January 25, 2023
Carat, MediaCom, Zenith Rank As Top 3 Shops Clients Most Want To Work With
- by Joe Mandese @mp_joemandese, July 28, 2016
Publicis’ Zenith, Dentsu
Aegis’ Carat, and GroupM’s MediaCom ranked as the “top three” of 15 media agencies measured in a recent survey asking ad executives how likely they were to select them as their
agency. The survey, which was conducted by ad industry B2B customer satisfaction researcher Advertiser Perceptions, specifically asked respondents the following question:
“Imagine you are conducting a review… How likely are you to consider working with the following agencies in the next 12 months?”
The top three identified in each category were based on the highest index of responses giving each agency an “8-10 on a 10 point scale.”
The rankings, which were released in a promotional email sent by AP on Wednesday, were from what it described as a “pilot study” ranking more than 100 agencies on various criteria conducted this summer.
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AP also released the “top three” rankings in three other agency categories: digital, search and creative.
The top three among 50 digital shops measured were: IBM’s Interactive Experience, Omnicom’s Tribal Worldwide, and performance marketing agency Merkle.
The top three of 25 “search” agencies measured were: Dentsu Aegis’ 360i, Merkle, and Publicis’ Razorfish.
The top three of 30 “creative” agencies measured were: Interpublic’s Deutsch, Publicis’ Leo Burnett and its Saatchi & Saatchi units.
The study, which surveyed more than 300 marketers, according to an earlier report in The Wall Street Journal, also found that 58% of the respondents planned to “review their agencies in the next 12 months.”3 comments about "Carat, MediaCom, Zenith Rank As Top 3 Shops Clients Most Want To Work With".
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This type of research has been conducted for years and agencies that "win" always use it to promote themselves in new business pitches. Otherwise it's almost impossible to isolate the hidden variables such as how familiar a client is with agencies he/she has never dealt with or how you isolate the scale factor---which inherently favors the larger and, often, the older shops over the smaller, newer players. What would be helpful for readers of this article would be a listing of the actual scalings for each of the top 10-15 agencies so the degree of difference between them could be considered. Also worth noting would be a breakdown by agency function---"creative", account handling, media planning, media buying, etc.
Besides the obvious ridiculous point of - if a client wanted to work with an agency, they would (unless this was a survey of 300 start ups with no money and no potential)... The best part about studies like this is that we only have ourselves to blame for it. What more blatant marketing, than creating a best agency list :). Kudos to winning this prestigious award.
While understandable that one might come away from a “most desired” finding as just another rating agencies could use to tout, the study itself actually goes much deeper. Beginning with familiarity and consideration of agencies by top level marketers that hire and retain them, the study utilizes over 25 perception points across Service, Talent, Creativity, Strategy and Execution, Scale and Cost. Through the study we are able to determine what is actually driving prospect and client decisions to hire or retain agencies. These drivers are dynamic over time and differ by agency type and business vertical. Through the study we are also able to see how agency brands are perceived by prospects and clients against those drivers and how one agency brand stacks up against it’s competitors.