ABSTRACT
Over the decades spanning the 1940s to the 1980s, advertising agencies and their clients had developed a comfortable relationship. Marketing’s emphasis on methodical processes that would guarantee a positive return was something of an anathema to the creative departments in the advertising agencies. With the economy weakening, advertisers’ calls for greater accountability in their advertisements and, indeed, their relationship with advertising agencies became louder and more insistent. With marketers eager to utilise any marketing strategy that would enable them to reach their desired market in the most cost-effective way, the advertising industry found itself in an increasingly challenging battle to win a piece of the shrinking marketing pie. With marketers exercising greater sway over marketing strategies, it was inevitable that they would also pay greater attention to branding and revisit the advertising agency’s role in its development.
