our area of expertise — understanding the client’s brand.  33% of marketers rate their branding agencies as “excellent” in understanding of the brand.  Another 47% rated their brand agency as “good” on the same question.  Are clients saying that some of us brand gurus and experts are not as expert as advertised?

As Jupiter Research put it, “Agencies show moderate understanding of brands; missing opportunities in many areas.”

The biggest gaps are in very important areas — innovation, breakthrough approaches, integrating new and traditional media, working well with other agencies.

If the branding experts — the brand consultants — aren’t innovating and creating new marketing techniques, then who will?  That leaves it to academics and to corporate marketers to take the lead on reinventing marketing.

Here’s the chart:

Marketers rating branding agencies/brand consultants