What marketers should be asking their incumbent agencies
Stephan Argent attempts to get the lines of communication flowing between marketers and their agencies in this crossposting from the Trinity P3 blog.
I love it when a client says to me: “we’ve never thought of asking our agency that…”
More often than not, it’s the questions that haven’t been asked that can be hugely valuable in assessing your current agency’s thought leadership capabilities and willingness to collaborate to form a better relationship.
Whether or not you’re contemplating an agency search, or undertaking an agency evaluation process, here are five questions worth asking that can be quite revealing. (And yes, the answers might surprise you):
What’s your vision for your agency two or three years from now?
— you’re still our client, and we’re still in business
Who are the real thought leaders in your agency we should be following on social media?
— we don’t have thought leaders
— we’re all too busy making great work to be bothered piffling around on social media
— you’re on social media?
What do you think of our current contract – how should we improve it?
— if it’s got our signature on it, we’re happy with it.
How do you think you’re collaborating with our team and our other agencies?
— you hire us to be non-collaborative. if you didn’t, you would just get others to do our work.
How are your other clients integrating brand and digital initiatives?
— a brand campaign is already integrated across all touchpoints, otherwise it’s not a brand campaign.
— what do you mean by digital?