Tino GK Meitz
Strategic planning – Advertising agencies professionalization of service portfolio
Ever since the beginning of the 1980ies, in the final course of advertising agencies’ segregation of ad creation and media marketing, the appreciation of creativity in advertising beguiles a discussion that allows for the substantiation of creatively added value (e.g. Sasser & Koslow, 2012). ‘Added value’ within the advertising industries, in terms of an economical valuation standard during the last decades, was mainly discussed between the poles of two organising ideas in advertising: creativity and efficiency. At this juncture, advertising’s service provision has – more precisely – remained unsettled among creative personnel’s aspiration to achieve ‘sophisticated’ creative work and account management’s ability to convince advertising agencies’ clients in regard of the efficiency of creative processes’ outcomes, namely the efficiency of campaigns. In other words, the production of advertising is a complex process executed by experts who belong to different intellectual “milieux”, as, among others, Chris Hackley and Arthur J. Kover (2007) have pointed out from an organisational theory point of view. If nothing else, the developments in regard of digital media technologies in respect of theirs repercussions on target groups, and accessible audiences distinctly unveiled advertising industries’ complexity. Depending on these specific ratios the formation of role profiles can be described as a significant phenomenon of a system’s functional differentiation. For the advertising industries’ development and deployment of strategy, the interplay of advertisers, advertising practitioners and media marketers marks the point of reference for the present research. The decisive outset for the presented findings is namely the accountability of decisions, the professionalization of knowledge, the empowerment of role profiles and the handling of communicators’ authority in a multiple systems environment. The paper presents empirical findings that foster on decision-making processes in the advertising industries as well as on the legitimisation of these decisions towards internal and external stakeholders. Challenged by an increasing demand for strategic expertise in advertising (e.g. account planning) the paper addresses issues like: do communication networks influence the development and deployment of strategy? What is the significance of authority and accountability in regard of decision-making processes? What is the status quo concerning the conditions under which advertising is planned, produced, and distributed, and who is mediating these processes across systemic boundaries?