Originally posted by BillV63 Hello Mike,
I remember going to a seminar featuring Jerry when he was one of the partners at Della Femina Travisano & Partners. He was the first ad exec to utilize the concept of 'positioning' a product. I did work for J Walter Thompson, BBD&O, Doyle Dane and a couple of other botiques in the city as the were called back then. Had a small studio, got really busy and then thought I'd make a million by opening an ad agency. Ha, that was a bust. Should have stuck with what I knew. Remember, then, 95% of the work was done in B&W. Worked through the night in a darkroom so I could deliver the following morning. Loved it. What about you? Best, Bill
I think you meant to say, "Hello Ira."
And yes, they originally called them boutique agencies, but that only lasted until they landed a big account. The term "boutique" only related to billings, and had nothing to do with the quality of the agency.
Many boutique agencies didn't offer in-house research services, which most big agencies didn't really offer either. They had one or two research people on staff who worked with outside companies to conduct focus groups with and such.
The death of the smaller "boutique" agencies was only the result of the media/ad space/ad time discounts that the mega-agencies could offer, based on the sum of their buys. Work quality had nothing to do with it.
We had some very major accounts that we lost based ONLY only on the 1% media discount that Ogilvy & Mather could offer them.