Marketing Client Perceptions of the Advertising Agency Development Process: Understanding Dispositional and Situational Attributions

Marketing clients appear to put emphasis on the importance of agency skills to help them develop better creative ad campaigns. That is, clients tend to focus on dispositional factors in making attributions for why some ads are better than others. This contrasts with those who work for advertising agencies, who put more emphasis on the situational factors leading to more creative work. We explore these issues by surveying large US-based marketing clients about their views on why some campaigns are better than others. We show that attributional biases do play a role in how clients view the advertising development process. But we also show that some client attitudes are consistent with agency views of the process.