“I was very skeptical.” A quote from a CMO client of ours…right after we completed a successful agency search for his company. He was highly skeptical going in, but a huge believer coming out. In fact, he’s such a believer,...

It is a New Year.  Time for a New Plan? Don’t look now, but we’ve reached the final month of 2020.  As we’re hurtling toward year’s end, you’re likely in the midst of looking ahead to what the New Year...

The Challenge Document. The Challenge Document is a document we use during agency searches during the final stage of the review. At that point, we’ve narrowed the list down to a group of 3 final agencies for the marketer to...

It’s been a year of micro-shifts; a plethora of small adaptations to things like messaging, channel engagement, and split-second decisions driven by social forces, political leanings, and of course, the pandemic. What’s beginning to emerge from these shifts, however, is...

When you’re looking for the next agency to add to your roster, rarely do you set out for more of the same. You want something shiny, new, and different – otherwise, well, you wouldn’t be looking. It’s a fair criteria,...

78% of marketing agencies in our most recent Agency New Business survey (conducted by our sister company, RSW/US) stated that their website was either only “somewhat” or “not at all” fully optimized to help them win new business. You can...

At RSW/AgencySearch, our focus is on laying the groundwork for a long, productive relationship between marketers and agencies. As a result, most of what we write concerns the search process itself: what to look for in an agency, how to...

The conversation around internal creative teams vs. outside agencies is one that’s been an ever present theme in our world for years now. While some might say that in-house marketing is making the agency obsolete, and others say that the...

Just finished up a search for a client in the entertainment/hospitality space. It always amazes me that when you put the same ask in front of 3-4 agencies, you get very different approaches to how they address the challenge document...

Too often, marketers or traditional search consultants, don’t take the time to ask agencies the tough questions upfront in a search. There’s a tendency to focus on the functional elements associated with an agency versus diving into the degree to...