How to work with agencies without wanting to ship glitter bombs to their office

Unless you’re a grossly over-capitalised AI startup training your models on content that you’re not paying for or you’re reading this in 2015, there’s a good chance that you don’t have enough money to hire every person for every job that needs doing at your startup. Enter the agency.

Agencies can be brilliant resources to help you do whatever that thing is you need done that no one in your company can do or has time to do. Whatever it is you need done, I promise you, there’s fifty agencies in London that’ll happily do it for you.

But they’re not quite plug and play. They’re a little more like plug, realise you have the wrong plug and you needed the two round ones instead of the slanted ones with that straight one in the middle, and now you’re working in the dark. There’s an analogy in there somewhere to highlight that agencies don’t just seamlessly work – you must do the work with them.

My hands are not clean

It would be incredibly cheeky for me to claim to be the Agency Whisperer. There’s a few account managers out there who I’m sure wish they could take it all back, block my Figma access, and un-send that DM on LinkedIn. I’ve derailed entire out-of-home campaigns and gone back for my 316th round of edits on a Friday evening all the while trying to convince them I’m a cool client and not like the ones they usually work with.

I’ve not adopted this philosophy of finding new and interesting ways to piss off agencies for the fun of it. It’s just what happens when two organisations collide and wires get crossed and you’re under pressure and they’re really stretched and you care a little too much about your brand and they care a lot but in a different way that they don’t communicate well and before you know it you’ve both crossed each other off the Christmas card list and everyone is upset.

So yeah, I’ve probably made all the same mistakes you’re going to make because when you’re running the marketing org in an early stage startup you’ve got a million things to think about and whoever is running whatever agency you’re working with is trying to open a new office, make payroll, do a TED talk and see their children before bed. The world could do with a little more empathy and while I recognise that improving your client-agency relationship isn’t going to stop wars or famine or bridge an ever-growing political divide it might just make you hate your job a little less.

So here are a few things that have helped me to improve the way I work with agencies at Yonder.

Accept the misaligned incentives

Do you like to make money? Thought so. So do agencies. And if you think about how they make money it’s usually not in the same way your business will.

It’s no one’s fault that you have different business models. If your business is anything like mine, it makes money from a growing customer-base that drives more revenue. Agencies do that by bringing on new clients. More clients means less time for them to spend with you. Sure, they’ll also grow their agencies, but the nature of that expansion means you won’t be getting the same attention as before. It’s not anyone’s fault, it’s just how things work. The sooner you can accept that the sooner you can set up your relationship with an agency to be a success. Don’t date a rockstar then get upset when they’re out late.

Know that they’ll never be as good as a full-time hire

I’m self-absorbed enough to envision a few agency owners reading this and shaking their head. Of course they are, they’re as self-absorbed as I am.

Sure, there are some exceptions. Advertising agencies can create better work because they don’t work for you. Everyone else will do their best and admirably fall short.

My theory is that even the very best agencies are only ever about 60% as effective as having someone work on something full-time, in-house. Think about it. Even the switching costs alone for an agency mean they’re always jumping from one client to the next, losing efficiency as they work. That’s before you consider things like your deeper industry knowledge, passion for your brand and understanding of your customers. At every step, agencies will get close but not close enough. Again, not their fault, get over it.

Agencies give you speed and expertise. They’re in the business of delivering outcomes, not efficiency. They can help you test new ideas quickly, launch new projects and tackle problems you haven’t seen before. But they’re not going to do any of these things as efficiently as you would and that’s fine.

Besides, if agencies were 100% efficient, companies would exist with a CEO and no full-time employees. Why would you hire someone when an agency gives you the exact same results? You have to nurture a full-time employee, pay their pension and sit with them at lunch and hear about their weekend plans in which they’re massively downplaying how pissed they were on Saturday. It’s not a “pretty chill one” when you’re Uber driver is carrying you inside mate.

Your goal should be to focus on getting your agencies as close to 60% effective as possible. When you think you’ve maxed out on their efficiency, and you still need more, then maybe it’s time to think about bringing in someone full-time. Pension and all.

Set clear expectations at the beginning (try this email)

If everyone sat down on a first date and set out their expectations with complete honesty, there’d be no ghosting, love-bombing, gaslighting or whatever form of emotional manipulation is yet to drop on our generation. I reckon it works the same for client-agency relationships too.

So I’ve been trying it out. I’ll just add everyone from the agency I’ve been speaking to to an email and fire off something a little like this. This is an example for a creative agency, but the message remains mostly the same regardless of what they do.

You may value other things, so feel free to play around with what’s important to you. Then press send on that risky text and get back to your day job.

Avis sent the below philosophy to their advertising agency. I’m not suggesting you go full Ten Commandments on whoever you’re working with, but the point is setting expectations up front gives everyone something to refer back to. If DDB start suggesting half-formed ideas to Avis, they’ll be able to point at the sign to get them back on track.

Flag your priorities and challenges outside your work together

Look, I know it’s none of their business but I promise it’s helpful. When you’re kicking off a new agency relationship or even checking in on an ongoing one, I find it’s really helpful to just tell them what’s going on in my world and how that might impact them. It’s like free, un-timed therapy. And the best thing is they can’t just hang up on you. I’ll even throw in some stuff that’s going on at home too, just to get real bang for my buck.

I’ll let them know when I’m kicking off other big projects that can impact my availability, whether there are broader organisational things they may need to be aware of, or even more mundane things like how certain metrics are ticking along.

I’ll also preemptively apologise for issues that I foresee but don’t have a huge amount of control over. Things like:

• Noting when I’m really short on time. I’ll apologise for my brevity or directness that might come across as though I’m not happy with them. If I’m not happy with them, I’ll tell them.

• Noting when I may struggle to unblock their work. If I’ve got a lot on, it often means agencies working on other projects might not get the love and attention they need to thrive.

TL;DR – build agency relationships with empathy, curiosity and honesty

A much shorter version of this post is to just treat agency partners as the people that work there. Sure, you are paying them and at times they may not deliver on the things you really wanted them to. But if you can set really clear expectations upfront and outline what’s important to you, you’ll be able to reference that later on to get them back on track.

But it’s not their fault that their business is set up differently to yours, or that they aren’t as effective or that they don’t get your brand like you do. That’s not their job. So the sooner you can work that out, the happier everyone will be.

Also please don’t trauma dump on your agency partners – do that to your manager.

See you next time.