Ad Agency Net Promoter Smack-Down

March 6th, 2007

posted by: Spike

Adpulp posted this a week ago (via MediaPost), but I still can’t get over it:

A new Forrester Research study found “a major rift between marketers and agencies with some harsh survey results: On aggregate, agencies scored a dismal Net Promoter rating of 21%, showing just how few marketers in the fourth quarter of last year would have recommended the same agency services they themselves pay for.”

Boiled down, your Net Promoter Score is the rating you get when you ask people the ultimate question: “Would you recommend us to a friend?” Now, let’s put the score in context: USAA has an 82%. Harley-Davidson, 81. Apple comes in at 66% and Adobe has a 48.

So, basically, 21% is not good. Sucks even. Ad agencies spend all this time trying to raise the number for their clients, yet (yes, I know it’s an average) only 21% of the clients they work with would recommend them to their peers. Why? Could it be the less than 4% ROI that they’re getting on traditional ads? Could it be trying to compete with the 3,000 messages their customers are bombarded with every singe day? Or could it be trying to compete with DVRs, iPods and other ad-blocking technology?

I dunno. But I do know that alarms are going off and red flags are going up all over the landscape. Listen, I’m not puttin’ on a sandwich board that predicts the end of the ad world. Because advertising isn’t going away. But how many more wake-up calls are going to have to be made before they realize that the monologue is coming to an end?

Twenty-one percent. Wow.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 6th, 2007 at 7:01 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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2 Responses to “Ad Agency Net Promoter Smack-Down”

  1. Christy says:

    Not sure when it’s going to hit bottom, but there are already many people leveraging the channels in which consumers *are* listening, and the monologues (hopefully) will soon become extinct.

    Your previous post, “Crowdhacking,” nails the very reason why companies (brand marketers) continue to monologue like Syndrome. They’re hiding from their fears instead of taking a chance and facing them.

    What do all those empowerment people say about growth?

    March 6th, 2007 at 12:51 pm

  2. David Burn says:

    Nice Spike. Thanks for the pickup.

    Clients likely feel that agencies are spending their money unwisely. That’s why they don’t want to recommend us.

    The closer we can tie our services (and fees) to actual market place success, the better off we’ll be.

    March 6th, 2007 at 4:22 pm

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