How much time should agencies spend marketing their own brands?
Each week, we ask agency experts from across the world and the ad business for their take on a tough question facing the industry, from topical concerns to perennial pain points. This week, we consider how much elbow grease agencies should put into their own marketing efforts.
How much time and effort should agencies spend on advertising themselves? / The Drum
Ad agencies love a tagline. Even the ad shops that prefer to show their quality in the work itself can’t resist a succinct bon mot. The best ones even become famous across the industry, such as McCann’s ‘Truth well told’ or Ogilvy’s ‘We sell – or else.’ It’s one way of putting your business on the map in a busy, competitive sector.
It’s not the only way to market a business, though. We asked agency experts from up and down the industry how they bring themselves to market – and whether or not they consider it time well spent.
How do you solve a problem like... establishing an agency brand?
Naomi Troni, global chief marketing and growth officer, Wunderman Thompson
Rather than a problem, it’s a huge opportunity to be able to establish a new agency brand, especially at scale. It’s not about taglines, it’s about finding the reason why you exist. For us, this is about inspiring growth – both for ambitious brands and ambitious people.
You need to galvanize your people around your vision and unearth inspiration from every corner of the business. This will allow you to create a company of brand ambassadors who are equipped with the tools to communicate everything you do, from thought leadership and creative work to acquisitions, new hires and new business wins.
Matt Rhodes, chief strategy officer, Engine Creative
They say that the cobbler’s children are the worst shod, and this is an element in some agency communications in our industry. We can lose sight of what we do best – understanding our audience for communications (people who want to work with us or for us) and identifying how best to engage them. The worst agency marketing can be too insular, too wrapped up in themselves and peers, trying to impress with cleverness or uniqueness. We may not always make noise that our peers only hear, but we will deliver on our objectives with clients and potential recruits.
Alec Troxell, director, business development and marketing, Barbarian
When establishing an agency brand, after identifying your key audiences, consider three themes you want to be known for.
Audit the landscape and identify the whitespace none of your competitors are occupying. Agencies try to be too much, and when you offer everything, your brand means nothing. It’s just as important to know who you are not as it is to know who you are. Once you find your flag to plant, arm your employees – they’re your best brand ambassadors. Then repetition, repetition, repetition. Finally, keep a pulse on how your brand is tracking and refine.
Dan Rawley, digital marketing manager, Evoluted
At Evoluted we’re currently working on a rebrand because after years of growth our branding no longer reflects the projects we deliver and the talent in our team. Our identity needs to be so clear that businesses can immediately sense we’re the right agency for their needs.
We recently began internally treating Evoluted as a marketing client – it has helped ensure we give our own marketing equal priority to client projects, and it makes my job easier.
We try to constantly reinforce our identity through shouting about agency and team successes, aiming for as close to omnipresence as possible across our channels.
Charlie McKittrick, chief strategy officer and partner, Mother
Advertising an ad agency is one of the most remarkably absurd dilemmas in our business. If you are good at what you do, you shouldn’t have to do much of it.
Creativity is like quitting smoking – you either do it or you don’t. There isn’t much use in talking about it. Nothing important about an advertising agency can be captured by a line, mission or purpose statement. Other than creativity, the only other real ‘dimensions of differentiation’ are the vibe of the individuals and the culture that guides how they work. Neither of these can be meaningfully captured in marketing materials or a website. Best to just get in a room and have a conversation – ideally without slides or much marketing material at all.
Tanya Whitehouse, chief executive officer, Elvis
When we launched our positioning ’Unexpected & Unforgettable,’ our teams started using the language every day – strategists used it to select insights, creatives used it to articulate their goals. Pretty soon our clients were using it too. We’d suddenly grown more confident and focused, and since then we’ve developed some of our most creative and effective work.
Today we continue to strive to be ’Unexpected & Unforgettable,’ not just in our work, but in the way we run our business and in our commitment to a better world. Great positioning isn’t just a way for an agency to sell itself. It should provide focus, demand accountability and inspire ambition.
