About Us

Richmond, VA - AgencyFinder Solves Longstanding Relationship Challenge

You might think our name says it all - Agency Finder. So find me an agency! After eleven years helping folks, I know you'll want to know how it works. (If you're an agency looking for clients,
go here)

Back in our early years, when people asked, I found it difficult to explain how it worked in less than ten or fifteen minutes. Now, after an extensive, expensive, far-reaching national ad campaign, I simply say - "We're the e-Harmony.com of the advertising industry" - and everyone seems to understand.

If you want the involved version (I like detail myself), let me start by saying that in the world of advertisers and advertising agencies, the challenge of pairing one with the other had for years been a happenstance process.

It wasn't like that way back in the earliest years (1950 and on), but as the industry grew and advertising agencies proliferated, it was no longer the case of one-agency or few-agency cities, but one of hundred-agency cities. There were "ad agencies" of all size; some generalists and many highly specialized. Then they morphed further - into direct marketing, sales promotion, public relations,

and with the Internet - new and interactive agencies.

What had worked for years to find a partner no longer worked. Business colleagues used to ask each other for recommendations; marketing managers used to ask media reps; some turned hopelessly to Yellow Page listings; and from all that clutter the RFP (Request for Proposal) emerged.

The RFP was meant to be a thought-provoking series of probative questions (generally there was no actual proposal request) whose answers were intended to help identify the "perfect" agency. Unfortunately, questions were often authored by those without sufficient "ad agency" experience, so the questions themselves left much to be desired.

Worse yet, the RFP's were widely distributed to agencies identified by the same process it was meant to replace - colleagues, media reps and Yellow Pages. When responses did arrive, the questioner was confronted with a sea of discontinuity - and the task of building some mechanism so they could investigate the candidates on an "apples & apples" basis.

In October 1997, following seven years of ad