Tough Truths with Gareth Turner, Founder of Big Black Door

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“The people who got on my radar were the people who were generous…”

“The people who got on my radar were the people who were generous…”

Gareth Turner, former UK Head of Marketing at Weetabix, recently spoke to Propeller’s Jody Osman about his career path. This journey includes achieving early success at Heineken in sales and subsequently transitioning into marketing - a move which allowed him to secure roles at Arla and Weetabix. He is now following his dream and setting out on his own.

It wouldn’t be a Tough Truths without digging deep into his views on client/agency relationships, the pitch process, and how NOT to approach him cold.

Outside of a typical pitch process, what could agencies be doing differently/better to help them stand out within a crowded landscape? What things used to grab your attention when you were at Weetabix?

It all starts, ultimately, with great work - the number one thing that anyone can do to get on my radar was (and still is) to do great work. It’s almost as simple as that. I wasn't going to work with someone that was collaborating with a competitor - you needed to be in a category adjacent to mine. The people that got on my radar were generous both with their time and their thinking. Taking the time to really get to know me, understand me - these were the people that caught my attention. I previously did some research into the state of client-agency relationships which I shared as a whitepaper. Mutual understanding was the key to success in these relationships. Knowledge of the business was important - but so was an understanding of me, my ambitions and weaknesses, what I wanted to achieve. The question I would ask is “how can you help me and my business?”

When you’ve got a particular challenge or brief coming up — aside from the agencies you already know and the people you’ve built relationships with over the years — are there any go-to resources you would use for finding out about new agencies?

Looking within my network was always a successful strategy. Then, depending on the size of the challenge and the timelines, it would be someone like Propeller Group or an intermediary. Balancing the size of the project versus the fees for an intermediary, for example, would decide whether this was something that I needed help with.

New connections, colleagues (both former and current), and agencies I have previously worked with - I'd ask for recommendations from as many people as possible.

You’ve touched upon a few methods you find are good ways to get to know you, but what are the things that really put you off with all these agencies that are vying to get your attention?

For me, the worst approach is when people haven’t invested the time or effort to get to know me or my business. Case-in-point, I recently came off stage after presenting at an event and was immediately swarmed by a gaggle of people trying to sell at me. One guy, right off the bat, was telling me that I must be looking to engage with an international market and that he can help me with that. I’m thinking, this guy knows nothing about me - I’m UK Head of Marketing not International. He hadn’t asked me a single question. The way you reach out is also crucial. Generic emails, LinkedIn connection requests and messages are all classic examples. I admire the proactivity but realistically I don’t have time to trawl through all of these. Make sure you do your research first, it will save both of us a lot of time.

There’s a lot of discussion each year around the pitch process, how it’s broken and what can be done to improve it. Do you have any top tips for how to make a streamlined, effective, collaborative pitch process that gives everyone the right results?

First and foremost, ask yourself “do I really need one?” Nobody enjoys a pitch and whilst it can seem like quite a glamorous thing to do, the reality is that it saps a lot of time and energy. As a client, for every one agency you give good news to, you’ve got to deliver the bad news to at least another 2 or 3. There’s no fun in that. It’s also important to do some proper thinking before issuing a brief. Normally, you’d be collaborating with your agencies to get a great brief - but that option is removed from the table when you run a pitch. You need to do that thinking without their help, you’ve got to challenge yourself - you can’t just jot a few things down quickly and send it as an email. Getting it right is worth the extra hours (or days). Be clear on what you’re looking for and what your selection criteria is.

The reality is that you need to be prepared to collaborate through a pitch process too. When you’re in a pitch, you’re not just looking for examples of good work, you’re also judging them on whether you can work with this group of people. And more importantly, whether this collaboration will lead to some great work. This willingness to work together is vital to making the pitch process as true to the real world as it can possibly be, and I think there should be an asterisk there as to whether it can ever be. Genuine teamwork means treating people with respect. You are making yourself available and perhaps even if it’s just nominal, you’re paying a pitch fee. I can’t say I’ve done that many pitches in my career but the best ones are when an agency is going to win some business, it’s a genuine pitch.

When an agency has won the pitch and got the project, it’s now time to deliver the work promised, sometimes that’s the reality and sometimes not, but in terms of nurturing that long-term relationship, what are the methods you’ve seen work as a process either implemented by the agency or the client, that have ensured a long healthy relationship?

I did some research into this for the paper I published. By far and away the biggest driver of a successful long-term relationship is mutual understanding. There are a few other themes that come behind that, such as respectful challenge and dedicating the right amount of time to each other, including briefing and responses.

There are several tools you can use to do that, you can have a good kick-off meeting, or you can have an intervention-style meeting as well. The term ‘Land and Expand’ is a good example here of how agencies can have long-term successful relationships with clients rather than be a one-hit-wonder. Management Consulting companies like Bain & Company come in for an initial project and then expand to offer a broader range of services. They are now buying up creative agencies because that’s another expansion slot for them. So, how can media or creative agencies do the same thing?

I think agencies are initially recruited as a point-and-shoot no matter what they are doing, whether it be a bit of packaging design, creating an ad, or buying media, they're recruited to do a specific thing. The ambition for the agency must be to get to a point where they're seen as an embedded trusted advisor. One way for agencies to do this is to be gradually invited in by the client. It takes time, and that is in somebody else’s control. If you want to try and speed it up, you need to think about how you can become that trusted advisor. Well, you challenge a bit more and consistently deliver in the area you’ve been asked to, but what else can you do, how else can you be generous with your time, your thinking, your provocation? How can you bring experience from other clients and other sectors into the business that you're working with because as an agency you’ve got this slice across so many different clients, whereas clients have just got one vertical. How can you inspire us and challenge us to create better, more profitable work?

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