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Make beautiful music together: one brand message, multiple agencies: here are 10 easy tips for navigating the intra-agency divide.

Article Excerpt
Brand teams that need help guiding their agency-integration efforts may find it useful to look outside the world of pharmaceuticals, and zoom in on the model of a well-orchestrated jazz band. If you've ever had a chance to see a live jazz show, you'll understand: Talented players creating melodies that make sense on their own; when built on another band member's riffs, however, melodies rise and fall in a sum of harmonies that offers an oratory experience that no one player could deliver alone.

Similarly, agency-integration meetings should result in group synergy and a flow of great ideas. Suggestions from one agency should spark creativity from another, and together, the brand's initiatives should become more robust, connected to the business goals, and efficient.

Today, agency integration is more important than ever. That's because consumers need multiple touch points in order for messages to penetrate. In fact, the most successful campaigns are often due to cohesive and consistent messaging across the different disciplines.

For instance, to break through the noise and constant clutter of everyday life, a pharma brand team may decide to do the following: target a particular type of consumer by placing an ad on a billboard for a particular treatment, pitch disease information to a magazine for a story on a relevant disease, or send an e-mail that offers a cutout questionnaire for consumers to take to their doctor to see if a particular drug is right for them.

Put simply, interconnectivity among agencies that specialize in different areas along the consumer continuum allows brands to...