The Advertising Agency Audit (Marketing)

A complete guide to auditing your advertising agency, evaluating new agencies and establishing effective
in-house disciplines.

Use this self-assessment audit to evaluate the effectiveness of your current advertising spend, get the best results from advertising suppliers, improve creative quality and media planning efforts, and build an advertising strategy that delivers real value for money. The audit includes 12 separate self-assessment checklists with a total of 177 questions prepared. It comes in three sections.

• Part 1 contains a 7-step Agency Performance Review (with checklists at each step) for auditing an existing advertising agency.
  
  If you don’t use an advertising agency, you can use this section to audit your internal advertising services department.
  


1. Evaluating Administration and Staffing
2. Appraising the Effectiveness of Planning and Strategy
3. Assessing the Creative Contribution
4. Analyzing Capabilities in Media Planning
5. Evaluating Agency Cost Effectiveness
6. Appraising Specialist Agency Services
7. Scrutinizing Available Data on Achievement
   
   
• Part 2 has a 3-step approach (with checklists at each step) to evaluating a potential new agency.
  
  
  1. Drawing up a Long List of Candidate Agencies
  2. Identifying the Short-Listed Candidates
  3. Establishing a Suitable Agency Agreement
     
     
• Part 3 presents a 3-step approach to establishing in-house structures and disciplines – to help you get the most from your agency.
  
  
  1. Briefing and Setting Objectives
  2. Agency-Client Communication
  3. The Client’s Contribution to Agency Motivation

  Information from Part 3 could be included in any future agreement/contract with your agency.

The audit includes a detailed guide to the audit process:

• How to set-up and staff the audit team
• How to create an audit project plan and lay the groundwork
• How to gather, analyse and share results
• How to write audit reports, make recommendations and deal with resistance to those recommendations.
  
  The final section of the audit includes more than 40 pages of detailed questions and checklists – ready for use at each stage of the self-assessment audit.