The new 8 P's of Agency Marketing...

What should one expect from its new marketing agency and it's team...I call these as the new 8 P's of Agency Marketing...all the views expressed here are mine and are basis my prior experience and exposure of working with a multiple number of global brands...

• Proactiveness: - The first and the foremost expectation of any brand from its marketing agency should be that the agency people should be proactive rather than being reactive. They should continually monitor brand and competition and should come forward and share ideas with the brand team.

• Preparation: - Agency should be thorough in their plans and preparations as being at a client side every brand struggles with go-to-market, creation of a niche market, and stringent timelines. it’s good to delay a meeting worth for few hours than reaching on time at client site without preparation...when agencies delay meeting time, brands understand that there is some last minute work going on at agency, which is good for brand.

• Patience: - Agency people sometimes get frustrated in terms of the time and efforts spent on making a plan and during the pitch process to client your boss and Pitch leader says hey you are not going to present your part today. Have patience, as the time and energy you spent on creating something new which never got presented to the client is your hard work and would definitely be utilized somewhere else for a similar business challenge.

• Persuasiveness: - One should be persuasive enough to put across his ideas and taking them to execution. There are clients who don't have any set budget, but if you have any innovative idea they can create budget for the same. So whenever you have an idea and you believe in the power of that idea, be persuasive enough to take the same to the client and have faith that somewhere someone (I call him third umpire) is noticing all your noble intentions of making this brand a better brand.

• Persistence: Agency should be persistent in its effort to help achieve brand objectives. There would be instances where the campaign would not go the way you wanted it to go, yet you have to be persistent and brands love that.

• Planning: - This is the most crucial skill of any marketing agency. Limited number of planners and large number of brands & pitches and yet to justify each and every presentation you put together for brand. So even planning is an attitude and this should be inherently present in all the professionals working in there. Even being a client servicing person you need to plan your time, WIP and deliveries well. So in nutshell everybody in the agency team needs to demonstrate the true planning skills.

• People: A brand spends a large amount of money every month in retaining an agency which is made up of a team and people. The brand will grow even if they get one person who breaths in and breaths out the brand all the time and become a true and honest brand ambassador. So the crux of the story is agency people with good and positive attitude could make a brand and the opposite of this is also true. There are large numbers of examples.

• Profit Focus: - As an agency if you demonstrate that whatever investments or spend you are doing on the behalf of the client has a solid returns on investment, then please go ahead and do that else wait for some time and think does this spend in anyway bring in profit to the client. When we hear the debates on pay for performance and variable component linked to performance is all because every brand need justification for money spent. So profit focus is going to help both the brand as well as the agency as both are growing together.

If you work for a marketing agency and have read through this article, and started practicing these new 8 P’s of Agency marketing, then nobody can stop you being on the other side of the table one fine day.

Regards,

Ajay Chhabra
0091-9313334808
http://innovativeinteractive.blogspot.com/