• by December 1, 2005

SWITCH PITCH -- It was probably inevitable that given the current rate of advertising role reversing, a major agency was bound to hold a review for clients to pitch its services. Just consider what's already happened in the past year alone:

* Consumers have begun pitching ad accounts. (see adcandy.com's pitch for Coca-Cola's business).
* Consumers have begun creating ads for clients independent of any account review, and without the marketers' permission. (see Joe Jaffe's impromptu Tiger Woods' magical Nike golfball putt commercial.)
* Clients have begun pitching consumers to generate advertising content. (see GEICO's and Verizon's consumer-generated ad contests).

Of course, advertising services have never been a linear process of client-to-agency-to-media-to-consumer. It's been a shifting process ever since N.W. Ayer, and his sons, first began repping ad space for newspapers, and offered the papers' advertisers creative services as an inducement to place the business. That ultimately blossomed into the full-service ad structure that Madison Avenue became famous for, but there have always been blurry lines among the client, the agency, the media, and the consumer. And we don't simply mean the emergence of AORs, the unbundling of media services, the shift toward communications planning, and the boutiquing of creative services. Those are all part of the same logical progression. Or, an illogical one, depending on your perspective.

If you want to observe a really bizarre example of modern day advertising account structures, just look at the Yellow Pages industry, where the biggest shops are also "certified marketing representatives" of the directories they purchase space from. In fact, they're required to be. Don't believe us? Just thumb your way through a directory to the heading labeled: "Conflict."

Then there's the most recent progression of media getting into creative. There are major media shops producing advertising content. They call it digital media content, branded entertainment, or by other names, but when you come right down to it, they're making the ads.

And, of course, media companies have always produced ad content. But things have changed since the days when newspapers and magazines produced ad slicks in-house. Things have gotten slicker, and more competitive with the types of creative services offered by some of the biggest ad shops. Just look at the stuff coming out of John Partilla's group at Time Warner, or the work Clear Channel Communications is doing for clients on outdoor content. We even hear some curious buzz about Google getting into "advertising services." And we don't simply mean the search engine's electronic and print media brokering gambit, but the same kind of advertising services offered by conventional Madison Avenue agencies.

So when Burnett invites public service advertisers to pitch its pro bono services, we have to admit we were a little surprised, but definitely not shocked. It's just the way things are going. And we expect them to go even further. Why wouldn't hot creative or media shops play the same game with commercial clients? In a subtle way, we're sure they do. Demand for Crispin Porter + Bogusky's, OMD's or Media Kitchen's work must be so great these days, that those shops effectively stage clandestine reviews for clients to pitch them. Of course, they would never call it that. At least not yet. There are still protocols, after all. It's one thing for an agency to stage a review for free. It's quite another for them to stage one for a fee. But we think this is inevitable too--if for no better reason than for Madison Avenue to give in to an irresistible urge for another kind of role reversal--one that will give agency review consultants a new kind of agita.

But new advertising account roles may also require new account servicing rules. So, before we see a major agency make the leap and open up a category review inviting commercial clients to pitch its business, we think the industry should answer a few important questions:

* Will the agency ask the client contenders to produce work for spec?
* Will the agency's procurement department nickel-and-dime the account, sucking any life out of the creative process?
* Will the client commit to--and honor--the rule keeping the best members of its team on the account?