Tip 5: Motivate your agency creative team

Welcome to part 5 in this 8 part series on getting the best out of your agency.

This time here are my thoughts on motivating your agency’s creative team:

Herding cats
Agencies vary on how much contact they encourage between their clients and their creatives.  Although these meetings often made me extremely nervous as an account handler (managing creatives tends to be like herding cats), you can get better work as a client if you have direct contact with the creative team.

However, this may not be the case in all situations – it will depend on how you handle yourself as a client. In particular, my next post (how to feed back well) will have a huge impact on your relationship with both your account handlers and your creative team. Assuming that you are able to feed back constructively, then having direct contact with your creative team should be a good thing for both sides.

Early bird
When you start working with an agency, make sure you ask for an induction day at the agency. You should meet the creative teams as part of this introduction. People who’ve met tend to work better together when they have to work remotely. Though this may seem obvious, it’s all to easy to forget it when you’re in a rush to get a project underway. It’s well worth the investment of time at the beginning of the relationship to meet your team.

When you come to brief in work, you can invite the creative team too so they can question you directly. And don’t forget to brief well. This gives the creatives the best chance to get enthusiastic about your project and deliver great work.

Make a beeline
No matter how much detail you include in your brief or how well you describe your work, there is no replacement for giving your creative team direct access to  front line services. It is incredibly motivating for them to see the work in person. Obviously, this will not be appropriate in all cases but most charities will be able to work something out.

For example, when working with an animal charity, our copywriter spent a day with animal inspectors. He talked of little else for weeks. And was able to write extremely powerful copy based on his direct experience.

At a health charity, we arranged for the creative team to directly interview someone who had survived cancer. The resulting case study pack successfully raised a huge amount of money.

At a children’s charity, it wasn’t generally appropriate for creatives to meet the children but we could arrange for them to visit the project where the child had been helped and speak to a case worker with relevant experience.

Horse’s mouth
Even if you are not able to offer any access to the front line, you can link up your creatives and your supporter services team (who spend all day talking to supporters). They can be a valuable source of information about how supporters actually view your organisation and work. They can also provide examples of the language used by supporters to help make the copy accessible.

A rabbit from a hat
Coming up with the creative spark for a pack is an elusive art. You can’t predict exactly where it will come from. But if you give your creative team the time and access to your front line services, there’s a good chance they’ll pick up some nugget that will form the basis for a strong piece of work. It may be something  a service user says, or a throwaway phrase from a supporter. Their fresh perspective may pick up on something that you have got used to and no longer view as remarkable. The wider access they have, the more chance they’ll pick up something that gets their creative juices flowing.

Up with the lark
You mustn’t forget that access is no good without sufficient time. Do ensure that you brief early enough to allow the creative team time to make these visits.

Don’t keep a dog and bark
A final consideration for getting great work from your creative team is to respect their skill. All the copywriters and art directors I have ever worked with have been highly trained and skilled individuals. Just because I can roughly string a sentence together, it does not mean that I can write copy (I can’t). If you want to be a copywriter or art director, change your career. As a client, you are paying specifically for their experience, qualifications and skills. Use their skills (with your guidance if necessary) to get the best work possible. Micro-managing, for example, by writing specific copy for them is generally not helpful. It can be seen as disrespectful and antagonistic and tends to be counter-productive in the long run.

Look out for the next post on how to best to feed back comments on creative work to help avoid this issue. I’m not saying every creative is an infallible genius who creates perfect work first time, every time. But there are ways to work collaboratively to improve materials without resorting to dictating changes or pulling rank. Most of the quality of your ongoing relationship with creatives will derive from how well you can feed back comments on their work. It’ll take all of my next post to cover this area properly.

Checklist

• Brief well *every* time
• Provide access to the front line (& the time to make it possible)
• Do not try to do their job for them

Tip 4: Motivate your agency account team

Do we not bleed?
Account handling is probably the hardest job I’ve ever done. It’s the only time I’ve been nearly driven to tears at work – thanks to two clients who gave me a tag-team roasting. They treated me merely as a go-between. They missed a great opportunity to enlist my help to influence the quality of the work they received. More importantly, they didn’t seem to care about keeping our working relationship as productive as possible (in order, ultimately, to make their lives easier).

