Short List to Successful Client/Agency Relationships

The Client/Agency relationship is an integral part to developing strong marketing. At its best the relationship is a true partnership built on mutual respect. At its worst it is frustrating and even toxic.

Having worked from both the client and agency perspective, and having managed both wonderful and challenging agencies and clients alike, here is my short list of advice on how to develop a true partnership with your agency/client partners.

To The Agencies

1. Do What Is Right, Not Necessarily What Is Asked

Detailed and flawless execution is the cost of entry. It is easy to find an agency that follows orders, but the agency who has a point of view and who isn’t afraid to challenge directions that don’t make sense is the one I want to work with. I may not always agree, but as long as your reasoning is solid I will respect and value you for your opinion.

2. I Want To Speak To The People Who Are Actually Doing The Work

I don’t know where the absurd notion came from that the creative staff can’t attend a meeting because they need protection from the criticism or differing points of view involved in strategic dialogue. If your only role is to record my feedback and water it down so that it is more easily digested by the people who are really doing the thinking then you are as useful as the mosquito. It is imperative that the people whose thought went into whatever is being discussed actually be at the discussion, not only to get their point of view per point 1 above, but also to troubleshoot any challenges together.

3. Leave Your Puns At The Office

Another thing that I have no tolerance for is a glossy presentation laced with pithy copy and clever puns but completely lacking in strategic thought. Window dressing is easily seen through and doesn’t make you look clever. I don’t want used car salesmen, I want strategic marketers.

4. Take Initiative

If there is a bigger need than what I am specifically asking you to do then solve for it. If you do a good job you will get more business than what was originally in the offering. I once worked with a PR agency that was asked to develop a basic tactical outreach plan. Instead they provided a comprehensive PR strategy because they saw a need for one, and in doing so they got 3X the budget to execute than was originally planned.

To The Clients

1. Don’t Be An A-Hole

This is pretty straight forward, and you assume it would be obvious, harkening back to the golden rule circa kindergarten, yet there are horror stories of hellish clients circling around almost every agency. Look, I am sorry if you weren’t allowed to eat chocolate as a kid and had to take an ugly date to the prom, but that doesn’t mean you have the right, now that you are in a position of faux authority, to exorcise those demons by treating your agency partners like crap. There is a reason why you get a new account lead every six months, it’s because your agency hates you and spends the first half of every internal meeting making fun of you. If you want good work out of your agency then treat them respectfully and they will more likely than not bend over backwards for you.

2. Be Hard But Be Fair

Push your agencies, demand inspired thinking and don’t settle if you aren’t getting what you want, but at the same time be fair and reasonable in your approach. If you are only allowing two days to develop a creative strategy then you have no right to expect the next Old Spice campaign. If you continually beat up your agency about price without compromise on the deliverable then you shouldn’t expect the top people on your business. And if you don’t put any thought, time or effort into the initial brand strategy and creative brief how can you expect your agency to be inspired to do great work?

3. Be Transparent & Inclusive

The more informed your agency is about your business and the more insight they have into why and how the decisions are made the more effective they will be. Don’t beat around the bush, get to the heart of an issue even if it is a difficult one. Your agency will appreciate it, will be better informed to make smart decisions about your business and will have clearer direction to do it with. Get them invested in your business and they will invest in your business.

4. Remove Obstacles

In my mind one of the most important things a client can do for an agency is quickly identify and remove any obstacle in the way of their progress, and often this starts with the client themselves. If you are not getting the work you want out of your agency look internally before you point the finger at them. Is your strategy too broad or unclear so that it is preventing the development of a distinct point of view in your marketing ideas? Are you being lead by tactics before strategy, which is causing things to get forced fit and thus is impairing the expansion of an idea? Do you have “God Syndrome”, and thus are creating a “follow orders only” dynamic. There are many things that can cause work to get stuck in the mud and it is your job to identify and solve for them, and that doesn’t always mean getting a new agency.

Just like any relationship, Client/Agency relationships take work and require communication, respect and mutual understanding, even if you don’t always agree, in order to prosper. This isn’t a comprehensive list, but it should lay a good foundation to build upon.

Why Your Social Media Plan Doesn't Deliver

Many brands enter social media because they feel they have to, so as not to “miss out”. They read about Old Spice’s Mustafa or get forwarded the Double Rainbow meme and have visions of millions of adoring people sharing and talking about their brand for zero dollars invested.

They start a Facebook page or open a Twitter account, quickly realize it is a commitment, and after telling their agencies that they want a viral idea, one of two things typically happens:

1. Through perseverance they stumble along until slowly, they figure it out
2. Upon failing to achieve their viral dreams they say social media is not worth the investment, which they came to realize was more than zero dollars, and thus add to the scrap heap of dormant brand pages that exist in a half-life state of digital carbonite - a permanent echo of aspirations unrealized

Is that overly dramatized? Sure - but it is not entirely unrealistic either. The fact is, Point 2 can be avoided and Point 1 can be optimized by identifying metrics that link back to actual business goals.

