Mistake #4: Agencies Are Non-Profit Institutions

Mistake #4: Agencies Are Non-Profit Institutions

Presuming you provide your agency candidates with an assignment tied to specific deliverables during the search process – or simply request speculative creative ideas, consider paying the agency a fee for their efforts. Frankly any fee amount is unlikely to equal the time the agency invests in winning a client’s account. Many agencies spend hundreds of hours pursuing a new client. Moreover, a large number will often incur out of pocket costs for independent research, creative production, outside consultants, etc. -- all to assist them in giving the prospective client the best perspective on their business. Money talks honesty. Offering a fee for agency insights demonstrates that the client company takes the agency selection process very seriously.

One Fortune 500 Company felt so strongly about finding the best interactive agency fit for their needs that, after narrowing its list of candidates to two firms, it provided both agencies the opportunity for each of them to demonstrate their capabilities in a 90 day paid trial. Each agency was given the same information, equal client access (including frequent CEO interaction), an online assignment and a budget that afforded them a profit. At the end of the trial period, the company contrasted the relative strategic contributions, creative execution, working styles and passion for the client’s business. The winning agency felt it was the fairest, best search process they had ever experienced. The loser understood that it had only itself to blame.

Best Practice:
You get what you pay for; rewarding prospective agencies for their ideas can pay real client dividends. Agencies instinctively work harder when they know the client has some real skin in the game. Similarly, corporate teams are more demanding and attentive knowing that they have money on the table. And, in the final analysis, companies get better thinking, better work --and they even get to keep the recommended agency ideas as their own at the end of process, since they paid for them.