A marketing department hires an advertising agency to provide creative to execute advertising to support a marketing plan. It is up to the client to know their product and target market and provide information to the agency. It is up to the agency to understand audience pschology, medium viewing habits, segment profiling, etc. so they understand reach.
On both sides, client and agency, there is a certain amount of responsibility and necessary communication. A company needs to choose an ad agency that is familiar with their target audience, provide adequate direction, and get out the way enough to let the agency do their job. Unfortunately, bad advertising either comes from agencies being chosen by billing rate and not capabilities, marketing directors who want to dictate creative, or not providing clear direction “I’ll know it when I see it.” On an agency’s part, they accept a client for the billings and not because the product fits their portfolio. If you’re heavy into industrial B2B (business-to-business), then tackling a D2C (direct-to-consumer) is going to be difficult and have a learning curve unless you have on staff creatives who have had D2C experience at other agencies.
Some agencies don’t allow creatives to have direct contact with clients, and as a result the client direction is filtered through the agency account exec. In that sense, things can get lost if the account exec isn’t a good listener, and is grounded in both marketing and advertising.
As my old creative director said, “Everyone’s creative is talented when you have an open budget. It’s when you have to deliver $50,000 creative on a $1000 budget that the rubber hits the road.”