Who's in charge over here?

How much strategy should the agency be responsible, and how much should the client be responsible for? I know that the easy answer here is: it depends.

It depends on the agency – are they a creative agency, or a strategic agency? Any agency, be it design or marketing or public relations, needs to play to its strengths.

It depends on the client – how robust is their internal marketing team? Smaller businesses may be starving for some strategy and insight when it comes to promoting themselves. Larger corporations may make all of the strategic decisions internally and just outsource the deliverables.

In any mid to large sized agency, I think the agency has a responsibility in most cases to provide some strategic thinking to the client. When you are in the agency environment, you are in the front lines of marketing, advertising and public relations. We are the folks that look at commercials with a critical eye, that read the paper and think, “I know exactly how this company profile got into the business section.”

Maybe it’s a new SEO tactic, or a new format for variable data in direct mail. Maybe it’s a more affordable way to get on the radio or on television. These are things that folks within the agency world will almost always hear about before the folks in the client world, and for that reason it’s the responsibility of those outside the company to provide strategic thinking.

So what’s the right answer here? Who ends up doing what? It’s got to be a balance. Nobody knows the client like the client, and nobody knows the possibilities of what can get accomplished like the agencies.

The client is like Honda – really well grounded, they know what they do and they do it well. The agency needs to be like a tribe of punk kids throwing as much aftermarket product at the cars as they can just to enhance the performance.

Screw Everyone Else!

Is there something to be said for Dodge here? Sure, everyone is thinking green and efficient and hybrid, and they're unloading a truck that's lucky to get 8 miles per gallon. But what if Dodge is right?

There are a LOT of brands competing for space out there in the automotive world. Dr. Z has hurt Dodge, and Daimler Chrysler in general, by blurring the brands. He's also tried to take some very American brands, like Dodge, and push them as cars with German engineering.

Dodge knows big engines and big trucks. Dodge has spent far more, per truck sold, than Ford or GM in the past few years, making "Hemi" a household name again.

While at first glance, the new Ram may seem counter-intuitive, let's look at the whole industry and where dodge fits.

Dodge does NOT have fuel-efficient little urban cars for the college age crowd - Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, Scion and Kia have that.

Dodge does NOT have big, cushy luxury American cars - Buick, Lincoln, Mercury and Chrysler have those (why does Mercury exist? Different conversation...)

Dodge does NOT have high-performance sports cars the way that BMW, Mercedes, Audi and Porsche do

Dodge does NOT have the family friendly cars like the Honda Odyssey, the Chrysler Town and Country line, some of the GM trucks

Dodge DOES have big engines and mean looking trucks. Perhaps in putting out a vehicle that can actually claim to be Al Gore's nemesis, Dodge is only acknowledging that they know their role, and that they're comfortable there.

Marketers often talk about creating a niche, not keeping up with others. Dodge may very well be creating their own niche of bad-ass-trucks and, lest we forget, mean-looking-station-wagons.