Agency relationships have the potential to last for years, so you want to get it right. Sarah Buttarazzi, director of creative agency Columns, shares her tips on how to ensure you pick the perfect creative partners
Working with creative agencies can be incredibly rewarding. The right fit between client and agency can deliver fantastic results for your brand, products and services. But, get the wrong agency on board and you could face headaches, complaints and bitter recriminations from all sides.
1. Understand your needs
Fishing through the hundreds of different agencies can be daunting. Agencies are now offering a much wider array of services, specialisms and new channels to engage your audiences. Start by defining your business goals clearly: do you want to increase brand awareness, improve the capabilities of your website, launch a new service or create a more effective and engaging social media strategy? You also need to define the sort of relationship you are looking for: are you looking for an agency with a one-off project in mind, or do you require an ongoing relationship? And finally, what are your ambitions? Is your inclination to aim high and do something extraordinary, or to settle for the ordinary and avoid the risk of failure?
2. Identify agencies you like
Once you have an idea of what you’re looking for, you need to create a long list of maybes. Start by asking colleagues and friends for any recommendations. Perhaps you have seen some work you love, or have had a positive experience with someone in the past. You can also check out industry websites, such as AAR, or this magazine to find agency listings.
Once you have established your long list, ask for a chemistry meeting with the agency to get a general idea of their approach, inhouse skills and experience. You can make a much more informed judgment if you meet at the agency’s office rather than yours. Get an idea of how they like to work and the experience they have. Do you think they will understand and meet your business goals? Do they have the right levels of creativity to catch the attention of your audience? Do you connect well with the people you meet? What capacity do they have and how do they manage overflow?
3. Orchestrate a pitch
From your chemistry meetings you may have a shortlist of three or four agencies that tick most of your boxes. If there is little separating them, you might want to consider a pitch. If you do think this will genuinely help make a decision, make sure your brief and the budget is clear and the playing field is level.
Be clear about what you expect to see at the pitch presentations to help you make a decision. Have you provided your agency with enough information to expect to see creative solutions? Do you need research to inform part of the brief and if so, is it plausible for the agency to conduct this under pitch conditions? If this is the case, you could ask to see their strategic approach, relevant case studies and estimated costs.
Asking an agency to pitch is a massive investment of their time, and all agencies will have different views on whether they are happy to participate or not. For example, some may have a no-pitch policy (but they may have revisited this policy in recent years), others will want a minimum spend up front before they are willing to commit and some may be put off if you have invited more than four agencies to pitch.
Alternatively, you may have one agency that stands out as a good option and you can ask them if they would be happy to produce some speculative work to test the water.
4. Judging a response to pitch
Agencies will want to impress you at a pitch. Sometimes this will be reflected in the volume of work they present to you, but this isn’t necessarily the best measure of their capabilities. It’s a good idea to write a pitch criteria (which would be useful to share with your selected agencies) and score the work based on how effectively you think the agency can solve your business needs, not by how much work they have produced.
Case studies with ROI stats are all very reassuring, but don’t forget to use your own instinct in the work they are showing you. Creative work that just feels right could be even more important than the academic rationale.
5. Chemistry matters
It’s an old cliché, but people buy from people. Do you get a sense that you want to spend more time with the team? Do you like them or is the nag of a large ego beginning to bother you? If there is something grating about their team at this early stage, then this is likely to escalate at pressure points throughout the project. That’s the beauty about being able to choose your agency, the decision isn’t forced on you, go with your gut instinct.
6. Be open to ideas
Part of the reason you work with an agency is to bring fresh thinking and ideas to your brand, your campaigns, and to improve the effectiveness of your spend. The creative world changes constantly and your chosen agency should be at the forefront of those changes. For your work to have any impact it needs to keep up with new developments, so be open to the agency’s ideas, encourage them and make sure they know your creative expectations are high. You will certainly get better results. It’s mucheasier to rein things back a little than it is to start again.
