PERSPECTIVE: Clients might ask for media neutrality but do agencies deliver?(Brief Article)(Column)

Journalists soon learn that a few words of disapproval in an article are remembered forever, yet we can produce 1,200 words of elaborate praise and they will be forgotten by the following week.

The subjects in Campaign's ongoing series, the Client Catalysts, face the same trap. Take a swipe at agencies for their inability to recruit people who can work in other markets, question why agencies persist with financial structures that motivate managers to boost their own bottom line at the expense of the group, point out that agencies do little more than talk a good game when it comes to offering integrated solutions, and they might find themselves characterised as one of those client thugs who likes to browbeat agencies into submission for sport.

But there is one theme that recurs and deserves closer attention. It is that thorny issue of integration, media neutral thinking, call it what you will. Here, in the order they happen to come to mind, are some of those clients commenting on the topic. 'All too often agencies string together up to ten separate units and expect the client to deal with each one. I don't want to talk to ten people who don't often talk to each other' (Ann Francke, Mars); 'Agencies all talk a good game in claiming to offer communications solutions, but they don't. An obsession with traditional advertising has caused many agencies to paint themselves into a corner' (Carol Fisher, COI Communications); 'The holding companies have bought in other expertise, but ...