Masters of their fate.
While a lot of the responsibility for motivating account teams lies within the agency, smart clients can help themselves. Because so few clients actively do this, any effort at all applied here will make you stand out. It seems too easy for clients to forget that account handlers – though a resilient bunch by nature – are still human. They will respond well if you are respectful of what they contribute and act considerately to them personally.

High time
Firstly, and most importantly, remember that time is the scarcest resource on most jobs. Try to always allow enough time for your account handler to get your job done properly. Otherwise, the work may suffer from being hurried. If you are always in a rush, you will appear disorganised and may become known for never allowing sufficient time.

Agencies will cope with emergency jobs – but make sure it’s not every single job you brief in.

They stumble that run fast
When you brief a job, your account handler should provide you with a schedule based on expected timings. If in doubt, ask how long to ideally allow before you include deadlines in your brief.

Amongst other factors, a job’s complexity will influence absolute timings for each job. But in general, be aware that you could struggle if you allow less than:

• 5 days for agency brief (in response to your brief)
• 10 days for concepts
• 5 days 1st copy
• 3 days artwork
• 10 days print & production (note: this is the least forgiving stage. ½ day late into print does not always mean you are ½ day late back from the printers).

As you like it
Client approvals: it’s common to allow 2 days for clients to sign off each stage. As a client I have seen this take more than two weeks (especially when senior people are involved). Don’t forget that this is within your control – keep on top of it. And make sure you are honest with your agency about how long to allow.

What else affects how long works takes at your agency?

The green-eyed monster
Occasionally projects can make slow progress because the agency is swamped with work (sometimes jobs for other clients). It used to drive me mad that my agency account team had other clients. When I worked at an agency, I finally understood why this diversity benefits clients. It’s mainly that the variety keeps your team fresh. Although it’s true some agency teams work only on one account, this only happens if they are big accounts covering a wide variety of projects.

Sometimes, you may feel that you are being overlooked. For example, if your agency is consistently taking too long to respond or turn work around. First of all speak directly to your main account handler. If they can’t resolve it, speak to a senior agency person about the resource on your account (your Group Account Director or the Client Services Director if your agency has one).

Infinite variety
The number of times an agency has worked for you will also influence how long a job takes. The first time takes a bit longer as they are learning about you. Once a few jobs are done things move more quickly. But there is not an indefinite pattern of improvement. Eventually it will start taking a little longer again to come up with something original if it’s a repeated campaign. If you run six appeals campaigns each year, this will happen sooner than if you run two. Check with your agency to see if more than one creative team can work on your account or if the team needs to change. (And see my next post about motivating your creative team).

A spotless reputation
Some agencies are more formal than others with their quality control (when they circulate materials at the agency for sign off before it comes back to you). This should remain invisible to you as the agency allows for this in their timings. It shouldn’t cause work to come back to you late.

Expectation Fails
Do remember, that if you are late getting something back to your agency, you cannot automatically expect the agency to make it up out of their timings. Standard agency schedules tend to allow a little slack. But making up time from later stages is not always possible – especially if you have set challenging deadlines at the outset.

Your best bet is to ask your account handler. If you have a good relationship, it’s more likely they’ll find a way to make this happen (especially if you don’t do this on every job). If you can volunteer some time back from one of your later stages so much the better.

It was Greek to me
Another way to help your account handler is to call each stage in the process by its correct name. You should know the difference between scamps, visuals, artwork and proofs etc. If you call scamps artwork, it’s inevitable that your account handler will think that you’re not sure of what you are doing.

When you start, it can be hard to tell some of the stages apart (as mac visuals look very finished compared to hand-drawn concepts). If you’re unsure, simply copy the language the account handler uses. If she calls the latest materials ‘artwork’ – you do too. Or you can even use generic words like ‘materials’ or ‘pack’ until you’re familiar with the different stages.

All’s well that ends well

Remember, your account handler’s main desire is to have a happy client. They are on your ‘side’. A little bit of effort will keep them there.

