There was once a time when Jez Furlong, Creative Director of Cleverducks (part of Cherryduck Productions), used to shudder on hearing the stock ‘all-under-one-roof’ and ‘one-stop-shop’ descriptions of marketing agencies.

Now, he's running one. So, what happened?

To me, a one-stop-shop always used to sound, well, cheap – a bit lazy, tacky, a bit… pound shop.

So what made me swap my comfortable existence as a Creative in a plush central London ad agency, for exactly one of those outfits?

Recruitment. Now there is a boring word. The very idea is snore inducing. But when a marketing agency enters into the realm of recruitment it becomes a whole new ball game. It’s no surprise the ideas these creative brained agencies come up with are media attention grabbing and awe-inspiring examples of their skills. What better way to attract new troops?

Proving their bite is just as good as their bark marketing agencies have a knack for producing quirky and unforgettable job adverts that leave their mark on all that see them, regardless of whether they are applicants.

Work 4 Rich - Goodby, Silverstein & Partners

One example that has exceeded its applicant quota is Rich Silverstein’s campaign to recruit a new Personal Assistant. The Work 4 Rich campaign has reached an applicant count of 3,055 on last count. Phew, a little too effective maybe. We can image the HR manager left to sift through those CVs is not a happy bunny.

The success of Work 4 Rich was entirely down to the all singing, all dancing full-blown extravaganza of advertising genius that was applied to the simple task of creating a job advert.

Let’s start from the top. Firstly we had a ‘Work 4 Rich’ Tweet emerging among the many Goodby, Silverstein & Partners Tweets in the familiar @GSP timeline. Then before we knew it there was a website with a rather catchy tagline: ‘Rich Silverstein answers to nobody… and that nobody could be you’.

Immediately you want to play and prove your worth and the marketing agency sure does deliver. The next step of the application is a series of gamified tasks to prove you are worthy to work with the apparently super organised, painfully busy and OCD suffering Rich Silverstein. The tasks included sorting pencils from blue to green (all of which appear a dull grey colour), deciding which explosion is the most ‘explosiony’ and arranging his meetings with Felix the cat, Kim Jong Un and others in order of priority.

The site provided such a funny and engaging experience that it attracted a universal audience of playful participants, not just job seeking applicants but also new found fans of the marketing agency.

The news of the site spread quickly thanks to a clever viral aspect that encourages applicants to Tweet about the job from their personal accounts. A stream of witty and whimsical responses filled the Twitter-sphere, gathering more attention to the site as the Work 4 Rich Twitter account replied with equally as sharp responses.

On September 5th the website was nominated for an FWA Award (Favourite Website Award) by the public with a 70% yes vote. Even if Rich doesn’t find his Personal Assistant it proved to be a great internal achievement for the marketing agency, showcasing their proficiency to clients and media.

We thought we'd take a breather in our busy blogging schedule to see how you and your marketing agency would fancy blogging for us?

Here, in the final installment of our Publicis/Omnicom commentary series, Dudley Masters, Account Director of comms and marketing agency, Acumen.

(Catch up on the rest of the series, 'Merger could signal new biz opportunity' and, 'How will the merger affect clients?', now).

In a continution of our effort to see what smaller marketing agencies are saying about the Publicis/Omnicom merger, we asked MD of marketing agency Incite, Kristian Gough what he thought about the upcoming move and how he saw it affecting the industry.

The Publicis Omnicom Group will boast a forecasted £23 billion in share value and 40% of the global advertising market if regulators approve it. Big deal.

However, the risks of the large merger are easily translated into advantages for independent advertising and marketing agencies. For example, the complicated process of orchestrating a merger can be a cause for concern for clients who will be anxious to avoid any negligence of their brand’s needs during the process. Incite found new business potential in the following problems:

Problem #1 – Bigger is not better

Ask the experts. See what the smaller marketing agencies are saying...

The merger between advertising agency giants Publicis and Omincom is one of the biggest happenings in the industry for decades. We asked three MDs of smaller marketing agencies what they thought the impact would be for clients and how the landscape could change.

Jamie Mollart, Director of Advertising and Marketing Agency, Rock Kitchen Harris, is calling all creative folk to arms in a world of cold, hard stats.

I've been thinking about this a lot recently; how does an advertising or marketing agency maintain the focus on creativity in a world of monitoring?

We were digging around the back catalogues the other day and found this arther provacative article, which made our eyebrows, and we're sure those of marketing agencies everywhere, raise a few inches. Kevin Roberts of Advertising Agency Saatchi & Saatchi makes four big claims in his article entitled ‘Marketing is dead’. These are:

1. Strategy is dead
2. Management is dead
3. The big idea is dead
4. Marketing as we know [it] is dead

It's quite a statement, but reading further, we find ourseves agreeing with Roberts’ support points. Cynically, however, we suppose, in true Saatchi style, his headline points were meant to provoke. The social movement has changed the face of marketing and of the marketing agency. As did the internet. TV. Radio. Moveable type, etc.

If Roberts’ goal was to shock and generate discussion around the change that the industry is experiencing; he succeeded.

But, it’s our view that brands will continue to engage with audiences in order to drive sales and as the industry fragments further, moving from one to many communications toward one to one interactions, the role of the marketing agency and advertising agency will become more important. While the current marketing landscape and social tools allow the top 10% of brands and products to generate organic awareness and interest, this won’t be the case for the majority of firms and products. Most will still look to specialist firms to save themselves the learning curve of implementing full marketing programmes internally.

What do you think? Is marketing dead? How do you think the role of the marketing agency change in the years to come?

Are you selecting an agency? Many regional corporates (large and small) choose large advertising network agencies, but are they the best choice?