Top 5 Client & Brand Complaints about Advertising Agencies

I was recently at an end of year Marketing Holiday party where agency and brand marketers mingled in a cider induced cheeriness and happened to make an acquaintance who gave me great insight on what agency marketers did to get on the Naughty list this year.

Given my unique position as a matchmaker for agencies and brands, I get great feedback from both parties about what the other could do to make their life easier or just to be better in general.

Agencies saying they are good at something when they aren’t and then either white labeling a small shop or muddling through, creating a subpar product.

• This practice is extremely common for agencies that have already won work with a client. Instead of being honest and saying “Hey, we don’t specialize in that (social media, web design, SEO), but we can recommend this other shop in town that does” They will typically say, “Oh yeah, that’s no problem. We have done a lot of work like that”
• When the work is shown and it’s subpar or downright wrong, the client becomes irate and the agency might find themselves up for review sooner rather than later even if the main work they are doing is good. Don’t lie and get greedy. Would you rather take on small social media campaign that you aren’t good at and lose the large web redesign project because you lied? No.

Pitching with one set of their team and upon winning placing a junior team on the account

• The old bait and switch. The impetus is to always bring your A-Team, a group of seasoned presenters and leaders of the agency because no one wants to lose business, no matter how small. Bringing the people that will handle the work proves that you are honest. If you aren’t rewarded the work solely because the brand liked a different agencies’ team better, they are in for a rude awakening when they never hear from a member of the winning pitch team again.

“So many do this and it’s incredibly irritating. As a client I actually understand why they have to do this, but my recommendation to the supervisor would be for them not to disappear. Just check in once a month or jump in on a email thread with a thought so we can at least see their presence in the work” Brand Marketer, Chick-fil-A

Not setting expectations early

• Don’t promise a small regional insurance firm that you can make their website look like Geico’s on a budget of $30,000. Sure you could bankrupt your agency and actually do that work, but realistically bringing their website into this century and making it responsive is all they need.
• Costs need to be talked about — what does this cost — be realistic on both sides — when agencies try to undercut other agencies on cost, they end up with employees working long hours that are way over the budgeted hours and actually losing money. Congratulations, you played yourself.
• Caveat: Clients/Brands are also notorious for not setting their expectations earlier. Agencies are not mind readers, the more information shared the better the overall work.

Not having clear lines of communication

• All communications should go through a focal point from the agency and client.
• In practice, this should be easy given all of the means of contact that technology has given us, but that is hardly the case.
• I think many people are scared of talking on the phone with another human being, but having a conversation over the phone is so much more efficient for hashing out difficult problems than a 35 email long thread.
• Personally, I love temperature check meetings to make sure everyone is on the same page and head off any potential problems.

Agency’s taking sole credit for work that was a collaboration with a brand and chasing awards as opposed to a successful campaign for the client.

“They (agencies) bamboozle their unfortunate clients into paying millions of dollars a year to exhibit their originality. They aren’t interested in the products they advertise, and assume that the consumer won’t either; so they say almost nothing about their virtues” David Ogilvy

• There are two sides to this — A) Agency uses creative idea that they think is better and the client will never approve, just to submit for awards. B) The Agency incorporates client in-house work into their own and takes credit for all of it, again for awards.
• Awards are cool to win and the PR is nice, but wouldn’t you rather have a happy client? Word of mouth recommendations between client side marketers is way more valuable.

The current relationship between many Agencies and Clients is tenuous. Instead of long and beneficial partnerships, the review process is more common and frequent. However, by keeping an open dialogue, the two sides can come together as a team and focus on the sole purpose of marketing — Sales.