We spoke to Paul Collier, marketing director at Western Europe at IFS, Dan Roche, head of marketing at KPMG Small Business Accounting, and Simon Hall, MD and founder at NextGen Marketing Solutions.
1. Be honest about how bad a brief is and your reasons for rejecting it
Paul: Don’t accept a shit brief. The agency or individual that calls up and explains why they’re not going to go for something that I fully expected them to find attractive is likely to get me calling them back. Following up with a call is a good opportunity for me because I can use it as a learning opportunity and receive direct feedback from them around refining the brief. Although the agency’s suggestions may not be in line with the focus of my brief, having that constructive dialogue means I’m more inclined to keep them on my list and ask for their help with future projects.
2. Avoid exaggerating what your agency can do and be open about your strengths and weaknesses
Paul: Be realistic about the services you offer: a full-service agency doesn’t exist. It’s crucial to know what your true strengths are and that you play to them and proactively call out where you’ll need help – whether that’s from me, my team, or other agencies that work in areas where you don’t excel.
3. Avoid self-promotion and show you’ve done your research on the client
Dan: For me, it’s simple. If agencies have already been invited into the office to pitch, I don’t want to then spend an hour having them tell me about their business. They’re there because we’ve already done our research and believe they could help.
What agencies should be doing is spending time researching the client’s market, playing back what they believe their client’s business does, as well as how it currently operates, and who the key competitors are. If they can grasp that, this gives me the confidence they’d have a solid foundation to build on and can deliver quickly if selected.
4. Showcase creative expertise to demonstrate what you can achieve
Dan: Dangle a bit of creative – either showcased or adapted from other client work – that could be relevant to my business. I wouldn’t expect agencies to give away any creative, but agencies who stick purely to the rule book and don’t accept a fee offered by the client to cover the creative work done on a pitch aren’t allowing the client to understand their potential. I see it as a poker game – the agency needs to try and assess the likelihood of winning the pitch, and then apply the right level of investment in order to make that happen.
5. Help clients write a strong brief to save time and resources
Simon: Agencies can be helpful by providing standardised briefs to fill out as well as offering coaching on how to write a brief for agencies. In instances where some aspects of the brief can be written by the agency, they should do this to avoid making the process too lengthy for clients.
6. Be proactive in chasing clients
Paul: Communication can be a major problem on the agency side as well as the client side, and a lack of time is likely to lead to communication problems, which can result in briefs being misunderstood by agencies, especially if the brief hasn’t been well articulated by the client. The solution to poor agency-client communication is for agencies to pro-actively pick up the phone and tell me about anything I may have missed, rather than having to rely on a long string of emails.
7. Show you’re dedicated by aligning your targets with the client’s goals
Dan: Where appropriate, the targets should be aligned – so the client and agency have a common interest in working together. I ensure our agencies know our business goals and sales targets and are completely focused on helping me achieve those. This helps both parties get through the mild turbulence that can sometimes occur in a business relationship – particularly when the client feels the agency isn’t adding value – and underpins a better long-term outcome because it’s clear the agency has a vested interest in the client.
