Return on Intention

I have been reading a lot of blog posts lately where the agency side is trying to convince clients to stop coming to them with solutions, and start to bring them problems. I don’t know why anyone would want more problems, but maybe that’s just me. All kidding aside, the premise of the argument is that agencies feel that if they are brought the problems the company has (I need more market share, I need higher positive brand recognition) that the agency can use their insights to help create the solution (the strategy).

There is a lot of merit in this argument. Because most agencies work with many different kinds of markets they are in a good position to help move things that work in one sector into another. Often times, the ideas and strategies they bring are new to a particular market and if works wonders. When you spend your days thinking about brands and markets, you get good at it. This is very different than taking an agency your solutions. This is often spec work, and a lot of agencies and independents don’t like it. As an example, lets say you need to increase your brand awareness. You have read a lot about the migration of markets to the web, so you decided you need to beef up your web presence in order to fulfill your need for brand awareness. You decide that you need a website that does a, b and c. So you shop around, get some referrals and call a digital agency. They get on board, do a great job and launch a site that has the best execution of a, b and c. Then 6 months later you measure you progress to find that the web initiative failed. As it turns out your focus on a, b and c made no difference to your brand awareness. You should have focused on d. If the agency we’re brought the problem (I need more brand awareness) they could have helped identify that d was what will make the difference, not a, b or c. That’s the way the story goes anyway, not all agencies would have identified that d is the best option anymore than their client-side counterparts.

The part where this all gets interesting is that, don’t we get taught in brand / business 101 that to be really successful, you need to identify the need and wants of your market and then fulfill those needs? I have heard a million agencies tell their clients exactly that. Try to go with the market instead of trying change the market to fit the business practices? If this is true (you decide if it is) then do agencies practice what they preach?

I received a twitter from David Armano from the Logic + Emotion blog, that pointed to a story on Marketing Vox about whether size matters (size of the agency) to clients. As it turns out, it doesn’t matter that much. But in the article was the list of top reasons marketers choose one agency over another. Here is the list:

1. Quality customer insights
2. Chemistry
3. Creative work
4. Service level / response to needs ongoing
5. Cost control
6. Innovative / strategic thinking
7. Case for ROI
8. Client list
9. Strict adherence to brief
10. Seniority of account team
11. Location
12. Size

It does indeed show that size doesn’t matter, but look at what else it implies. Innovative / strategic thinking didn’t even break the top 5, and neither did Case for ROI. Chemistry and Creative work are at the top of list. With these priorities, does it seem like many clients are searching for help with strategy as agencies think they should (the problem), or are clients searching for great execution (the solution)? It would seem the latter.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 20th, 2007 at 12:20 pm and is filed under Doin' it right, Mar Comm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.