The pitch: Focus on coming up with great ideas and the rest falls into place

By DAVID BELL AXIS adschool tutor

I used to do a lot of touring in Spain. We'd flip a coin at Malaga airport to decide which way to turn, and let chance dictate our travel.

One of the delicious thrills of this approach to holidaying was the variety of hotels we'd end up in.

In Spain, all hotels have fantastic reception areas - polished marble, lemon trees, twittering canaries, etc.

But sometimes, as we ventured away from the reception, things would begin to go astray.

The lighting would dim, carpeting would thin, strange, vaguely sewery smells would creep by, and the endless twisting corridors would begin to bulge and sweat.

Finally we would enter our allotted room - Mother of Mercy!

I won't frighten you with some of the horrors I've seen, except to say that if you ever want to experience a living, three dimensional, definition of "shithole", in Smello-vision, you'll find it in San Roque, just west of Marbella.

It's bizarre that anyone could get their core business so wrong.

In a hotel, the one thing that just has to be right is the rooms your guests sleep in.

Let's face it, many modern ad agencies, large and small, work like hotels. They are not the destination, they are agents that pull together a slick package of service, reassurance and comfort. But they do have a core product, and that is ideas.

Ideas - more specifically ad ideas - are to advertising as rooms are to hotels. So why are so many ads the equivalent of a room in "El Shithole"? How come full service doesn't necessarily lead to great ideas?

Don't get me wrong. A holistic, multi-disciplined approach to problem-solving is needed to do great ads.

It's the one thing that consultants and independents can't offer, and an advantage that full-service agencies can and should exploit.

But all the skills, talents and expertise an agency has at its disposal should be primarily directed at servicing ideas, not clients.

Clients don't come to agencies to be serviced, they come to buy solutions to their big, real-world business problems.

They want ideas - big, fantastic strategic insights and conclusions that are the stock-in-trade of the ad business.

They want a room with taps that work.

In the absence of good ideas, all "full service" does is help grind out predictable, boring and invisible ads.

But when excellence and unbridled enthusiasm for ideas are the focus of the agency's efforts, then the complex web of creative exploration, media nous, planning savvy and production expertise become rewarding, exciting and more effective.

Get the rooms right first, then everything else falls into place. Service the ideas and you're giving your clients the service they checked in for.

* Submissions for The Pitch are welcome. They can be sent to marketing writer Simon Hendery