Is that oversimplified? Not really - yet I am continually impressed by how few brand marketers think in those terms when it comes to social media.

The reason being is twofold. First, so many agencies falsely claim social media proficiency in order to cash in that it is difficult to get legitimate strategic direction. Second, many marketers erroneously assume that once they have a sufficiently dense following, their message will automatically spread throughout that following, be positively received, and will ultimately result in people falling in love with their brands and buying their products.

Getting “Followers” Is Not The End Goal - It Is Merely A Means Towards One
A recent Digiday article on digital ROI showed that 40% of marketers aren’t measuring social media at all, and for those that do, top metrics include: purchase (67%), time spent (54%), sharing (51%) and likes/followers (less than 33%).

The thing that struck me in this article, other than 40% are not measuring ROI at all, was not so much that these are the wrong metrics, but that these metrics (except for maybe purchase) are actually only part of a solution to broader challenges. However in discussing ROI, marketers often fail to link these metrics back to their business objectives, and are in turn forcing them to stand alone without context for measurement.

Do you need to create greater brand awareness? Is yours a premium priced product in an inelastic commodity category? Are you facing better resourced competitors?  The potential challenges facing brand growth are as endless as they are diverse, but I can definitively say that the end solution to any of these challenges is not to get more Facebook “likes” or Twitter followers.

If your objective is to get 100 or 100 Million followers but you are not tying that back to how it solves for your brand challenges, then you are only looking at half of the puzzle, that is to say, you are not answering the real question of; “Once I have this community, what would I like them to do for me and what will I provide in return for that ask?” The answer to the first part of that question is your objective to measure against and the answer to the latter part is your strategy to achieve it.

Followers, time spent or any of the myriad digital metrics are merely just a means to a greater end, and if you look at them in isolation to that end, you are essentially just staring at Plato’s shadows on the cave’s wall. You have to make your metrics tie.

Why Your Target Consumers Don't Hear You

I am frequently astounded by the regularity of poorly written creative briefs. There are likely multiple reasons for this, not the least of which is prioritizing speed of completion over quality of thought, but one of the most common elements I find to be subpar in a brief is the line typically titled “Target Consumer”.

If you have been in the business for any significant period of time chances are you have seen a brief with a Target Consumer description that looks something like this (I am using a female target for this example but it could just as easily be male):

Target Consumer
25 - 45 yrs old, Female, Upper Income, Upper Educated, with or without kids...

This is usually followed up with some generic “insight” that is supposed to provide depth into what makes this human being tic. You know, something like:

Insight
The challenge of trying to balance family, personal relationships, career and still find “me time” causes her to be time stretched. She is always looking for solutions that help her to balance these multiple pressures. She constantly puts others needs before hers, and is ok with that, but sometimes she just wants time to focus on herself.

The problem is the above example Target Consumer defines three quarters of the Earth. It essentially eliminates the male half of the planet and identifies an “insight” that impacts everyone but infants. Good luck trying to craft a message that will resonate with any subset of that target, let alone the entirety of it.

I think mass market brands find themselves working against these absurdly broad consumer definitions because they are afraid that in crafting programs that speak to the needs of a smaller subset of consumers, they might in turn alienate the consumers outside of that subset, and thus not deliver against the growth goals of the business which, being already highly developed, require widespread consumption to move the needle.

Aiming For the Bullseye
Often within these broad consumer descriptions we see the term “Bullseye Consumer”, which in theory is supposed to identify that smaller consumer subset, but in my experience really only helps to focus the media buy without actually impacting the point of view of the message.   

In thinking of the “Target” and “Bullseye” metaphors to describe the people we want to use our products we should consider that, much like the game of darts, when you aim for a target’s bullseye you often wind up hitting some of the bullseye’s surrounding rings, which in the consumer sense, makes up that broader target definition. Contrarily, when you simply aim to hit any part of the target, you can wind up missing it altogether.

I’ll use the sports category to exemplify that point. The people who make up the majority of Nike’s business are probably the casual athlete or the weekend warrior. However Nike doesn’t design shoes for the 5K run; they design them for marathons, because the casual athlete knows that if the shoe works for a 26 mile run it will most certainly suffice for a 5K. That is also why Nike ads depict elite athletes like Michael Jordan, and not some guy named Doug who plays in an intramural league whenever he can get out of work on time to make a game. In targeting the elite athlete in product, messaging and imagery they deliver a message that resonates with the casual athlete who makes up the majority of their business. The elite athlete is the lifestyle bullseye, but in aiming for it, you wind up hitting the casual athlete who makes up a larger portion of the overall target.

