Areas of exploration that can help inspire proactive thinking.

1. Prepare a complete online reputation report using social media tracking and analysis tools.
2. Study trade association reports and provide insights.
3. Prepare a brief analysis of industry trends.
4. Attend client trade shows and prepare key findings.
5. Recommend and implement a tracking study.
6. Initiate account planning research.
7. Conduct a field trip to client and competitive locations and provide a written report of your observations.
8. Do telephone interviews of distributors, sales reps, magazine reps, editors.
9. Recommend new products and services. Recommend new uses and markets.
10. Recommend market tests. Analyze competitive strengths and weaknesses and identify opportunities.
11. Develop detailed customer profiles.
12. Make sure your client is doing an adequate job at the point of sale.
13. Perform a post-campaign analysis and hold a client debriefing.
14. Conduct an updated marketing audit.
15. Make a survey of all offline and online literature and make suggestions on how it could be improved, consolidated, or done more effectively.
16. Do an audit of the internal brand. Hold a client brand review.

The Brand Review

One of the best ways to make sure you’re serving clients effectively is to gather your best minds together for a “brand review,” in which you take a big-picture view of the client’s business and think about other ways you can help.

A good brand review includes a look at things like:

• Status of the industry and current trends
• Current client issues and concerns
• Competitive review
• Market segments and target audiences
• Client sales history and marketing successes
• Current brand awareness, attitudes, and usage
• Share of mind and share of market
• Spending history and projections
• Consumer understanding and recent research findings
• Current branding strategy
• Current work (from all disciplines, not just advertising)
• Results, past and current
• Critique of agency services
• Assessment of current agency/client relationship
• Opportunities for involvement of other agency disciplines
• Business building opportunities

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