Featured

Agencies: Hate Project Work? Act More Like an AOR.

Most agencies hate project work because it’s less predictable and harder to manage and staff. What’s more, agencies believe project work negatively impacts the agency-client dynamic, with agencies treated more like vendors than partners, and their contributions focused on tactics rather than strategy. The relationship can feel transactional and shorter-term.

Will COVID-19 Destroy Your Agency Culture or Reinvent It?

Culture is the only sustainable competitive advantage that agencies have. After all, most agencies produce the same types of work the same way—and often with the same people (we all know it is a small industry). That is why an account, strategy, or creative person can move from one agency to another and immediately contribute. Culture is one of the most important differentiators—it makes one agency succeed and another fail.

Zurprise and Zelight: Surprising and Delighting Clients in a Zoom World

In the old days (about 12 weeks ago), agencies focused on surprising and delighting clients. They understood (the good ones, at least) that delivering work on time and on budget was the price of entry. Client retention and growth required a higher level of thinking, service, creativity, and connection.

Agencies Are Great at Creating Narratives. Now They Must Write Their Own. Carefully.

Agencies sometimes create aspirational ads and press releases as a tool to help clients envision a successful, alternate future. Now we can imagine headlines like, “M&M’s redefines retail in Times Square,” or “CVS takes a stand on health by eliminating cigarette sales.” But before these were realities, they were possibilities—and research suggests that seeing a possibility makes it easier to achieve.

To Have A Big Impact, Agencies Must Sweat the Small Stuff

Self-help experts have long instructed people not to sweat the small stuff. The basic philosophy is that by not focusing on life’s little annoyances, we can reduce stress and improve our lives. This might be true for individuals but not for agencies. For agencies to succeed, they must do the opposite: they must sweat the small stuff. Every client interaction—every phone call, email, invite, estimate, and meeting— must be as error-free and on point as possible. Why? Because the small stuff has a big impact on clients’ perceptions of the agency.

Let's Make Agency Meetings Great Again!

In the last few years, there has been a movement to reduce the number of agency meetings. Many internal meetings are considered a waste of time, energy, and money. The trend has also extended to client meetings, aided by the ability to meet online rather than in person.

I agree with the need to eliminate bad meetings—whether they are live or online, internal, or with the client. However, I think agencies are missing an opportunity—that is, to encourage great meetings.

Client Feedback: When No Response Is a Response

There is a saying that “no news is good news.” When it comes to client feedback, this is not true.

Many agencies send surveys regularly to get client input. Done right, these surveys can generate critical insights about the agency’s work and relationships. Done wrong, it is easy for the agency to misinterpret the data and focus its efforts in the wrong places.

Clients Are from Mars. Agencies Are from Venus

I am often asked to act as an intermediary between clients and agencies. It is the advertising equivalent of the old Ladies Home Journal column, “Can This Marriage be Saved?” I am usually called upon when the relationship is near its breaking point in a last-ditch effort to salvage it. Much like “Can This Marriage,” I start by speaking to the agency and the client separately to try to understand each one’s point of view and then bring them together to find common ground and a way forward.

What Your Email Style Communicates About Your Agency

I work with agencies to help them keep and grow business. My work requires a deep understanding of an agency's culture. I rely on all sorts of data to get to know an agency, including employee and client interviews, satisfaction studies, HR and financial data, and believe it or not, emails. Granted, email practices and patterns can be a bit more subjective, but I find them highly indicative of how an agency works.

Goldilocks and the Secret to Breakthrough Advertising

In psychology, the inverted U theory is used to explain achieving optimal performance. The theory states that there is a relationship between performance and pressure, and the ideal performance occurs when there is just the right amount of pressure—too much or too little can reduce performance. A similar theory is used in economics and sports. The axes are different, but the “just right” Goldilocks’ principle is the same. To create breakthrough work, agencies should consider the inverted U.

"Yes, and" or How to Say No and Make it Sound Like a Yes

An irate client called me from the floor of a convention. He hated the convention panel we had produced and said, “it looks like an impossible-to-read eye chart full of small type.” I promised to investigate and get back to him. I told him we would try to redo the panel, and also identify what went wrong so we would not do it again.

