
The Business of Agency
It’s a race to stay relevant for agencies and it is becoming more and more apparent that if we don’t address the nature of our own business and the way in which we attract and maintain clients (and talent), that race will soon end.
The argument of course is that it is simply an evolution, a continuous growth of what came before, but the reality is that what came before will not drive and deliver sustainable business.
Sure, there is still a place for project-by-project work, but rather than considering this as a way to line our pockets, consider it as a step towards selling a total solution.
Let’s be better than a bandaid
Successful businesses know their strengths and build on those, growing not only their portfolio, but their bottom-line, too. What successful businesses don’t do, is try to cover all bases or ‘pitch-hit’ for the sake of a new client.
Clients coming to us with a problem might only be looking for a Bandaid — a quick fix to plug a hole, and yes, many agencies can do that — but what we shouldn’t want to do is get into a game of limbo with our friends down the road.
We want new business, yes. And we want to do great things for our partners — but we should first consider whether we can bring a holistic solution that improves a brand’s total lifecycle.

Do it together, rather than alone
Perhaps the misnomer here is that agencies have hordes of employees that we will subsequently assign to every job and therefore charge our clients accordingly, so we can pay our teams wages. Newsflash: We don’t!
Just like most of our clients, agencies face resourcing constraints, and continually need to come up ‘new ways of working’ to ensure we can deliver for our business, too.
I’ve talked previously about how an important part for the success of client-agency relationships is understanding the total business. Knowing what expertise, talent and resources clients have inhouse will allow us to complement these with resourcing solutions — getting the best out of our people and theirs.
Yes, we are a business
And yes, we are in the business of making money, but not at the cost of ours or the clients. Sure, we might uncover some problems that they didn’t know needed to be solved, but in doing so we have moved towards finding a better total solution and a longer-term relationship — rather than just being a Bandaid.
