As a client, you’re paying your agency to keep pushing your brand and keeping it relevant in a shifting competitive landscape, not to simply take orders.
There are many reasons why a company would fire its advertising agency. Sometimes even agency declines certain accounts.
But, how do you, the client, decide when the time to split has come? When do you make a decision to transition to a new agency?
You may know your answer once you answer this question:
Has my agency stopped challenging me?
We are not suggesting that an agency should challenge your authority. It’s your money and your brand, and no matter how strongly it feels about its own opinion it should never forget that. But the fact that you’ve got precious resources on the line is precisely why an agency should consider challenging your thinking part of its job description. After all, creativity requires thinking differently. Thinking differently requires risk-taking. And risk-taking is challenging.
If your ad agency isn’t regularly making you feel uncomfortable, it’s not doing its job. They may push you to experiment with unproven tactics so that you don’t get left behind in the frenetic world of new media. They may challenge you to reexamine your strategic approach altogether. Whatever the nature of the challenge, an agency that makes you think is taking the initiative to think on its own. And that’s what you’re paying it to do.
Sometimes you just want the agency to do what you say, give you something familiar, or avoid rocking the boat. But you wouldn’t want your attorney or accountant to be an order-taker, wouldn’t you? By controlling your agency and telling them what to do, agency may lose its passion. And once it loses its passion you have lost a key strategic asset.
Think about the interactions you’ve had with your agency over the past year. Have you been challenged? Have you been pushed? Have you felt a little bit annoyed by the fact that the managers of your account always want you to go just one step beyond what you’re comfortable with? If so, the relationship is probably worth saving and you can focus on fixing any bumps in the road you may be experiencing.
If not, consider turning the tables and giving them a challenge. Share with them something you’re struggling with, give them an assignment, or simply give them a problem statement and tell them you want them to break new ground—strategically, creatively, whatever. And see how they respond.
If they’ve lost the fire or simply don’t come through, then you’re paying too many bucks for too little bang—and the opportunity cost of not moving forward is losing you forgone brand equity every day.
If that’s the case, it’s time to move on.
October 1st, 2007
Los Angeles office of Attention Interactive web design company, begins work on Carol Alt online identity.
Constantly in search of new frontiers, Carol Alt is the ultimate chameleon. Since her days as the world’s most renowned Supermodel, Carol Alt has gone on to be author, actress and entrepreneur. Having had enormous success in all her endeavors such as: USA Today’s Best-Selling Author for her book on Raw food, Multi- award winning Actress, The Face of her own line of cosmetics, a number one hit in Europe in the music industry, voiceovers for such hits as King of the Hill, and as the host of various TV and radio morning shows and newscasts-including Fox’s Good Day Live.
Called “The Most Beautiful Woman in the World” by Playboy Magazine and “The Next Million Dollar Face” by Life Magazine, Carol has not disappointed. Gracing the covers of over 700 magazines, several posters, two workout videos and numerous calendars, she is a one woman conglomerate! Having lost track of the number of advertising campaigns, commercials, interviews, hosting jobs and endorsement contracts that have created this enormously successful and lasting career…
Forever touted as “The model that started the Supermodel trend” by John Casablanca the owner of Elite Models, Carol tosses off that title as the result of necessity being the mother of invention. The necessity of a fourth elite division of models who worked everyday-who were career professionals, made Carol the first ever “Super Elite Model in the Super Elite Division.” The press thereby dubbing her the first “Supermodel.”
Having hit the highest echelons of the fashion industry, did nothing but fuel Carol thirst for new projects and new venues so, using her fame she self- produced her highly successful series of posters and calendars when Elite rejected the idea. These posters and calendars became the benchmark for any and every rising young supermodel. Carol thereby created a new business for all supermodels to come and in the process become the object of fantasy for every young boy in America who had her poster plastered on his bedroom wall.
No other model can boast an uninterrupted 27 year career. Having twice graced the cover of the coveted Sports Illustrated Magazine’s Swimsuit Edition, Carol has gone on to star in over 50 movies, series, miniseries and episodic television in America and Abroad.
Her highly acclaimed series “Amazon” written by Peter Benchley, debuted as Variety’s “Number One New Dramatic Syndicated Series”, much to the delight of CBS and Alliance Atlantis, and paved the way for today’s hit “Lost”.
Carol has also had great success for her role in “Howard Sterns Private Parts”.
She is the recipient of Three European Telegattos (Emmy awards) one European “Oscar” Moda, The Mont Blanc Award, The Best Award, The Golden Ticket Box-Office Award ( for the most box office sales for a film in one year), The Certificate del Arte from The European Film Commission and The Umbra Award.
Prince Albert still holds a slight grudge that Carol did not come to the Monaco Film Festival to pick up her award for the portrayal of the life story of Rosanna Benzi-a woman with genetic polio living in an iron lung-in the film “Vice for Life.”
Not content to “just act”, she re-wrote the medical aspects, co- produced, and directed the children in a series of 12 films about a female doctor with a practice in an African clinic called “Under the African Sun.”
Her independent films include “Hitters” which won the Westchester Film Festival, “The Look” which was the talk of The Tribeca Film Festival and “Signs of the Cross” which won The Catskills Film Festival.
Her sci-fi hit, “Snakehead Terror”, based on a true story, is still scaring people on the Sci-Fi Channel where it became not only a hit, but now a cult film.
Her recent films include: “Fatal Trust” for Lifetime, “Totally Awesome” for VH1,”Homo Erectus” an Adam Rifkin comedy starring Ali Larder, Tom Arnold and David Carridine, a new Sci-Fi Channel film called, “Swarmed” and “The Town that Banned Christmas” an independent film slated to join the roster of Liongate Films for 2006.