Is there risk in that by using product language and brand imagery that would appeal to a marathon runner you might turn off a casual 5K runner because they might get intimidated or feel like they can’t relate to a marathon runner’s needs - maybe. However, odds are that person probably wouldn’t have become a customer anyway, and I guarantee you that in alternatively trying to appeal to every person who runs, you will instead wind up with a watered down message that appeals to no one. Sometimes you have to be willing to turn some people off to your message in order to effectively speak to the people who will be most receptive to it.

The Misguided Rationale Behind Facebook "Likes"

The Need For A Paradigm Shift In Your Marketing Approach
If you follow Social Media and the conversations around it you will hear a common refrain that many, even most, brands/businesses are doing social media incorrectly. I believe there is a lot of truth in that statement and I think the underlying reason for that truth is that social media, really all digital media, requires a paradigm shift in the thinking behind how to build a brand vs. how marketers have traditionally used media vehicles to do so.

Since ages past the basic premise of marketing, in simplified terms, has been: define your target consumer, identify the media vehicles that consumer uses and craft your brand message so that it interrupts the content on those media vehicles and thus “reaches” your consumer. Over time as the types of available media expanded, the concept of “surrounding” your target consumer with your message, or of delivering an integrated message across different media types emerged, but the basic premise of reach and interruption remained unchanged.

The challenge with social and digital media is that the concepts of “reach” and “interruption” no longer hold true in the same manner as they do with more traditional media forms. The reason being is that in digital formats the consumer has infinitely more control over whether or not they wish to see your message. Yet many marketers still approach social and digital media through the same lens as they approach traditional media. They have not made the paradigm shift in thinking from reach based messaging to messaging that adds value to a community, which is what is required for effective digital programming. Facebook provides a convenient example to this point.

Facebook Example Of The Misguided Quest For Likes
In my experience most marketers approach their Facebook programming with the goal of gaining “likes”. Although “likes” can be a reasonable metric, unfortunately the motive behind acquiring “likes” is often to create as large a fan base as possible to deliver your marketing message to, or put another way, to create a large consumer population that you can easily reach with your ad message.

That rationale basically applies a traditional “reach” based approach to a social channel. However, the goal of putting your message in front of as many people as possible is not social, it is self serving, and doesn’t necessarily work in social channels.

Instead of thinking about how to acquire likes and thus expand your potential “reach”, you should be thinking about how you can develop something that people will want to discuss and share. The latter is a fundamentally different approach and necessitates the assumption that people are not automatically going to like your brand or message simply because you are on Facebook and saying something. Rather it requires you to think about how to earn their likes by creating content that provides genuine value to the people you want to follow your brand.

This thinking holds true for all types of social media vehicles, not just Facebook. Beyond evolving their approach to digital/social channels, marketers will also benefit from correctly defining their goals & adapting their message to the medium, both of which I will explore in future posts.

The Social Media Conundrum

I just finished reading the Forbes article - Marketers Have It Wrong: Forget Engagement, Consumers Want Simplicity, and in the article the author makes the argument that marketers are:

"...trying too hard to engage with consumers via social media, marketers are generally pushing out too much information, causing people to over-think purchase decisions and making them more likely to change their minds about a product"

The author also uses statistics to show there is a disparity between what marketers believe consumers want out of brands in social channels (to be part of a community) and what consumers actually want (to get discounts). 

This speaks to a point I made in an earlier blog post, The Danger In Forming Brand Relationships, that the relationship consumers want with a brand is based on three basic premises:

1.      Provide me a quality product that meets the need it promises to meet

2.      Provide it at a price that is competitive

3.      In some instances provide me with a self-image boost derived from the cache the brand provides

The challenge I have with the author is in his dispute of a popular marketing theory that the best way to engage people is via social media. My challenge is not so much with the dispute itself, as I do think there are other, non-social media tactics that are incredibly powerful in engaging people. Instead my dispute is with the fact that in providing a solution to the overly complex, message inundated dynamic that the author says marketers are creating, two of the three tactics he lists as solutions are social media tactics.

How can social media be both, not the most useful tactic to engage people with, and two-parts of the solution of how to better engage consumers?

The author's point of view highlights what I think is a common issue in social media; that many marketers and people in business have a only a surface level understanding of the depth of social media and how it should best be navigated. This in turns leads us to three errors:

1.      Marketers enter social channels with the wrong assumptions of what consumers want - e.g. They see people forming relationships with like-minded communities and assume that in turn those people want to form similar relationships with their brands

·      Dave Trott calls this phenomenon a Category Error and you can read his deeply insightful post about it here

2.      Marketers often view these communities as a way to deliver a message vs. a way to add value to them

3.      Marketers often enter social channels simply because they don't want to be left out vs. identifying the business goals they think social media will help them to achieve

It is not so much about marketers being wrong in thinking social media is an effective tactic to engage consumers with. Instead it is about marketers making the wrong assumptions about what consumers want from brands in social channels (it is value, and that doesn't necessarily mean discounts). To Mr. Trott's point - as marketers we are making a category error in how we approach social media.