What Clients want - Post 3

Posted by: Ross Sleight

It’s Friday, so close to the weekend, so no messing about and we’ll jump right into Insight 3

Insight 3 - Strategy is essential, Evaluation is crucial.

Now as a Strategy Director you would expect me to extoll the virtues of Planning, but I fundamentally believe that there is a dearth of good strategy from digital agencies. The introduction of Planning to the Advertising discipline in the 70’s fundamentally changed the communications industry, and gave Agencies the ability to sit at the top table of Clients by providing insight into their customers and their business that Client’s did not have before. Whilst Clients have become by necessity more focussed on external factors to their business, its still the area where Agencies can, and should, add significant value.

In digital especially, there seems to be too much “we should” rather than “why?”. Not enough time is dedicated into the process to understand customers, drivers and proposition. And not enough time is given to a single piece of paper that should define the strategy, the work and the criteria for success - the brief.

In a brief, a document that has to be mutually written by Agency and Client, insight is everything in our push for differentiation. But too often, briefs are ignored, or badly written, or seen as a step to overcome and then forgotten about. A brief will define the strategy for both parties, and allow both parties to judge the solutions that are presented. So in terms of defining and shaping any work, the brief is the singular most important document on the table.

But it isn’tjust in defining work that a brief is important. Digital more than any other media provides the opportunity for us to measure interactions and goals at an individual customer level. Thus the brief should be a vital point not in just evaluating work, but also in evaluating the work’s success. We need to set clear goals for success against the brief’s objectives, because if we do not evaluate work, we cannot understand how it has performed, and take learnings from this in order to improve and tweak, or radically overhaul our intended strategy.

If goals for success are mutually agreed by Client and Agency, then both parties know the lie of the land, expectations are set, benchmarks created and arguments avoided. Success can be defined and budgets set against it for the future. Setting a clear strategy and goals for evaluating it mean an Agency has to be disciplined, and not accept work from its’ teams unless it is going to hit these goals.

So ensure you have at least one, or better a group of people in your Agency who lead this process with Client, with internal teams and with external tools for evaluation. And if you want to call them a planner, or a strategist, then do so.