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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.

Goldilocks and the Secret to Breakthrough Advertising

All too often, they don’t, or can’t. Clients often task agencies with assembling teams with deep brand and category knowledge and strong client relationships. Clients consider category and company knowledge and shared goals to be so critical that they are now a central part of the rationale for the increasing number of in-house agencies.

The inverted U theory, and Goldilocks, suggest that too much is not always a good thing.

1. Market Knowledge: Team members with in-depth market knowledge are invaluable. They can quickly recite the brands’ strengths and weaknesses, the user journey, and seminal events in the industry. They are often the voice of reason. They can also be the voice of “no”—what can’t be done, what will never work, what’s been tried and failed. They stop the team from dreaming.

Just the right amount of knowledge—enough, so teams understand their brands but not so much that they limit the possibilities – and mixing it up a little— is the key to success. That means refreshing the lineup with successful people from other categories, enforcing “no bad ideas” during brainstorming, and encouraging leaps of faith that, at the very least, display true passion for the business, and might result in a spectacular idea. Consider this: it was not a hotelier that created Airbnb or a retailer that developed Rent the Runway.

2. Client Relationships: A strong client relationship is the foundation for great agency work. There must be mutual trust and respect and a healthy dose of empathy. Good agencies understand their clients’ perspective, goals, concerns, and challenges and can build a bridge between the clients’ world and a big idea. On the other hand, we all know agency people who are too connected to the client. They don’t just understand the client—they identify with the client. They mistake their relationship for friendship; they’re afraid of losing a friend. It is the agency version of Stockholm Syndrome, and the risk is increased with in-house agencies. These people know their client (in this case, their brand manager) so well they anticipate their reaction and may even hesitate to bring a great idea to presentation. They are afraid to push back for fear that it will hurt their relationship.

Agencies benefit from just the right amount of relationship—enough that there is confidence in the agency and comfort in taking a risk, but not so much that being liked is the primary goal.

3. Business Tension: Good agencies know they have to earn the clients’ business every day. They understand that other agencies are waiting in the lobby and eager to take their place. Successful agencies use this tension to motivate their teams by encouraging the development of new ideas, without waiting for the terror of a review or pitch. Letting the relationship become complacent—too little tension— also kills agencies, when a crisis catches them napping. For in-house agencies, whose jobs are (relatively speaking) more secure, the lower level of risk can backfire.

Just the right amount of business tension—something in between fear and comfort—produces the best results.

These are essential considerations as agencies build teams. There are benefits to adding the creative with little category experience or moving the account person who was the best man at the client’s wedding. In-house agencies have a more significant challenge. The very traits that are valued by their proximity may ultimately work against them. These agencies may find themselves too insular, too comfortable, and too friendly to serve as honest brokers.

Agencies who consider the inverted U when assembling teams have a better chance of creating breakthrough advertising, or as Goldilocks would say, “advertising that is just right.”

Stacey Singer is a client retention and growth specialist with 25+ years of experience helping agencies keep and grow business. If you’d like Stacey’s help in achieving that “just right” balance in your teams, please contact her at Stacey@staceysinger.com or (908) 313-6539.

Stacey SingerSeptember 9, 2019