The Drum Awards for Marketing - Extended Deadline

-d -h -min -sec

Agencies4Growth Marketing

‘Bring out your inner David’: APAC indie agency CEOs on taking on the big guns

Author

By Shawn Lim, Reporter, Asia Pacific

October 21, 2020 | 5 min read

Independent agencies across the Asia Pacific face a multitude of rivals, from networks to consultancies. APAC indie agency chief executive officers tell The Drum how they are competing against the big guns.

bhbhbh

Indie agency heads tell The Drum how they manage overbearing clients and bigger rivals.

Agencies often treat other agencies, especially networks and consultancies, not just as competition but as the biggest challenge they face. As someone who has spent time in agencies before starting her own, Pat Law, founder of Singapore-based Goodstuph, is of the view that one always needs a Goliath in their life to bring out the David in them.

She explains indie agencies can‘t be competitive without competition. “I quite enjoy the competition and friendly rivalries are a very inherent Asian thing. So it‘s good because I think it keeps our work to a certain standard. It really is a cliché, but the work is all that matters, so if you do good work, you will attract clients and you will retain clients,” says Law during The Drum's Agencies4Growth Festival.

“By and large, budgets are being cut across the board. Clients are put under pressure to deliver more with less, and we have to ride that wave with them. We have to ride that wave with them and instead of looking at, Did my budget just get cut? Why should I do twice the amount of work for you if my budget got cut?’“

She adds: “I think the attitude should be, ’Wait a minute, the client's still parking money with me. What can I do to make sure that my client keeps her job or his job for the year to come?’ So it’s about attitude and it’s about perspective, as well.”

Saying no to overbearing clients

When it comes to overservicing, Andrew Au, regional managing director, for APAC at Eight Inc, says it does not matter if an agency is an independent or a big network player – it is still important to know when to say to push back and say ’no’ to things.

“I say no all the time. We have to be very cautious where our expertise and skills lie, where we can bring value, and not to bite off more than we can chew,” he explains.

Bob Du, the managing director at Jellyfish Singapore, points out that a relationship is off to a wrong start, if it begins as a transactional relationship. He points out that saying ’yes’ can have a human cost that is especially acute for indie agencies, given their smaller headcounts and the need to keep staff passionate.

Du suggests that to kind of combat issues is by starting with what a great qualification process looks like and get the agency’s salespeople to disqualify the opportunities when they come up if they do not see a good fit.

“That is what a great indie agency sales team should look like. By doing that, you protect your people, you allow the agency to grow, and you prove it to the client that the value that you bring actually lands in the right way,” explains Du.

“My role sometimes is to help the team manage these principles, but also understand that ‘Hey, are there any strategic reasons to over-service an account?‘ We can create a great piece of work and help the client work through this pandemic, but there have to be future growth opportunities. That is the kind of thing that we balance decision-making.”

He continues: “I wouldn‘t say that sometimes we will go all-out and say no, but there need to be balancing voices within the agency that help us come to a decision that benefits everyone. But we will always place our people first and foremost, I would say. That is the key.”

Pat Law, Andrew Au and Bob Du spoke with The Drum at Agencies4Growth Festival, a week-long online event celebrating the power of agencies to support businesses. You can watch the interview in full here.

Sign up to watch forthcoming sessions and see the full Agencies4Growth schedule here.

Agencies4Growth Marketing

More from Agencies4Growth

View all

Trending

Industry insights

View all
Add your own content +