Freelance Brand and Creative Strategist / Strategic Planner and Fractional Strategy Director
I’ve been having a few conversations recently about the future of agencies, especially the small to mid-sized ones. For a number of reasons, including the rise of AI, the complexity of doing full service without serious scale and the decline in fee-based client contracts, the good old days for agency founders of starting up an … Continue reading Small and agile is beautiful – and necessary
Anyone remember the good old days of agency retainers? When clients paid their agencies thousands each month to retain the relationship and cover both the day to day time on their business and longer-term strategy? Once Procurement got involved and around the same time client’s horizons shortened to the next trading quarter and their next … Continue reading Agencies should be client partners, not just suppliers
I've been delivering creative brief writing training to agency strategists and client service teams for most of my career. And, by far, the two most common problems I see with people’s creative briefs are sub-standard propositions (which is a whole other post) and excessive length. It’s called a creative brief, not a creative long. 2-3 … Continue reading The clue’s in the name – it’s a creative BRIEF
In my mid-20’s, as a full-time agency Planner, I thought I had my career all figured out – next stops Senior Planner (check), Head of Planning (check), then onto the Board. That last jump never happened. It turns out that it’s quite hard to juggle working 50 hours a week with caring responsibilities and also … Continue reading My aim: to do good work for nice people
I have a client at the moment who refers to the agency team as ‘subject matter experts’. At first I wasn’t sure how I felt about it, but it has really grown on me. It signposts to the client’s marketing team and wider stakeholders not only that we, the agency team, know what we’re talking … Continue reading we should aspire to be seen as ‘subject matter experts’
Over the last 20 years I’ve worked as a Planner/Strategist at five agencies and freelanced at over a dozen more and they’ve nearly all claimed to have their very own, unique to them, insight ‘process’. This is usually brought to life in a pitch with a powerpoint slide using circles and/or arrows from left to … Continue reading Independent agencies – sorry, but your strategic ‘process’ isn’t unique
Agency growth mentor, digital strategist and all-round decent bloke Mark Kelly recently asked me to join season two of his Agency Thinking Podcast. We go way back to when we were both at Poulters, once one of the hottest and biggest agencies in the North but sadly no longer around. We’ve kept in touch through … Continue reading a freelancer’s view on agency thinking
A lot of my B2B and FMCG current clients are already back in their offices - presumably because if the factory has to go back to work, so do they. But I only know of one agency that is doing face to face client meetings and even they're not back in the office yet. The … Continue reading Agencies will be WFH for a LONG time
I wrote 18 months ago about how agency account management was increasingly becoming agency project management and that the art of account handling or client service was being lost. It’s safe to say that the tide has still not turned. I’ve recently worked with an agency to deliver training not only to improve their account … Continue reading why delivering ‘What the client wants’ is a slippery slope
Professionally speaking, 2018 was not the best year and it left me of the opinion that agency employment is no more secure than freelancing. So I'm back as a hand for hire and quite a bit has changed during the two and a bit years I was Head of Whatever-we're-calling-it-this-week. The most noticeable is the … Continue reading for agencies, small is increasingly beautiful (and friendly)