Step 1 in Your Agency Search: Developing a Needs Assessment
No one decides to replace a marketing agency on a whim – the service and financial stakes are too high to take anything but a thoughtful, considered, and evidence-based approach. Once the decision to move on has been made, though, your approach to finding the right new agency should be no less thoughtful, considered, and […]
How Agencies can work more effectively with Agency Search Consultants: The 4 R’s
Search Consultants play an important role in the agency world. They may only represent about 25% of agency searches, but typically manage the biggest searches. They are an important gate keeper. Given their role, we’re often asked how agencies can work more effectively with search consultants. What’s the key? The key to working with search […]
Chemistry’s Tim Smith on clients, leadership and blowing sh-t up on the way to AdAge’s A-List
By Steve Boehler with special guest Tim Smith It’s very hard to grow an agency from scratch. Getting the agency’s headcount past 50 takes talent and commitment and very few agencies ever get that large. Breaking 100 seems like an impossible feat and going past 150 – the AdAge definition of “small agency” – takes […]
The Keys to Strong Client-Agency Relationships
Over the years, we’ve conducted hundreds of client-agency 360 reviews, a process wherein we talk to and survey clients and their agencies to find out what’s working, what’s not, and “where to go from here.” Recently, we dug through results of ten years of such reviews to find out what, if any, themes could be […]
The Marketer’s guide to planning an effective agency transition
Your agency review has concluded. You’ve found the perfect agency, negotiated a fine SOW and MSA and you’re itching to get started. And (of course) you are in a rush! You need the new agency to hit the ground running and your business depends on the success multiplier that a great agency relationship can provide. […]
Biz Dev Best Practices From the Client’s Side of the Room
From Build a Better Agency. With Robin Boehler. Business development is a topic that is always front-and-center for agency owners. So I’m welcoming back one of our most popular guests, Robin Boehler from Mercer Island Group, to talk to us about the observations she and her team have made as they work with both agencies […]
AdAge’s 2023 Small Agency of the Year Awards are open for submissions. Great small agencies should apply!
AdAge’s annual Small Agency of the Year Awards are now open for submissions for 2023! This is the only awards program of its kind tailored to agencies of 150 or fewer employees. These awards, now in their 15th year, recognize the best in small agencies from overall agency of the year to agency of the […]
How not to react when your agency loses a pitch
We recently ran a creative review for a fine regional brand. The client was battling much larger competition and were outspent dramatically. The client needed new breakthrough creative to help their budget work harder. They knew that the right agency partner, creating the right work, could be the marketing effectiveness multiplier they needed to compete. […]
A fast start to the pitch process helps agencies win
A well-run pitch process can set up an agency for success. This sounds obvious, yet we often see agencies lose for the wrong reasons. Often they simply save too much work for too late in the process. Agencies often get off to a slow start in prepping for a pitch. We often see agencies not […]
Watch the 2023 Super Bowl ads like a CMO
In the run up to last year’s Super Bowl, we wrote about many of the basic approaches that marketers use to evaluate advertising during the biggest advertising event in the world. With this year’s annual advertising (and football) celebration just days away, we thought it would be fun to share some additional advertising principles that […]