Fire or Hire

Recently Steve McKee of Mckee Wallwork Cleavland wrote two articles for BusinessWeek. “When to Fire Your Agency” and “How to Hire an Ad Agency“, both excellent articles. The main concept that stands out in both situations is an agencies ability to challenge your thinking and how they think for you. Regardless of size and location.

Fire
Has my agency stopped challenging me? Is the main question to ask when looking at your current situation. Not challenging your authority - its your money and your brand. But, challenging your thinking. They should make you uncomfortable because that means they are doing their job.

“Whatever the nature of the challenge, an agency that makes you think is taking the initiative to think on its own. And that’s what you’re paying it to do.”

Hire
Does this agency have what it takes to solve my marketing and business problems? Will they think for me? There are several tips (10) that suggest ways to gain insight into how a company thinks, and works, and how they will think and work for you.

“Don’t ask for - or even entertain- speculative work”

“The timeline is artificial, the discovery process is shortchanged, and in the excitement of a new business pitch an agency can focus disproportionate resources on the task, something unlikely to happen in an ongoing relationship.”

I agree for the most part - spec work is guess work. But, what if the challenge was centered around objectives rather than spec creative tatics?

Speculative “thinking” around a certain objective or set of objectives could provide a glimpse into the way a company solves your problems. For example, a generalized objective may be to “generate leads” with a given value propostion. The agency in review would then outline their solution and tactics with the support of the value proposition. That speculative solution would then be measured up against the generate leads objective, creativity, and originality.

Its probably a subtle difference - spec work and spec “thinking“. But I do think speculative thinking does have a place in an agency review situation.