Madison Avenue was once inhabited by advertising agencies that bore the names of their founders and top execs.
It was a personal business and the clients wanted to do business with those who had a successful track record of producing good work.
But along the way the advertising industry changed and so did the names of the agencies.
Today, the ad agency directory in New York and Los Angeles lists names such as Mother Advertising, Strawberry Fog, Anomaly, TAXI, Channel M, 72 and Sunny, David & Goliath and Fourth Wall.
These names are different, but they don't say anything about the people behind the agency and does little to suggest why someone should trust the entity with the success or failure of a given brand.
Hip, slick and cool are not what the first century of ad agencies were about.
Starting in the late 1800s, agencies were about selling ad space and managing this effort for clients.
Then, to differentiate themselves from others, they added creative development as a service.
Two of the pioneers were J.
Walter Thompson and NW Ayer.
Thompson, an industry leader for years, is now an independent entity operating under the ownership of one of the major agency holding companies.
Ayer, once the biggest US agency, has been purchased and dismantled like an old factory.
It is almost a certainty that your parents purchased something that one of these old-line agencies advertised.
As businesses grew and advertising influenced more Americans with radio being added to newspapers and magazines as well as outdoor signs, the business became more sophisticated and more competitive.
Those employed by the big shops in all major cities, but particularly in New York, began to split off and form their own agencies by taking their clients with them.
This resulted in a host of new agencies bearing the names of the founding partners.
The reputation of the men, and later women, behind these start-ups was what enticed clients to follow them out the door.
Their names were what attracted new clients to join them, just like in the early days.
As companies merged, initials became popular as nicknames, but the names remained even if they stretched across the letterhead.
Then in the golden years following the advent of television, holding companies emerged as a way to house many agencies, with competing clients, under one roof.
While not thrilled with this concept in the beginning, the holding company has become the way to handle international business.
This afforded opportunities for smaller shops to spring up and offer personalized service and focus on specialized segments of the business such as creative, marketing or media buying and leave the wrapping up of the total service package to the big boys, which is pretty much how it is today.
The Internet may be responsible for the strange names under which many newer ad agencies now do business.
Will agencies go back to using personal names? It may happen when individual reputations for doing great work become important again.
It was a personal business and the clients wanted to do business with those who had a successful track record of producing good work.
But along the way the advertising industry changed and so did the names of the agencies.
Today, the ad agency directory in New York and Los Angeles lists names such as Mother Advertising, Strawberry Fog, Anomaly, TAXI, Channel M, 72 and Sunny, David & Goliath and Fourth Wall.
These names are different, but they don't say anything about the people behind the agency and does little to suggest why someone should trust the entity with the success or failure of a given brand.
Hip, slick and cool are not what the first century of ad agencies were about.
Starting in the late 1800s, agencies were about selling ad space and managing this effort for clients.
Then, to differentiate themselves from others, they added creative development as a service.
Two of the pioneers were J.
Walter Thompson and NW Ayer.
Thompson, an industry leader for years, is now an independent entity operating under the ownership of one of the major agency holding companies.
Ayer, once the biggest US agency, has been purchased and dismantled like an old factory.
It is almost a certainty that your parents purchased something that one of these old-line agencies advertised.
As businesses grew and advertising influenced more Americans with radio being added to newspapers and magazines as well as outdoor signs, the business became more sophisticated and more competitive.
Those employed by the big shops in all major cities, but particularly in New York, began to split off and form their own agencies by taking their clients with them.
This resulted in a host of new agencies bearing the names of the founding partners.
The reputation of the men, and later women, behind these start-ups was what enticed clients to follow them out the door.
Their names were what attracted new clients to join them, just like in the early days.
As companies merged, initials became popular as nicknames, but the names remained even if they stretched across the letterhead.
Then in the golden years following the advent of television, holding companies emerged as a way to house many agencies, with competing clients, under one roof.
While not thrilled with this concept in the beginning, the holding company has become the way to handle international business.
This afforded opportunities for smaller shops to spring up and offer personalized service and focus on specialized segments of the business such as creative, marketing or media buying and leave the wrapping up of the total service package to the big boys, which is pretty much how it is today.
The Internet may be responsible for the strange names under which many newer ad agencies now do business.
Will agencies go back to using personal names? It may happen when individual reputations for doing great work become important again.
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