Ben Golik, chief creative officer, M&C Saatchi London
When deciding on M&C Saatchi London’s agency tagline, we had all the usual filters. Is it true? Is it interesting? Can we back it up?
But we added one more. How would it look on a T-shirt? And would people wear that T-shirt?
This gave us a bullshit detector. If no one would wear it, no one would rally behind it. And the only point of an agency positioning is to galvanize the team to be a gang that clients want to join.
We arrived at ’Creativity Changes Everything.’ We believe it’s true. We can back it up. And we can wear it without feeling like ad wankers.
Rocky Novak, chief executive officer, Fallon
“An advertising agency for companies that would rather outsmart the competition than outspend them.”
That was the headline of our very first (newspaper) ad, introducing Fallon in 1981. At the time, it meant an idea could – and should – be more important than a budget.
40 years later, ‘outsmart v outspend’ is still our mantra. Today, outsmarting means creating big juicy ideas that travel across the sea of emerging media and using data in artful ways to inspire insights and inform message delivery. Today, outsmarting means an ad is anything a brand does – whether it’s 60 seconds, or some format that doesn’t fit squarely into anything. Today, outsmarting means Modern Creativity.
Rachel Barnes, marketing director, Wolff Olins
I’d like to think it’s time well spent – as it’s my job. Like any brand, we must consider how we are presenting ourselves and building our reputation.
At Wolff Olins, we’re in a privileged position where our brand is well established and much of our work on transforming brands is famous for its ability to spin heads and shift the category norms. However, unlike some brands, we put our clients front and center – acknowledging that we’re not the ones changing the world, our clients do that. But we are powering that change.
For us, it’s vital that we’re able to talk about how we create transformative brands that move businesses, people and the world forward. That’s our tagline and underpins everything we talk about – through the events we run every year to the columns and deep thinking we put out into the world.
Alison Moser, head of business and brand development, Argonaut
The importance of establishing a consistent agency brand is critical to long-term business success, yet most agencies fall into the same trap by failing to dedicate the resources to do so. At Argonaut, we aim for the opposite by treating our brand as a paying client, with rigor and attention to detail. As a young agency, there is still a decent amount of exploration to be done in terms of what works and what doesn’t, but our dedicated brand development team continues to try new things, track the results and optimize where we can.
Misha Ravat, marketing and PR manager, True
More advertising agencies should practice what they preach. Very few advertise for themselves, despite it being the bread and butter of their businesses. Ad agencies often don’t feel the need to advertise to other brands, but that shouldn’t be the case. It’s just as important in B2B marketing.
Differentiation can be hard, but being distinctive doesn’t need to be. So many agencies end up saying the same thing, lacking distinctiveness. Most rely on building fame through the work they do for their clients rather than creating a great campaign for themselves. We saw many examples of this at Cannes Lions – loads of great agencies were marketing through events and parties, but few to none were building their brand through advertising.
Karen Kaplan, chair and chief executive officer, Hill Holliday
At Hill Holliday, we like to keep it simple. What brings a client to any agency is the need to overcome a challenge they’re facing – that can be legacy issues, problems in the current environment or challenges on the horizon. Our solution is ‘imagination that sells.’ Whether it’s looking at brand and business challenges in a new way or finding new audiences to propel growth, we stand out from competitors by delivering solutions that sell more today and tomorrow, sell in the boardroom and sell in all senses – from real life to bottom-line profits.
Jenifer Willig, chief executive officer and co-founder, WRTHY
When establishing an agency brand, don’t be afraid to evolve. We recently went through a rebrand and name change after realizing the name and brand identity we started with five years ago did not reflect our growing agency or set us apart from competitors. It’s crucial to reflect the vision for the business, the evolving culture and how you deliver breakthrough work for your clients. Under our new name and identity WRTHY (which incidentally are the initials of our founders), we are making it clear that we are dedicated to social impact. Our name and identity guide everything that we do, for our clients and the communities they serve.
Want to join in with our weekly discussions? Email me at sam.bradley@thedrum.com.