Brand Central Station

I’m not sure why clients never understood this … but when it comes to getting the best out of their ad agency or PR firm for the least amount of money, clients turn from being “marketing partners” into “general contractors from hell.”

I an’t tell you how many times I’ve received RFP’s from clients that read more like a purchase order for gravel than a request for our best thinking on a tough marketing assignment.  I’ve always wanted to respond: “Thanks for the bid request – we have a sale on four-color ads this week but we’re a little short on brochure ideas, can we arrange for a two-for-one swap?”

Now comes a study commissioned by Jones & Bonevac that reports at least 30% of marketing agency staff time is ineffective or wasted due to poor communications from their clients.

See, it was just as we suspected … it’s all the clients’ fault.

Ok, not really.

But the observations coming from the study conducted by California-based Greenberg Brand Strategy (and reported on in AdAge) should be of some concern to client-side marketing personnel who manage agency relationships.  Whether you want to believe the majority of agencys responding (54%) who said only 2 out of every 5 briefs given to them were clear or not, there is a list of items that SHOULD be included in a brief that would be of definite assistance to the agency:

• An identified budget (or budget range)
• Desired brand image and positioning
• Competitive information
• Competitive landscape (and an objective view of how the client’s offering ranks)
• No more than three client “champions” who own the process with the agency

A lack of clear direction and a tendency to revise briefs (sometimes for no apparent reason) are two other factors that lead to wasted time, lackluster work and financial stress – especially when the agency has a performance-based compensation scheme in place with the client.

One thing of importance to note on this study … of all the marketing agencies interviewed, most were large firms working with large clients. 

So trust me on this when I say it: this problem gets worse with small and mid-sized clients dealing with small and mid-sized agencies.  And the bad part about this is that for small and mid-sized clients (and agencies), there is no room for waste.  Clients can’t afford to burn the cash and neither agencies (nor the clients) can afford the loss of time.

Maybe a free webinar on preparing briefs to turn over to your agency is in order?  Any thoughts?  Brand Central Station would be glad to host it.