Checklist

• Allow enough time to do the work properly
• Don’t forget to ask when you need a favour
• Know the common terms
• Help your account handler keep you happy

Next time: Motivate your agency’s creative team

Tip 3: Lead the project

Sorry for the blogging break, life got in the way a bit. Normal services resumes with:

Tip 3: Lead the project

So you’ve decided what you want. And you’ve briefed your agency well. Now we can get down to the intensive project management phase. You need to take personal responsibility to pro-actively manage your project. Do not allow your agency or colleagues to drift off track. Take your project firmly by the scruff of its neck and manage the hell out of it.

C’mon everybody
First of all, be very aware that this project may be the most important thing you’re currently working on. Don’t make the mistake of assuming this also applies to everyone who’s involved. You can clear your desk to review second artwork at an hour’s notice but your fundraising director probably can’t – even if they wanted to. So be aware of the differing attitudes other people involved may have.

Altogether now
Furthermore, because charities like to be inclusive in their approach to campaigns, lots of people are likely to be involved. In particular, people from outside your team will often be asked to approve the work being developed. An advantage is that you get the benefit of many points of view from across the organisation.

Say what
But a major disadvantage is that you’ll get many points of view from across the organisation. Often these comments are from people who find it hard to remain objective. Because you’re a nice person (and maybe because these subjective comments are from your bosses) you act on them and the creative work is inevitably watered down.

Respect Yourself
If you try to keep everyone happy, then anything that doesn’t cause a row suddenly seems like a good idea. When you ask your agency to make unjustifiable changes it weakens the creative work. And it de-motivates your agency.

Do wot you do
Your best chance of surviving wide inclusivity with the quality of work intact is to manage others’ involvement extremely carefully. Prevent problems by being prescriptive when you ask for feedback. Tell each person exactly what they’re being asked to comment upon. So service delivery is invited to comment on factual accuracy of the case study. For the policy team, it’s specifically whether the work reflects the organisation’s policy. The brand team should consider the implementation of brand guidelines. Supporter services will comment on how they think supporters will perceive the communication (ie if confusion or complaints will arise).

Don’t
I would even go so far as to state you are asking for ‘feedback’ or ‘comments’ not ‘approval’. Approval implies that people can hold up a project or insist on changes being made. For most people outside your team, this is misleading. Try to avoid giving others implied control over your project.

Ridiculous thoughts
If someone chooses to comment on areas outwith those you have clearly specified, I think you can then justifiably discount the fact that they ‘don’t like that word’ or they want the picture to be bigger etc. Rather than following the helpful Strategy > Idea > Execution pyramid of creative feedback (a topic that could, and may one day, fill several posts) it is easy for people to descend to irrelevant, subjective comments (sadly, even marketeers).

Thank you
Be polite with subjective and uninvited comments. As a matter of courtesy, I would explain why you’re not acting on a particular comment. It lets someone know you have not merely missed or ignored it. If you are working repeatedly with the same people, they’ll learn why you do certain things. You could even set up a short training session on how to review creative (which you could ask your agency to run). This should help people avoid subjectivity.

Express yourself
So if you disagree with a comment – for a justifiable reason- stand your ground. If you believe in the work (which you should before you share it around) then you must stand up for it. You are responsible for selling the work to the rest of your organisation. If it’s an important project, ask your creative team and/or account handler to present it with you.

Leaders of men
It can be hard to keep senior managers on track – especially if they don’t have a marketing experience. It’s good if you can steer them towards commenting only on general strategy, tone and positioning. It is a waste of their valuable time to pick over creative in detail. Try to coach them into knowing it’s not their job to worry about individual words and pictures. They have you for that.

How soon is now?
As well as confining feedback to specific areas of expertise, you must be clear about the deadlines. If possible, tell people in advance when creative will be available to them. This makes it even more important that you keep the project on schedule.

Time is on my side
It is difficult to hold your agency to their timings if you miss your deadlines for feeding back to them. If you are running late (or are likely to do so) tell your agency as soon as possible. They may be able to shuffle around other work to stick to the original schedule. But you must ask about this. Don’t automatically expect them to turn around their side of things faster to make up for your missed deadlines.

Checklist

• Keep on top of the project at all times.
• Be clear exactly what feedback you require from colleagues (and by when).
• Believe in the work and stand up for it.
• Stick to timings and keep the agency informed if things are going to slip.

