If you’re a good Advertising Manager: Do it yourself!

Over the course of my 10 years as an Advertising Manager at a major agrochemical company, I demonstrated that, for any advertising client, it’s far more cost-effective to oversee all the processes involved in a campaign or advertising activity and hire each contributing agent individually, rather than entrusting everything to a single external intermediary. I also proved that working directly with freelance illustrators, photomechanical services, printers, promotional gift suppliers, direct mail advertising firms, outdoor advertising companies, recording studios, media buying agencies, and more doesn’t exclude advertising agencies—quite the contrary, I collaborated with them on numerous occasions throughout this period. Likewise, I showed that it’s more profitable for a company to have its own Advertising Department rather than relying on a single employee with no advertising expertise (a common scenario) to outsource all the work to an external firm.

With the substantial workload at ICI-Zeltia (now Syngenta), partnering with advertising agencies was essential, but I reserved their involvement for large-scale promotions and campaigns requiring the simultaneous use of diverse advertising elements across varied, tightly interconnected media—aligned in creativity, intensity, and duration. However, for more isolated, one-off actions tied to other products—such as producing brochures, booking a local radio and press campaign, securing billboards, or organizing a small regional giveaway—the Advertising Department took charge, directly hiring and supervising each necessary supplier.
 
Here’s my advice to Advertising Managers who’ve been leaving everything in the hands of a single external provider: try taking the reins on a standalone project. Negotiate, hire, and oversee each supplier involved in that advertising effort yourself, then compare the costs you achieve with what you were previously paying when a single provider handed you one all-inclusive invoice. As a bonus, if you truly love Advertising (with a capital “A”), you’ll relish diving in and taking ownership of those projects or elements. They’ll no longer be “something someone else did”—they’ll be “something you did yourself.”
 

A well-documented exploration of Medicine, Pharmacy, and rural society in the 19th century through two biographies that should not be forgotten:
“Kisses are tears”: https://a.co/d/eCok2Y0 

Sales prefers Promotions over Advertising

Sales teams in a company love promotions more than advertising. Why? Because promotions let them “see” the results of the money “spent” on the accompanying campaign. I’ve put “spent” in quotes because sales managers typically view advertising as an “expense” rather than an “investment.” That’s why they favor promotions: they can clearly measure their impact on sales, something advertising doesn’t allow, at least not with the same precision.

This preference, however, exposes a deep-rooted mistake among sales leaders—whether Sales Directors, Sales Managers, or Commercial Representatives: they prioritize the gifts over the advertising essential to publicize the promotion and persuade potential customers to participate.
 
When I started working at this major agrochemical company, that was the first thing that struck me. As Head of Advertising, I managed a hefty budget of 200 million pesetas (about 1.2 million euros at the time, in the 1980s), part of which went to promotions. But how was that money allocated?
 
Ninety percent of the promotion budget went to gifts. Sales leaders believed that the more expensive and appealing the prize—or the more giveaways offered—the greater the customers’ eagerness to join in, leading to higher product sales. But how did potential customers even learn about these promotions? Advertising to spread the word received just 10% of the budget.
 
There was a glaring imbalance between the funds allocated to prizes and those invested in communication. They assumed “word of mouth” was enough to get the message out, perhaps supplemented by a stray ad, a poster at sales points, or a commercial letter sent by mail. Back then, there were no computers, mobile phones, or emails, so mailing letters was as routine as sending promotional emails is today.
 

A journey through the history of the pharmaceutical industry and one of its great laboratories that had its origins in Alfred Nobel...
“From Alfred Nobel to AstraZeneca”: https://a.co/d/9svRTuI