The New Business Dingo

There's certainly no disputing that there are mixed emotions from agencies regarding the role and practices of search consultants.

We work with a wide variety of agencies nationally at Catapult that continually comment about the amount of resources required to participate in a search consultant run review. They also seek recommendations in terms of the types of filters that they should apply to each review that they're offered an opportunity to participate in.

Yesterday's article in Adweek, 'Shops Assess the Matchmakers' raised more than a few comments online and the debate continues.

The article was build around a study released by Mirren Business Development and hosted on their blog. You can download a complete copy of the 86 page report here.

It seems from the survey results that many agency complaints remain the same: not enough direct interaction with client decision-makers, a lack of respect for agency resources, too much "process for process's sake" and not enough constructive feedback. Those are the top four areas in which search consultants need to improve, according to respondents to the Mirren study, which involved 108 agency honchos.

Read the full article at Adweek.

Perhaps someone should build an alternative to the 'traditional' search function for those reviews that marketers need to run, that fall below the need to involve a consultant - now would that be neat? For all those corporate marketers out there, give www.marketingmine.com a whirl.

Happy Hunting,
The New Business Dingo.