“How can I make your life better?”
Agencies are guilty too often of pitching ideas you can’t afford, or promoting programs that aren’t rooted in your business. Instead, agency partners should be asking, “how can I make life better for you?” There’s a main hurdle, though, in understanding what “better” really means for their clients.
The challenge lies in the agency’s focus on dollar-value for its ease of management and measure, although it may misalign with clients' perception of what is really important. If referring to Bain’s elements of value pyramid, we might consider that anyone would be unimpressed by sparkly claims of ‘life-changing results’ or’ massive social impacts’ if they feel personally that basic underlying, functional or emotional needs are unmet by the efforts at hand. This also gives us a map for exploring and well-defining different elements of “value,” and exactly what services the relationship should be built around providing.
The question becomes, “does this agency understand my unique needs, and can they bring me the specific, value-adding service and consultation I’m looking for?” The main goal then, at the onset of your partnership, is to determine the greatest area/s of need, and define your shared perception of–and language around–value adding strategies.
If your project kicks off with the assumption that you’re all on the same page, you’ve missed an important step in alignment between teams. It’s crucial that you’re all working toward the same goals while speaking the same vernacular. With this in mind, there are three key ingredients to your agency partnership that will support a truly value-driven relationship:
Senior strategists who know your business
Access to subject matter experts
Account leads with multidisciplinary backgrounds
Industry-savvy senior strategists support functional processes...and much more...
Good project management is an obvious ‘must’ to maintain momentum with your campaigns. But it takes more field experience, tactical understanding, and a nuanced approach to help guide your big-picture outreach and goals planning, than it does for the straightforward delivery and execution found with a resource focused only on PM.
Senior strategists will bring consultative value to every meeting to help ensure you’re moving toward the right goals. They bring their own rich experience to yield insights across industries and help your team avoid common pitfalls, such as creating content sheerly for the sake thereof, with little measured output. This should reduce anxiety while keeping extra eyes on the wellness of your budget and campaign initiatives; it might even provide hope in the face of slow progress or mounting overwhelm.
Access to subject matter experts will fuel life-changing brand outcomes...
Having the right minds available can inspire motivation through productive collaboration, while at the same time reducing costs of integrating individual contributors. Subject matter expert (SME) access improves content credibility and ensures communications are on-message for your industry. Looking again at Bain’s value elements, this elevates overall attractiveness of the brand by association with thought-leadership and expertise instead of promotion alone – creating opportunity for better affiliations and sense of belonging.
Is your agency partnership highlighting these “life-changing” elements of value by bringing expert contributors to every conversation? They should also be asking about your available internal SME's, and seeking to make those connections to partner with your team in maximizing those resources.
Account leads with multidisciplinary backgrounds can see the big-picture view to support long term goals while filling resource gaps to alleviate functional needs and emotional strain...
Lastly, and equally important, does your agency bring a multidisciplinary perspective that makes you a star in your role? Your agency partner should bring enough dynamic skill sets and agility to your projects to free your bandwidth from the administrative slog and intricacies of your position. This makes space for deploying efforts toward achieving the more elusive value elements on a life-changing and even socially impactful scale.