Do Marketing Clients Really Get the Advertising They Deserve? The Trade-Off Between Strategy and Originality in Australian and New Zealand Agencies

This article replicates the role clients play in their agency's advertising development process, as investigated by Koslow, Sasser, and Riordan (Citation2006), but with data from Australia and New Zealand agencies. The role of client willingness to explore ideas is again found to be a critical reason why some clients receive more creative campaigns that others. Although some of the complex interactions found by Koslow, Sasser, and Riordan (Citation2006) were not replicated, additional analyses suggest other patterns in the data. Some marketer-related factors, such as client sophistication and the use of consumer research, improve how strategic campaigns are, but they do so at the cost of originality. The net effect on the total creativity of a campaign may be minimal, but the creative character may change dramatically. Again, marketers seeking accountability for their campaigns' creativity need look no further than themselves.