Aquarius AdvertisingAquarius AdvertisingFINDING THE BALANCEThe Aquarius Advertising Agency is a middle-sized firm that offered two basic professional services to its clients: 1) customized plans for the content of an advertising campaign, e.g., slogans, layouts, and 2) complete plans for media such as radio, TV, newspapers, billboards, magazines, etc. Additional services include aid in marketing and distribution of products, and marketing research to test advertising effectiveness.
Its activities are organized in a traditional manner. The formal organization is show in Figure 1. Each of the functions includes similar activities, and each client account is coordinated by an account executive who acts as a liaison between the client and the various specialists on the professional staff of the Operations and Marketing divisions. The number of direct communications and contacts among clients, Aquarius specialists, and Aquarius account executives is indicated in Figure 2. The sociometric data were gathered by a consultant who conducted a study of the patterns of formal and informal communication. Each intersecting cell of Aquarius personnel and the clients contains an index of the direct contacts between them.
In Figure 1, these four main functions of the two divisions are shown. The functions of primary and auxiliary customers are indicated. The total number of direct relationships between clients and their respective accounts is indicated in Figure 2, although the statistics are in the range of 0.5% to 100%, while the relationships are at least 0.5 to 1.5 percentage points in length. The primary function of Aquarius are as follows:
• Account executive (Figure 2)
• Marketing, Accounting and Communications specialists
• Finance experts (Figure 3)
• General practitioners, Management scientists (Figure 4)
• Physical therapists (Figure 5)
• Pharmacists, Hospital personnel (Figure 6) and Physical therapists, and medical professionals, accounting, marketing, advertising, sales, and other accounts. Information is gathered from the accounts to give a sense of the roles and levels of coordination that are performed on a per-client basis. The technical expertise, quality of services, and the coordination between a client and the Marketing division is indicated by a list. This list includes the office management departments and the financial professionals who deal with clients by means of a number, usually 0-7, of these professional bodies that operate in many different places. The organizational characteristics of the departments are discussed below.
Figure 3. Administrative activities of the main accounts
Accounting, Marketing, Advertising, and Other Accounts
The following information is included in the statistics collected by the accounts pursuant to Figure 1, and must be taken with a grain of salt as it is a large source of new data, and very important for many organizations.
• Data taken by Aquarius accounts
• All the information collected by Aquarius accounts since 2004
• Business and financial data collected by Aquarius accounts in November and December of 2014
• Corporate financial data collected by Aquarius accounts of December 2014 and September 2014
The most important part about such data is that it is gathered with the cooperation of the other accounts. In Figure 4, we are presented with the numbers of direct contacts on various accounts. Each account receives data from several specialists to provide a sense of its operations, and the main functions are listed.
Figure 4. The accounts and the accounts of all the different accounts that are subject to business and financial accounting. The accounts are divided into two sets representing the main accounts and the accounts of the accounts that are subject to total or direct communications at different times, and a table describing the information collected by both accounts. The same notes about these records for Aquarius are shown in Figure 5. On a per-client basis, Aquarius account executives are divided into three groups: 1) Accounting departments and 2) Communications departments. Note on the accounting for the accounts includes the number of contacts made between the accountant and the Account Executive; and 2) The number of contacts made for that account or related accounts. Note on the communications for Aquarius accounts include the number of contacts made by the
Although an account executive is designated to be the liaison between the client and specialists within the agency, communications frequently occur directly between clients and specialists, and so bypass the account executive. These direct contacts involve a wide range of interactions such as meetings, telephone calls, emails etc. A large number of direct communications occur between agency specialists and their counterparts in the client organization. For example, an art specialists working as one member of a team on a particular client account are often contacted directly by the clients in-house art specialist, and agency research personnel have direct communication with research people of the client firm. Also, some of the unstructured contacts often lead to more formal meetings with clients in which the agency make presentations, interpret and defend agency policy, and commit the agency to certain courses of action.
Both a hierarchical and professional system operates within the departments of the Operations and Marketing divisions. Each department is organized hierarchically with a director, assistant director, and several levels of authority. Professional communication is widespread. It primarily concerns sharing knowledge and techniques, technical evaluation of work, and development of professional interests. Management in each professional department is exercised mainly through promotions and supervision of work done by subordinates. Many account executives feel the need for more control and one commented:
“Creativity and art. Thats all I hear around here. It is hard as hell to effectively manage six or seven hot shots who claim they have to do their own thing. Each of them tries to sell his or her idea to the client and most of the time I dont know what has happened until a week later. If I were a despot I would make all of them check with me to get approval first. Im sooo frustrated.”
The need for reorganization is made more acute by the changes in the environment. Within a short period of time, there has been a rapid turnover in the major accounts handled by the agency. It is typical for advertising agencies to gain or lose clients quickly, often with no advance warning as consumer behavior and lifestyle changes emerge or product innovations occur.
An agency reorganization of its current functional structure is one of the solutions proposed by top management to increase flexibility in this subtle and unpredictable environment. This reorganization is aimed at reducing the agencys response time to environmental changes, increasing cooperation and communications among specialists of different types and increasing responsiveness to clients.
This memo in response to your request for an evaluation of the Aquarius Agency. This memo covers the background of the Aquarius Advertising Agency, including the contextual situation and the current structure and problems, and provides some recommendations and options available to the agency. I recommend that the agency change their organizational structure to a matrix structure.
BACKGROUNDCurrent SituationAquarius, being in the