Preparing to do another book for publishing in 2007, Carol just keeps working and silencing the critics who insist: Supermodels are just beautiful, not smart.
Offical web site will be www.carolalt.com and Carol has just finished a movie in Texas with another Attention Interactive client - Jennifer O’Dell; www.jenodell.com
June 17th, 2007
Attention Interactive Web Design Division is now known under the name:
Attention Interactive
Web Design Company
Web Design and Development is foundation of our business and all other services we offer tie into it. We have purchased new domain name under www.webdesigncompany.cc which will communicate additional services and offerings to our clients.
All employees of Web Design Division will have their signatures changed to reflect new organizational structure. Web Design division handles both design and programming - not just design. The name design is in it for the SEO purposes.
June 17th, 2007
Attention Interactive has moved to West Los Angeles - to the corner of Santa Monica Blvd and Sepulveda - right across the street from Westwood Gate Towers. Zip code 90025.
We will be also changing our main phone number to 310-295-1041. We are continuing to offer web design services and are closer to our Wilshire Blvd clients.
June 17th, 2007
According to the latest internet data collected in May 2006, the top 10 web sites in Serbia based on the number of page views is listed below. While the numbers claim to be based on several independent sources for measuring traffic, please note that we are talking bout page impression traffic in Serbia in table below. The Page View is also called page impression, is calculated as request to load a single page of a web site. Page view is contrasted with page hit, which refers to request for a file from a web server. So, there may be many hits per page view.
Top 10 web sites in Serbia
1. Krstarica 20,700,000
2. Serbian Broadcasting Corporation 7,900,000
3. B-92 6,600,000
4. Elitesecurity 2,900,000
5. Blic 2,200,000
6. Beograd kafe 1,700,000
7. Halo oglasi 1,500,000
8. Glas javnosti 1,100,000
9. Novosti 800,000
10. Serbian Government 500,000
April 23rd, 2007
Attention Interactive is an international interactive agency with presence in USA, Netherlands, Serbia and Croatia. Attention Interactive specializes in web application development, web design, e-commerce systems, flash and interactive multimedia, web site hosting and search engine (SEO).
April 22nd, 2007
CyberDefender has one of the best anti-virus products available on the market. The product cleans through all levels of registry and weeds out viruses somehow skipped by other security products in the same category. Norton Internet Security has come up with new interface for 2007, but the underlying technology and features remain the same as they had it in 2006. McAfee comes pre-installed on some of our office computers, but when given choice - we will uninstall it and install either Norton or CyberDefender. CyberDefender is run by Gary Guseinov who, it appears, is pioneering new distribution model for software on the internet that others may copy soon.
CyberDefender is essentially offering the same product, but through 2 different methods of payment. One is CyberDefender FREE – which is a free version supported by ads. Ads were nicely implemented and don’t pop-up and create problems as they do on some other products. Let us mention there are not competing products with the same business model – this software not only does what it is suppose to do, but it is really free. CyberDefender doesn’t limit functionality of its software in its free version. It simply relies on the fact that so many people will download CyberDefenderFREE 2.0 suite that if some of you clicked on the ads it may cover cost of software.
If CyberDefender ads are really annoying you, for only 1 USD per month you can remove them. But they are so well implemented and software in its free version is so unrestricted, you should not have reason to update.
Why would a company that sells software offer non-restricted free version of software with such well implemented ad system that goes unnoticed? How do they hope you will buy it if you have not been given a reason to do so. Let’s see how things develop. So far, so good. Great software. And free for real.
Like Skype.
January 24th, 2007
According to MORI poll of 2,200 Europeans (we never heard of MORI organization before, but we will quote it anyway to be fair), blogs are a more trusted source of information than TV advertising or email marketing. They say they found a direct link between blogs or other user-generated content and people’s intentions to buy. Nearly a third of Europeans questioned said they have put off making a purchase after reading negative comments on the blogs. And 52 percent said they were more likely to buy after reading a positive review on a blog.
In most scenarios, our agency considers Europeans more cautious in their buying behavior than Americans. We are on the lookout for the similar study on American buyers.
January 16th, 2007
Extraordinary website development is a combination of strong design, captive writing, visibility on search engines, and robust interactive marketing. We are strategically positioned in Amsterdam, to us the most creative city in Europe, to deliver solutions for our European clients.
Our Amsterdam interactive division is helping companies create or expand the market for their products and services throughout Europe. When you are ready to take a leap across the Atlantic, our Los Angeles office is ready to pick up the momentum you have build and take it across the United States.
We are strategically focused and creatively driven and our team represents every discipline within the contemporary marketing arsenal, including the broad categories of branding, advertising, public relations, interactive and media.
January 16th, 2007
Attention Interactive Amsterdam web designers have designed some of the best web sites our clients have ever seen. We can’t repeat the same success in our Los Angeles offices. We think this is because Los Angeles can’t compete with Amsterdam in terms of all good stimulants you can find.
Some of the biggest international agencies in Amsterdam, outsource their interactive work to Attention Interactive. On the top of that workload, there are direct clients who also need to be taken care off. Yet, no one has ever complained in Amsterdam of too much work. They get it done on time, and when we want to send some help they refuse.
We think it is weed and Red Light District. To get to our offices, you need to pass through Red Light District and to work 14 hours per day and maintain quality of work you need some weed.
Whatever it is, Amsterdam team - congratulations on productivity and beautifully web solutions coming from that part of the world. When clients are happy - we are happy. We were kidding about stimulants and Red Light District. We are just trying to explain your genius.
January 16th, 2007
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