Psst! There Are No Client Secrets

Unhappily married couples often try to hide their marital issues from their children. They believe that if they spend lots of time together, or don’t argue in front of the kids, they will never know the marriage is troubled. If you talk to their children, most will say the secret was out. Some heard their parents fighting behind closed doors. Others noticed their parents only spoke to and through the kids and not each other.

Client Satisfaction Surveys: 5 Ways to Blow Them. And How to Ace Them

Client satisfaction surveys have become SOP for many businesses. Every call to my bank or stop at my Starbucks is followed up by an automated survey. (By the way - if a visit to Starbucks is the “best part of my day,” I consider it a pretty bad day).

Dear Client: I Am Not Your Partner

I have been in advertising for a long time. Somewhere along the way, clients and agencies started referring to each other as partners. I don’t remember the month or year, but I feel like the use of the phrase increased as the business became more transactional. I assume this was supposed to make the agency feel better about our changing relationship with clients—the equivalent of renaming second mortgages home equity loans to reduce the stigma of borrowing.

What the Bachelor Can Teach Us About Client-Agency Relationships

I admit it. I watch a lot of Reality TV. I cry at Say Yes to the Dress and restage half my house after each episode of The Property Brothers. However, I draw the line at The Bachelor. I am clearly in the minority, as the show has run for 23 top-rated seasons.

To Have A Big Impact, Agencies Must Sweat the Small Stuff

1) The small stuff happens all day, every day. No matter how large and active an account, the number of deliverables is small relative to the number of agency interactions. A busy account might have 100 interactions a week, including calls, emails, teleconferences, invites, meetings, workshops, etc. This equates to over 5,000 interactions a year. Every client interaction is an opportunity to impress or distress. Every client interaction speaks volumes about the agency’s character and competence.

While I have worked mostly on the agency side, my experiences as a client have been enlightening. An agency I worked with on a complex project did a great job on the core deliverables but drove me crazy. They were late for every call. Emails were full of errors. Invoices were incorrect. Eventually, I fired them. Was there one major thing that killed the relationship? No. It was death by a thousand paper cuts.

2) The small stuff is a proxy for the big stuff. Clients assume that if an agency can’t successfully manage the little things, it can’t handle the big things. The logic goes that if the agency’s emails have typos and grammatical errors, it is hard to trust them to write a website. If the agency can’t manage a planning meeting, can they be trusted to manage the sales meeting?

The agency could argue that emails are sent quickly and without the benefit of being proofread. This argument might hold for an occasional error, but not chronic sloppiness. And anything written by computer has a built-in spell check to catch at least gross errors (cue the red underline). Can you think of any other field where poor performance on everyday tasks yields bigger, more critical work? Imagine hiring a painter to paint your home after doing a poor job on your bathroom.

3) The small stuff is a trigger. Clients are human. Agency interactions often cause emotional reactions. Clients are paying the agency and expect and deserve a high level of service. Logically, they may know that an agency that is late for a web conference may be having technical issues or finishing a call with another client. But emotionally, the message is, the agency does not respect me or my time, the agency is not committed to my business, or the agency is not competent (hence, the tech issues and poor planning).

Agencies must:

Embrace the idea that every client interaction counts. Don’t accept or rationalize behavior that might portray the agency negatively
Set expectations and standards with staff. Let them know the criteria for a good meeting or a proper email. Have regular workshops, if necessary
Model the desired behavior. Leaders who are late or poorly prepared can’t ask for more from their staff
Ensure that your systems, services, training, and incentives all reinforce excellence and success. If your outsourced accounting services save the agency money but routinely send invoices with errors, the agency is signaling what counts, to both its clients and staff. Make sure every link in the chain is strong

Agencies that have mastered the small stuff are much freer to land and keep the big accounts.

Stacey Singer is a client retention and growth specialist. She can be reached at stacey@staceysinger.com.

Stacey SingerMarch 6, 2020