Next time: Tip 4 Motivate your agency account team

Tip 2 – brief your agency well

This stage of your project has the biggest influence on campaign success. So be warned that skimping here is a false economy that is certain to create later problems.

Before you brief
If you are unsure about your project, then by all means discuss it with your agency to clarify your options before you start writing the brief.

Successful foundation
Imagine your brief as a humble foundation stone.

It is not interesting or glamorous in itself. But everything that follows is built entirely upon it. If you get it right, it can be the foundation for something spectacular like the Eiffel Tower.

But, if you rush and get it wrong, you  may well end up with a leaning tower of Pisa.

What your brief should cover
Briefs take different formats but essentially they need to cover three things:

1. Where you are now
2. Where you want to be
3. How you will judge success. Don’t confuse this with “How we should get there”. Your brief outlines the business problem the project should address. Do not define your view of the specific solution. Allow your agency freedom to advise how best to meet your objectives.

Success v solution
Let’s use a famous Victorian engineering family to explain this distinction.

If you asked the Brunels (Marc and his son Isambard) to design a bridge, you got a bridge. It could be a suspension bridge, a tied arch bridge, a brick arch bridge or even a bow and string bridge. All meet your brief but in a bridgish fashion.

A bridge too far?
However, if you had briefed that:

1. you were on one side of a stretch of water
2. you wanted to be on the other side
3. you would be successful if you got there safely

… then you might be presented with a bridge.

Alternatively, you might get an innovative boat of some sort:

• the first purpose-built boat to cross the Atlantic
• a revolutionary iron-hulled, screw propeller-driven boat
• by far the largest boat in its day

But…you might get something that you never imagined possible:

• a tunnel (the first underneath a navigable river and still in use today).

Dream the impossible dream
So if you write your brief carefully, the agency may come up with a solution that you never could have imagined. I’m not promising this will happen every time – or even most times. But you shouldn’t preclude it.

Format of a brief
It’s best if you provide a written brief. Ask your agency for their standard client brief template.

Brief encounter
Meet with your agency to run through the brief face to face. Anything else leaves your intentions open to misinterpretation. If the brief is simple and it’s not the first job with your agency, a telephone conversation could do at a push.

Heads Up
I’d recommend sending the brief through for your agency to review before your meeting. You’ll have a much more productive discussion if they’ve had some thinking time.

How long?

I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time. (Blaise Pascal)

Let’s not forget the document is called a “brief”. It’s your responsibility to keep it focussed and succinct. However many pages you lovingly craft, it will be boiled down to something like a 4 page creative brief. Common sense says the longer your brief is, the less likely that relevant nuggets will stand out. But your brief needs to be long enough to contain all the relevant information for the challenge under consideration.

Once you’ve built up a good understanding with your agency, you might be able to skip some of the detailed background information.

No dumping
Even if you’re extremely busy, avoid swamping your agency with stacks of information because you don’t want to spend time reviewing what’s needed in the brief. Don’t convince yourself this is delegation! It is your responsibility to select the most relevant information to pass on.

No cut’n’pasting’n’pasting’n’pasting
Never cut and paste wholesale from previous briefs. If you won’t devote the time and thought needed to write the brief properly, how can the agency get excited and produce great work?

It’s all or nothing
Don’t pass on information piecemeal. It’s almost impossible to start writing a creative brief without all the necessary information to hand. What seems like an additional wee detail to you, may in fact change the whole campaign proposition. Your account handler/planner could have to start their creative brief all over again because of one late detail.

Attachment abuse
If attachments are necessary (because the details can’t sensibly be included in the brief itself) then they must be sent with the brief. And don’t use attachments as a way to slip in loads of data that you want to avoid sifting. Fair enough, include a 100 page research report if you must, but tell them that page 21 contains the useful summary of customer perceptions.

Work of art
Don’t spend hours agonising over the exact wording of your brief. Just ensure it is clearly written and packed full of relevant information.

Checklist
Tell your agency:

1. where you are now
2. where you want to be
3. how you will judge success

• Keep it succinct but include all the relevant information.
• Don’t feed things through in dribs and drabs.
• Use a standard format & send it through before you meet

Get the practicalities right when you brief
So make sure you allow enough time to prepare a well-thought out and complete brief for your agency. You also need to deliver it in a motivating way. I’ll cover that in a later post.

Next time: Tip 3 Lead your project

Top tips to get the best from your agency

Let’s start with an apology…
I considered myself a fairly good client, until I went to work for an agency. Then I realised how many numpty things I’d done that must have caused grief.

Let me retrospectively and sincerely apologise to all concerned (I’m looking at you WWAV).

Few clients are trained on how to work effectively with agencies. When you’re starting out, it’s hard to know what practical  steps you can take to help your agency produce excellent work. So when I returned client-side, I ran training sessions for my colleagues to help them improve relationships with their direct marketing agencies. Though it was written for fundraising managers, I think the principles apply across sectors and agency types. I hope you can learn from my experiences.

Common client frustrations
Client frustrations with an agency often materialise in a plea is “How do I get them to do what I want?” (accompanied by a rolling of eyes).

Most frustrations arise when you review the creative work produced by the agency. However, the vast majority of these problems are originally caused directly by things you can influence much earlier in the project.

I have 8 tips to help you generate excellent work with your agency. I’ll cover one per blog post.

Tip 1: Know what you want

Before you contact an agency
You must take time to clarify in your own mind what you want the project to achieve. It may sound obvious but I’ve seen plenty of woolly briefs that change direction daily, so this is not universally done.

Don’t rush
When you’re a busy marketing manager, it’s easy to rush the work off your desk to make it the agency’s responsibility. The trouble is that when you actually spend a bit of time thinking about what you want, the brief changes. This can result in grief all round.

Clarify your objectives
So take a short time at the beginning of the process to clarify your objective(s). For example, We need to raise £100,000 from alumni by xxx date.

Until you know what you want to achieve, you can’t possibly decide who is best placed to do the work. A clear objective will allow you to consider whether you actually need an agency at all for the project.

Do you need an agency?
Sometimes the best option is to keep a project in-house. This will depend on whether you have the necessary resource available. Don’t forget you need the relevant skills and you need them to be available within your planned timescales.

Check the budget
If you don’t have in-house resource available then you’ll need to work with an agency. And you must ensure you have sufficient budget for the work that needs to be done.  Do not involve your agency with a project until you are sure what budget you have available.

Decide on the level of agency involvement
Once you decide that working with an agency is the correct way to proceed, decide exactly what sort of involvement you need from them. Sometimes you may need to discuss this with them to discover exactly what they can do for you. But you should go in with a rough idea of what level of involvement you want.

Strategic advice or tactical delivery?
Do you need strategic advice on fundraising channels to help draft a marketing plan for next year or do you suddenly have a press ad booked which must be supplied in 2 days? The agency will approach these two jobs in different ways.

Other key factors
You also need to define any other key factors that will impact on the project:

What are the main project deadlines? There may be intermediary deadlines that matter as much as the final deadline.

How much budget is available for this work? Do you want a Mini or a Rolls Royce project?

Who will sign off the work at each stage? This often influences your deadlines.

If you are continually contacting your account handler to change what you’ve already told them you want, it creates unnecessary work for the account handler (and perhaps the planner and/or the creative team). Over time they can’t help but delay briefing your work as they expect it to change. As a result, the planners and/or creative teams may not get as much time on your project as possible. This is not a good thing.

Unavoidable changes
I’m not saying you can’t make any changes once a project starts. Sometimes changes happen that are outwith your control.This is partly what makes marketing an interesting career choice and it is not a problem. Just don’t make a habit of creating extra work for your agency because you’re insufficiently prepared.

Pre-brief discussions
Don’t think I am saying you can’t involve your agency at a very early stage so they can help you formulate your objectives. Often it is useful to kick ideas around with an objective person from an agency while you formulate your plans. But you must be clear that this is what you are doing with them.

Checklist
What are the project objective(s)?
Do you need an agency at all?
Have you sufficient budget to achieve your objectives?
Can you afford to pay for an agency to help deliver the project?
Is there enough time to deliver the project?
What level of agency involvement do you need?
What are the main project deadlines?

Preparation is vital
So prepare yourself before you involve the agency and discuss these issue with them upfront. Then your project will start off in a clear and well-defined manner. This will help your agency do the best possible work for you. And it will help prevent difficulties later in the project.

Next time
Tip 2: Brief your agency well