If you can’t manage your own agency’s brand why would a client trust you with theirs?
So how do you run a world leading ad agency?
It’s not as hard as you’d think if you listen to Derek Robson speak.
The MD of Goodby, Silverstein & Partners talked to the Account Planning Group during his flying visit to Australia, and told the story of how the agency recreated itself. It was quite a tale.
Part of the story that has already been told was how it went from a traditional to digital focus. It involved dragging a lot of people away from what they were most comfortable doing and forcing them to work in new disciplines.
But what really struck me was that, at least in the agency’s view, how important external perception was. In Robson’s presentation, the impression was that the hardest part wasn’t changing the output: it was managing the agency’s reputation with trade press, headhunters, pitch doctors and the rest of the industry.
Even after they began to go digital, the outside world saw them as old school. Every great new ad they did in Goodby style reinforced that.
Now I suspect that’s partly because Goodby was already a fundamentally good agency, so internally they weren’t starting from scratch. And partly it was because he was playing down some of the massive internal frictions the company actually went though.
But nonetheless, what was striking was how alarmed he became when he joined the company and audited the agency’s reputation.
The US trade press were gently amused by Goodby’s “quaint and unconnected” approach to PR, particularly compared to their closest rival Crispin Porter Bogusky. Crispin had two full time people handling PR. “You guys just don’t call,” he was told.
Pitch consultants had a really poor reel for the agency. Headhunters felt it was old style.
They hired a PR agency. As he put it: “It did not go down particularly well. But we were doing it so badly we agreed to commit some money.”
From where I sit, it’s a similar story . Actually, it’s been the same when I’ve worked in the UK and Middle East too. A common conversation is where an agency boss tells you ruefully: “We never remember to tell you about stuff at the time because we’re too busy.” As a result the rivals that do, sometimes fare better than they deserve.
But this week’s presentation was a bit of a turning point for me on that one. If people aren’t doing anything about it once they recognise that problem, then I’m starting to feel less sympathetic than I did.
Because effectively, it’s an admission that they cannot even manage their own brand. If you were a client would you trust them with yours?
This is nothing new, by the way. In the early days of Saatchi & Saatchi in the UK, Maurice Saatchi would spend a day a week gathering gossip from his colleagues about what was going on in the industry to phone over to one of the trade titles. Not surprisingly, when the agency had news to announce itself it was always on the front page. And when they had news to bury it went on an inside page.
There are a handful of agency bosses who dabble with that here, but not many, and not to the same extent.
The late David Ogilvy made the same case in the classic advertising book Ogilvy On Advertising in his advice on how to succeed with an agency.
And yet, hardly anyone does trade PR well. There are big agencies from whom despite a couple of years editing B&T and more than a year on Mumbrella I’ve never met a senior member of staff face to face. Talking to other trade journalists I know that’s relatively common.
In fairness, the turnover of journalists is too speedy, and while that’s a problem for trade titles as it leads to poorer reporting, it’s still a problem for agencies interested in their reputations too.
Another part of the problem is that many people in advertising don’t really understand PR but are uncomfortable admitting it. Or worse, don’t know that they don’t know.
Also it’s hard work. Journalists are busy and difficult to get to find the time to chat. And when there is a good story, the politics of which outlet to give it to can be a nightmare.
And of course, some agencies just don’t deserve the press – they haven’t got the output to showcase even if they did put in the effort.
But perhaps the biggest issue is the internal egos. Many creatives (and admittedly it’s not fair to lump all of them in here) are not outward looking. They care far more about their peers than potential clients or the wider industry.
But the danger is that personal PR can be put ahead of the agency’s best interests. Even if that’s an unsound PR strategy, unless management stand up to them, creatives will fight to have their work appear on creative blogs with little visibility to potential clients but where they can win the acclaim of their peers (and attention of their next employer).
I’m less well placed to speak for pitch consultants, headhunters or others with influential views, but from the conversations I have had, there’s a similar story of many agencies not putting their best foot forward.
It was a delicate issue that Robson tiptoed around a little in the presentation– but the sense I get is that from his planning background, he took a view on what the strategy for the agency was going to be. It wasn’t set by the creatives. A position by the way, expressed as Art Serving Capitalism.
Certainly he made the case that planners are best equipped to run agencies and develop a strategy for their reputations. Of course, for many actually having a strategy in the first place would be a start. I wonder how many could articulate what they stand for in the way that Art Serving Capitalism does?
And I wonder how many agencies, if they audited their reputations with trade press, pitch consultants, headhunters and potential clients would do as well as they felt they deserved. Very few, I suspect.
And while Robson was talking about ad agencies, I’m sure the same principles apply to every other type of agency too.
But as Robson demonstrated, for those with world-beating ambitions, it’s a necessity.
Tim Burrowes
Tim Burrowes founded Mumbrella in 2008. He worked on Mumbrella until 2021. At various points he was editor, content director and editor-at-large.
Linkedin
Thanks Tim. Excellent article.
User ID not verified.
Great article Tim. And I’m sure this will come as a
huge surprise to the folks you describe.
User ID not verified.
Excellent article Tim.
User ID not verified.
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.
User ID not verified.
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?
User ID not verified.
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.
User ID not verified.
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.
User ID not verified.
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.
User ID not verified.
Re play the ball: This makes much more sense to me now. Good summary
User ID not verified.
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.
User ID not verified.
Hi Play the Ball.
You’re quite right. If your agency doesn’t have something that it is great at, then there’s no point in PRing it nonetheless, as it will never work.
(By the way – don’t see the above opinion piece as a full summary of the presentation – that was my ruminations on one thread of three or four. We chat about a couple of the others – the future shape of agencies & whether media planning can survive within media agencies in the Mumbrella Podcast: https://mumbrella.com.au/mumbrella-podcast-magic-pr-formulas-the-battle-for-media-planning-optus-looks-to-the-bloggers-what-next-for-toyota-17992 )
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
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.
User ID not verified.
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
User ID not verified.