ADvice & ADvisors, Incorporated, founded in 1989, is a consulting firm devoted to the relationship between advertisers and their ad agencies. We specialize in agency search and review, agency performance measurement/management and agency fee development.

We have helped to launch and maintain over 300 advertiser/agency relationships. Everyone associated with the company has had extensive advertising agency and client-side experience, prior to joining the firm, in diverse areas of expertise including traditional advertising, media, direct, CRM, interactive, guerilla marketing, DTC, B2B.

We view our role as search consultants to be that of investment counselors. We facilitate your decision making by providing you with relevant information. We ensure that the talent is there and the processes and systems are such that the agency can consistently do great work, following best practices, year after year. We ensure our impartiality by not charging the agencies any registration fees. We do no recruiting from the agencies. We helped write and faithfully observe the 4A’s/ANA Consultant’s Rules of the Road.

Along with an exceptionally deep and broad experience base, our Search Process has some unique elements:

We do not use a questionnaire. We find that we get much richer information and more recognizable distinctions by allowing the agencies to send us any information that they feel is relevant and will set them apart. A questionnaire forces common denominators; we want to see the differences.

We use an experience base, along with several proprietary data bases. We continually visit and meet with agencies so that we can really know them. You can not truly judge an agency until you have experienced it. We track agency people when they move about as there is no such thing as agency experience or talent.

We accept all unsolicited credentials. We are human - we may have overlooked an excellent candidate because we lack first hand knowledge of them

In the final round, we devise a real problem for the competitors to solve. The selection of an agency must be based in real time for your unique business situation. This also provides a wealth of great thinking on your business.

The agencies must provide a staffing recommendation and a compensation proposal. A selection decision can not be made without some sense of the price/value relationship.

Chemistry is too important a variable to be determined at first glance over a conference table. We insist that the actual team who will be assigned to the business be involved in the pitch. We also incorporate a social event, off campus, as part of the final presentations.

We do not vote - we are not choosing our agency. We aid in the deliberations by providing pros and cons of each agency and by pointing out their distinctions. The final decision must be yours.

Linda Fidelman began her advertising career in the Media Training Program at Young & Rubicam. After the program, her practical education started with assignments on P&G and General Foods. Three years at Bates followed, with responsibilities on Colgate and ITT. Linda spent the most significant portion of her agency career at Ogilvy working on Avon, General Foods, Hershey and, American Express.

Linda left Ogilvy with funding from Sir Martin Sorrell (unbeknownst to him) and became one of the first agency search consultants in the country. She observed a consultant lead review for Chase, with whom she was on retainer. Linda did not like the way the review was run and saw a major need in the marketplace. She readily filled it.

While Linda runs most of the agency reviews for ADvice & ADvisors, she has also developed strong expertise in agency performance evaluation. She has authored a book for the 4A’s on the subject and is at work on another for the ANA. She has taken and successfully passed the ASQ Six Sigma Black Belt course. Currently, Linda is developing a new, web-based agency performance system called ∑valuate with her partners in Great Britain in a new company named adept metrics.