If you can’t manage your own agency’s brand why would a client trust you with theirs?

Thanks Tim. Excellent article.

Great article Tim. And I’m sure this will come as a
huge surprise to the folks you describe.

Excellent article Tim.

Are you actually suprised, Tim? So few agencies have even the faintest clue about strategy or best still, differentiation. Trek through their websites to see the quality of their positioning statements and that tells me enough. I’ve recently done a new brand and strategy for a retail design agency and the fact we found the more interesting and relevant benchmarks were those of European and Japanese agencies says so much about the industry. At Goody and CPB are aware and do something about their brands.

If you want an effective online strategy be very careful if you are going to use an agency.

A good way to tell if an agency knows what they are doing in the online space is to Google them and click through to their website. It will surprise you to see that some agency websites do not even get returned in the serps and many others have ‘skip intro’ Flash websites…

Why on earth would you trust an agency with your own online strategy if they cannot represent themselves in the web space?

Having worked in firstly Australia and now for the last few years in the USA the last thing Australian agencies need is more PR and fluff. They need to stop talking crap and start doing.

Good tip Tim on sharing industry goss and then using that as leverage for your own stories. I know know why stories get leaked.

You’re right though with the PR lack of knowledge but when you come from a creative, technical or a design background there isn’t really someone out there putting PR on the curriculum.

I think a lot of us (us being agencies) know they need to increase the PR but then are either too busy or don’t consider trivial news like new hires, promotions and the like, actual industry news.

Agencies should also consider looking outside “advertising press” but then knowing how to pitch an interesting story is even harder than pitching a boring one. No one will cover a “new CD hired” story but people with hardly any news.

Q for you Tim: how much do you weight your decisions on what you post based on relationships vs potential comments and link bait?

I know when posting on Bannerblog I always feel obliged to post stuff for agencies I have friends at but also post stuff just because I know it will generate chatter.

Derek’s speech was more about addressing issues inside GS&P and in order to do that, he looked at outside perceptions and discovered that although they were a very highly regarded agency, they were perceived as old school. Derek was briefed to make them relevant. They set about a massive change from the ground up, based on their core philisophy ART SERVING CAPITALISM.

To quote Silverstein on SHOOTONLINE “People don’t want to be part of a faceless company. People want brands that have identity, that mean something,” said Silverstein. “People want brands that reflect themselves. So as an agency, you cannot operate out of fear. We never go into a situation thinking we might lose the account if we don’t do so and so. We don’t come from that position. We come from a position of what we believe is right for the account and is it something we can be proud of. As long as we stay true to that, we are fine.”

Goodby Silvertstein & Partners may be better at PRing themselves, but that is not what they spend time on. They changed their structure by incorporating digital, bringing media planning inside the agency, recruiting outside the square.

In among all these core changes, they engaged a PR agency to put that all out there. You cannot polish turds. The agency did a lot of really smart things and got a bit better at telling people. Too many agencies do PR too much and there is a vast difference in outside perception of those agencies and what it is like to work with them or for them.

That is not the case with GS&P. And that’s because their PR is a true reflection of their brand.

Re play the ball: This makes much more sense to me now. Good summary

Play The Ball on Goodby’s brand philosophy reminds me of Ogilvy’s Divine Discontent being at the core of their brand and culture. Too bad so many other agencies don’t really think of this and instead rely on “old school” advertising cultural stereotypes.

Just picking up a small point Tim, a planner doesn’t run Goodby, Jeff and Rich do. Those two are the driving force and set the standard and vision. That said they have some wonderful people filling out the upper management team.

Alot of business winning agencies do so based on their ideas, not really their promotion skills. The point here is that a lot of those agencies doing good things creatively arent always the ones doing business well, as some of the seniors are just promoted creatives, with no background in business skills.
Ive found many dealings with Aust agencies to lack a detailed business agenda/mantra/brand image of themselves, so much as just focusing on getting out good ideas.
It sounds a no brainer to promote yourself as an agency, as reputation can account for so much in this business.
But you cant polish a turd (well said play the ball), so maybe if agencies spent money on PR they wouldnt have to rely on unexperienced creatives doing a halfarsed job between pitches