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