The concept of ‘coopetition’ – a portmanteau of cooperation and competition – is not normally a term you’d associate with agencies. But putting aside ego in favour of collaboration can reap huge rewards, as the recently-formed partnership between The Mx Group and Bray Leino has proved. Since their transatlantic team-up – dubbed Mx + Bray Leino – the US/UK collaboration has pitched and won work with two large clients, most recently appointed agency of record for Fortune 500 company Cummins.
The agencies are now reviewing their existing client base to establish how this increased scale and coverage can benefit them, it looks to be the start of big things to come. So how did they gain the edge on global agencies, and how easy is it for two top five B2B agencies to work together?
The first date
Prompted by one of its international clients wanting to grow in the US in 2017, UK-based Bray Leino looked to expand its offering by partnering with another agency. After narrowing down their options using B2B Marketing’s US Agencies Benchmarking Report, they met with The Mx Group and felt an instant chemistry.
Bray Leino’s CEO Kate Cox describes the encounter as the start of a love story. “We had immediate chemistry and great culture,” she says, “We had 80% capability overlap in terms of what we offer our clients, which was great, and the other 20% was something different. We have a training and events business, while The Mx Group has demand generation and marketing operations. The combination of all that, plus culture, was really exciting.”
The Mx Group was ‘extraordinarily sceptical’ at first, says its co-founder and principal Peter Wroblewski, having heard many similar offers in the past. But after sharing a steak dinner with one of Bray Leino’s managing partners, Peter describes the process as more like dating than sales. There was a mutual feeling of openness when the two sides met and formed a strong rapport.
Putting ego aside
Although operating in different geographical regions, both agencies rank in the top five of their respective B2B Marketing Agencies Benchmarking Reports, and both specialise in B2B. While they have a lot to learn from the other, they’d be forgiven for also feeling a sense of competition and secrecy around their high profile dealings.
Peter at The Mx Group dismisses this idea, suggesting a lack of ego is the cornerstone of such a partnership. “We have tremendous respect for Bray Leino’s team and we can look at them as though it’s our internal team. It’s not about ego, it’s about the best outcome for the client.”
This approach means it’s easy to divide when it comes to separating client work, he explains. As well as dividing work by region, it’s also about which team fits best for the client, picking roles such as account leads from the best people for the job from both agencies. “We’ve worked out some ways to use common tools, common technology and custom interfaces to make it easier to work seamlessly.”
“It would be very unlikely for us to compete in normal circumstances,” says Kate at Bray Leino. “Our focus is Europe and Asia and The Mx Group’s focus is North America. We’re a very open agency anyway and we don’t have secret ways of doing things.”
The Cummins pitch
Competing with global agencies for an agency of record pitch is no mean feat, as Mx + Bray Leino discovered. Having already succeeded in winning one confidential client, the team was invited to pitch for the Cummins account.
“We were the underdogs and the last to be invited in because the organisation conducting the search didn’t realise we were working together,” explains Peter. The unusual partnership eventually worked in their favour, however. “It’s about breadth and scale,” he says. “We have two perspectives and regional coverage, which is something that played well with the Cummins team. We’re not just one regional office of a company headquartered somewhere else, we have local knowledge.”
The pitch itself involved less of a creative brief, and more an assignment where agencies responded to questions designed to assess their understanding of Cummins’ challenges and opportunities. This was intended for the agencies to showcase their strategic capabilities as well as providing examples of past work with clients similar to Cummins.
Kate explains that the engine manufacturer and distributor is facing some fundamental strategic challenges and opportunities that will entirely change the way it runs its business and not just its brand, something that fitted well with the work both agencies offer. The partnership’s expertise also lends itself well to communicating in different regions on the ground, which is particularly important.
“We wanted to be there, not because our parent organisation had told us to be there, and that vibe carried us through the process,” explains Peter. “It was a comprehensive brief and we’re open agencies and it was an open approach.”
Deb Giampoli, partner at Stone Soup Consultants who helped connect Cummins with the marketing agencies, said the decision was unanimous. “It takes three things for an agency/client partnership to result in great work – a great agency, a great client, and a great relationship. This process got us all three.”
The collaborative offering
Is a combined agency offering better than a classic global agency? For some clients looking for a long-term agency of record, it might just be. But what does a partnership offer that one agency can’t?
Two for one. With a traditional agency there’s a dominant region, for example they might be brilliant in the US but weak in the UK. When agencies collaborate, you have two top agencies in two regions, on the ground with country knowledge.Size and scale. Between The Mx Group and Bray Leino, they have 450 employees – a medium-sized offering with plenty of scale to deliver whatever the client needs.A special relationship. Two agencies that choose to collaborate tend to respect and like each other. In networks, that might not be the case because sometimes there’s one ‘big brother’ and one subservient agency.Simplicity. All the complexity of a holding company is removed, along with hierarchy of approval of work, meaning there’s more energy to go into making clients more successful.
While balancing internal schedules across the Atlantic might be tricky, both agencies found this easier to manage than expected when working on their first pitch together. It also opened up an unexpected opportunity when working across different time zones. “We’ve managed to optimise time zones by passing work backwards and forwards so you have 24-hour cover,” explains Kate. “If clients say they need something tomorrow, one team can start it and another can pick it up.”
The future of agency partnerships
Mx + Bray Leino emphasise that they’re not looking to be distracted by taking on as much work as possible. With the work for Cummins top of the list to get right, the partnership is looking to proactively pitch to a shortlist of clients they’ve chosen. “We’re not waiting for pitches,” underlines Kate. With a compelling offer now in place, they’re only looking for a genuine fit. “We’re looking for clients who are truly focused on B2B and get that it’s different, have great commercial ambition and align with our key regions.”
While the partnership is expanding, their first port of call is to see if their new offering can appeal to existing clients. “We probably turned away more business this year than we have since the agency started,” Peter says. “Keeping our existing clients is crucial to us.”
As this type of collaboration becomes more popular, would they advocate for it? “It’s working for us very well, but it may not work for everyone,” says Kate. “The key thing to ask is are you in it for working together or are you in it for yourself? If it’s the latter, it’s never going to work.”
