Are you and your agency pushing your brand and its marketing as far as you can?
The Back Story
There really is no reason why you shouldn’t be pushing your agency, they shouldn’t be nudging you, and ultimately see the fruits of those collective efforts blossom into smarter marketing for your brand.
Smart brands are confident in their positioning. So should you be confident in yours.
Smart brands segment and target and build relationships with their customers. So should you be engaging the same way.
Smart brands use technology to help push their brands forward. So should you be identifying the best technology to enhance the experience for your consumer.
If your marketing agency isn’t talking about things like VR, CRM, micro audience engagements, and location-based advertising to help you drive more consumers to your brand, they should be.
If they aren’t, you might be missing out on some rather meaningful opportunities.
Sure…putting together a meaningful and well-differentiated campaign for your brand is important.
And operating in a well integrated fashion is important as well.
But if it feels like your brand is just being put through the paces and isn’t being pushed…Houston, you may have a problem!
The First Clue
I believe lazy agencies can be identified early-on, well before you even bring them on board. I am in the final phases of a search for a large Midwestern retailer and we received four RFI responses. Three of them were very focused on the marketing client. They provided sound responses to the questions we asked and related their experiences back to the specific challenges facing the client that we outlined at the start of the process.
Then there was one that did just the opposite. Failed to answer many (if any) of the questions. Seemed to carry the response down a path that was far-afield from the ask for the RFI and while this might not have been a problem, presented it in a way that felt like a big ‘ole cut and paste job.
I specifically make the requests prior to responses to think about the client first. Tell us why you’re responding the way you are. And tell us what the relevance is to the client’s situation?
What does this mean for you, the marketer?
Next time you run a search, look for these subtle clues that will help you determine just how committed the agency is to wanting to work with you. If they’re lazy at the proposal or RFI phase, what does this mean for the future of your relationship? As the money starts rolling into their firm, are they going to dial it up for you? I’m not so sure they will. Or they might for a while, but what happens a year from now or two years from now? Will it be the same agency you brought in the door?
If you need help sorting this whole agency search thing out – and need a fresh set of objective eyes reviewing agencies for you, happy to help out.
Just email me and we can start a conversation: