This episode is for you if you’re working for a creative/digital agency and are thinking about becoming an agency owner.
It’s also one to listen to if you’re in a planning role (sometimes referred to an agency strategist) or are wondering whether your talents might be suited to this role.
Simon Barbato is the founder and CEO of Mr. B and Friends. Like me he started his career in advertising in the 1990s in client service.
He quickly then transitioned into a strategist/planner role and then eventually became an agency owner.
In this episode, he is going to share his journey, the ups the downs, and also his advice for you if you’re considering something similar. He’s also going to share why he believes now is a great time to make that leap.
I’ve asked Simon to share with us a little bit more about the role of a planner in an agency, how they work with the account management team, how it adds value to clients and leads to client retention and at what point an agency should consider having one.
I hope you enjoyed that chat with Simon and have come away inspired to perhaps start your own agency or even move into the account planning role yourself.
A quick reminder to come and join my LinkedIn group creative agency account management where I often share tips and trends for the world of agency account management and if you’d like to evaluate how good you are at keeping and growing your account, then you can take the quiz and see how you’re doing.
Transcript:
Jenny
So Simon, would you mind spending a couple of minutes talking about you, your background, and how you made that transition from agency account management through to agency planning, and then eventually, agency owner?
Simon
Yeah. Hi, Jenny. Thanks for having me on. I’m actually a really big fan of the podcasts I’ve being listening to it since you started. So, I’m quite, I feel quite honoured to be asked to come and come and talk to you today. So, um, my background is classic agency sorts of management. I started in London in the early 90s and I worked at a part of the Abbott Mead Vickers group, then part of the Ogilvy group, and then I went to work in a brand consultancy called Light and Coley who don’t unfortunately exist any longer. And my role was, in my very first job, was an account exec. I learnt very much how to do client service, I was looking after advertising and integrated marketing accounts. And then as I started to progress through my career, I started to become a little bit more interested in the business side of things. And as I got to my last role, which was with Light and Coley, which was an international brand consultancy, I started to want to have a deeper conversation with clients. And I started to become more and more curious about how organisations operated, about how you position brands, about how you develop organisational culture and things like that. So, I started to become extremely curious. I was always really inquisitive as a child, and never ever had any shortage of questions for people. And it was at that point, I started to work with internal planners and external consultants as well, and started to learn the frameworks of brand planning. And it was at that point that I took the leap from managing clients to consulting with clients.
Jenny
It’s funny, actually, because when you describe the account management role that you had, and your curiosity in the client’s business, do you feel that that is actually a prerequisite for the account management role?
Simon
I think curiosity is one of the key drivers of great account managers, the ability to show interest, ask questions, dig deep to unearth the background to a client’s business or business problem for example. I think all of these things provide a really great canvas in which then you can then build creative briefs or build project briefs. So if you don’t have that innate ability to drive into the clients business, I think that you’ll you will operate on the very surface, and therefore probably have a transactional relationship with your client rather than a deep relational engagement.
Jenny
I totally agree. So how do you think that having the role of agency account manager, agency planner, do you think that that fundamentally set you up for success as an agency owner?
Simon
Yeah, I would say that all of those experiences provided the framework for running a business really, I can’t think of a better grounding to start a creative business than the client services area. I mean, if you think about it, it’s so deep, and it’s so broad, you’ve got, the first thing is managing people, managing clients, , in providing levels of service, which, , delight, your client portfolio on a daily basis. I mean, that’s such an important principle to learn in business. The second thing about account managers is that by their very nature, they’re there to help grow accounts. So therefore, they have an ability to work with clients to grow their business to provide betterment to their customers, rather than just deliver against projects. So therefore, there’s a bit of a new business angle to client service as well. Then you’ve got project management, which is obviously about being really super organised, great communication skills, all those sorts of things, resource management in terms of people and then finally and really, really super important, of course, is budget management. And it was at Light and Coley actually, strangely that we were taught how to run a micro P&L for our client portfolio. So, I learned about how to , what was the difference between revenue, what was the cost of goods sold, what was , gross profit, what would the internal cost be and therefore, what would be profit before tax and, and net net? So, it gave me a really great source of understanding of how to, , forecast, from a financial point of view, how my small portfolio of clients would actually make the agency money. And taking all of those experiences forward. I started my first agency back in 1998, which was called The Field.
Jenny
Wow, I didn’t realise that you had another agency beforehand. Just stepping back one step, I think that’s phenomenal. And that’s the first time I’ve ever heard any agency providing training around a profit and loss account. I mean, yeah, I think that should be mandatory, really, isn’t it? Because if we’re going to be in front of clients, having business level conversations, , and we’re looking for business challenges, business outcomes, you need to speak the language of business. And the fundamentals of business is the P&L. So I think that’s phenomenal. The other question before we talk a little bit more about The Field, do you think for someone listening, who is in a client service role, that’s thinking about starting their own agency, do you think it’s necessary to have to do the planning role first? Because obviously, in your role as a planner, you are getting deeper into the client’s business, won’t you and being very consultative Do you think that’s important to do before you make the leap to do your own agency?
Simon
No, not? Not really, I think that it depends on what type of business you want to be. There are some really good creative businesses out there that are not strategically oriented. A lot of businesses will claim to be strategically oriented, but there are a lot of really great businesses, which just do great creative work or great digital work. So having a planning capability is not necessary for success. It was just that I wanted to, rather than focus on advertising and integrated marketing, which is where I started my career, I wanted to focus on brand, brand strategy, and therefore this gave me a competitive advantage. And it was through trial and error of my first few forays into doing actual brand strategy. I look back now, and I cringe at how naive and basic some of my solutions were, but it was, it was my determination to learn and determination to keep practising keep getting better, and that really drove it forward. So I don’t think that you need to have a planning background. There are also many great planners, who you can go out and employ if you can afford it. And at the moment within our agency, Mr B and Friends, we’ve got three outstanding planners who are far better at the job than I was ever. So, it’s always great to be able to do that.
Jenny
So tell me, take me back to that moment where you were employed in the agency as a planner, what was the moment or what happened for you to start to think I’m going to start my own agency? What was the spark?
Simon
So I was working on a relatively well known retail bank. And I was an account director. And I started to work with the planning team on the positioning of this well-known retail bank. And the information that I was exposed to from the planning team was information I’ve never seen about a business before. And it got me really interested. And the more and more I dug, the more and more I thought that’s exactly what I wanted to do. And I started to shadow the planning teams, started to move into the role. I started to form opinions, have conversations, I started to position myself up the client chain from the marketing department into the senior leadership team. And it was at that moment that I knew that that’s what I wanted to do. So I was given opportunities within that agency to work on other brand strategy work. And it was at the point of, it was around 1998 that I thought, I’m going to give this a go and I left my job without any clients, just with some contacts and some confidence and it worked. It was great. And what was interesting was, it was because of the reputation that I generated as a relatively decent Client Services person that enabled me to have a relatively good network of clients, and it was those clients that became The Field’s first clients.
Jenny
Wow. So you’d done the groundwork?
Simon
Groundwork was done,
Jenny
Just taking you back a tiny step. What was that information that the planning team exposed you to? That you hadn’t been exposed to? I’m just curious.
Simon
Yeah. So it was information about how the bank made money. It was distribution strategies, it was internal culture, it was positioning within the competitive landscape, all of these sorts of things. When I was in Client Services, I would probably get surface level of information rather than that deep level of, of source of information. I wouldn’t read an annual report, for example, but the annual report is absolutely where , you find out everything about your client, or your prospects business, . It’s information like that, that I suppose I just wasn’t exposed to.
Jenny
And I suppose, having gone through that journey yourself, do you now, I know we’re jumping forward and back because we’re at The Field, but now I want to talk about Mr. B. I’m thinking as having gone through that journey, and realised that was a massive revelation, realising how useful that information was, and how much it sparked you to think, wow, this is actually what I should have been knowing about the business? How do you now run your team? Do you make sure that everyone’s exposed to that, or kind of set the task of looking for that type of information about the business?
Simon
Yeah, I think that there’s a slight difference, though, because when you are in a planning context, your role is very, very different to what say, an AD, Account Director might be, and therefore the client will see you in a slightly different way, because you’re there to solve a different problem. And I think that as an natural consequence of the client’s perception, they will provide you with the information that they feel is necessary for you to get the job done. And so therefore, it’s not always, I mean, the amount of NDA’s I have to sign for example, is a really great example of the difference between a planner and an AD. Planners are exposed to business sensitive information, your client services, generally speaking, are exposed to information about the project. And I see that there is a difference there. So within Mr B and Friends, we have a fantastic planning department, we encourage all of our client services people to learn as much about the business as the planners are learning. But of course, we have to also respect the fact that they are doing two different roles. And you can do the role together because I did it. , when I started my first business, I did the role I was the AM plus I was the planner, as well, I was also the chief cook, bottle washer and everything else! But the point being, you can do it, but you can’t do it at scale. And that’s the point, , you cannot, it takes a lot of mental availability for a planner to immerse himself into a business and have that time to immerse themselves to research, to have those stakeholder conversations, to think, to come up with solutions. And then to provide the platform for everybody else to do their job brilliantly. Imagine trying to do that over three or four accounts. It’s really, really difficult. And that’s why the planning role and the AM role at scale has to be separate.
Jenny
So tell me about, again, going back, you started The Field, you were everything to everybody – there’s my account management hat, there’s my agency owner hat, there’s my planner hat. How did you then scale it? Because I’m sure there are people listening also that maybe are in the early stages of starting their agency thinking, this is all becoming quite unmanageable, but I don’t quite know how to then grow. So how did you do that transition?
Simon
Oh, it was just really incredible hard work, long hours. And the first thing that I did was to build up a war chest, a cash war chest. So, I try to make everything profitable from day one so I could put some money in the bank. And that will enable me to bring people in to share the heavy lifting, so to speak. And so it was, I mean, in those days when I was running The Field, this is when I was starting out and the planning, the projects weren’t as big, the clients weren’t as important and things like that. So, it was much more The Field is much more of a comms, brand comms agency than it was a strategy sorts of business. But yes, so all of those different things, it was just about a lot of hard work, a lot of application, running through walls and just trying to keep the quality high and the clients happy. And then it scaled. And The Field was only a very small business when you got to 11 people, sub 1 million pounds in fee income, but it was a really successful little agency, and I learned so much running that business, good stuff and bad stuff.
Jenny
I can imagine. What happened, did you sell the agency? Or did you close the agency? What happened?
Simon
Well, here is an incredible coincidence, because we specialised in the adventure travel market. And when SARS hit in 2003, most of our clients stopped spending money. So we had leveraged the business, painted ourselves into a corner, and revenue just really slowed down. And so I couldn’t believe that we would have another source of respiratory problem that would really kill a load of other agencies, nearly 20 years later. But, so I managed to sell the business to a larger marketing services group that was looking to put a brand offer into their comms offer. And so we became the branding department of that larger business.
Jenny
You must be Simon, one of the only people that could actually put up their hands and say, I’ve been here before with the Coronavirus, because you were there with SARS. And you built the agency, the niche that was going to be most affected. I mean, because it has been, , exceptional what we’ve been through. But, so tell us about what were the biggest challenges for you? So, okay, so you sold Mr. B? Sorry, you sold The Field? And then you started, Mr. B. Were you, how did that transition happen?
Simon
So, I had to stay around for a couple of years, with the company that acquired The Field and I always knew I would go back into agency ownership. One of the interesting pieces of advice I got was, a long time ago, was that people in profit, sometimes they don’t work well together. And so when I started Mr B and Friends, I’d learned a lot of lessons about creating overhead, during the days of The Field, and I was keen to try to go into the market again as a consultant. So on my business card, when it said Mr B and Friends, it just simply said ‘Brand and Creative Consultants’. And that’s what I wanted to do. I wanted to take what I’d learnt over the years and go in and help to unravel the plate spaghetti that is often a client’s business, and to provide simplicity and clarity around brand strategy, positioning, brand architecture, and all those sorts of things. And the Friends, all of these guys, were freelance contractors that I had generated my black book of, great people who could then come in and work with me on implementation programmes so identity, comms, digital and things like that. And what happened after a couple of years, it just got a massive head of steam again, and all of a sudden, I was working 16 hours a day and I could see burnout happening. But the biggest thing for me really was the fact that I could see the quality was slipping, and I really needed a partner in the business. And so I reached out to my good friend and ex colleague, Steve Richardson, who was then in Auckland, and he was the creative director of DDB Interbrand. And I sold him the idea of coming back to the UK and partnering up. And so that’s what he did. And he put his family on a plane and all of his goods and chattels in a container, sent it back. And we said, right, let’s build this thing. Because we had the foundation of outstanding clients. We had really good reputation. We had opportunities, and we just needed to get on and do it. So that’s what we did.
Jenny
So looking back on that moment, again, for anyone listening, thinking of doing the transition, would you advise people to really consider it earlier? Because it sounds to me like you thought you were going to be a consultant, then you started getting freelancers to support you, then you made that transition of having employees and then you thought, well, I actually need a partner, do you think it’s imperative to have a partner? Or I’m sorry, I’m asking so many questions. But talk to me about that moment because I think it’ll be useful for people to maybe consider different ways of doing this.
Simon
Yeah, I think it depends, you’ve got to ask yourself what type of business you want to develop, I mean, when you take on a partner, you certainly lighten the load, and you can get complementary skills, there’s just no way that one person can have all the skills needed to develop a really successful creative business. So, I knew that Steve, because we’d worked together, he was at The Field, I knew that Steve was, had the right metal to be a business owner, that, I mean, level of craft in his work, good at people management, great sorts of alignment with my worldviews and values and things. But most importantly, that run through the wall commitment to just get the job done. And, until whatever, , until it’s done thing. And I think that’s what was interesting. Was it, do I want to have a 100% of something very small, that was all about me and so therefore, was a lifestyle business, or did I want to have an equal share in something that could grow and scale and bring other people on board? And eventually, if we wanted to have an event, that might be a possibility? So, I don’t think I would ever regret bringing a partner on board is just helped so much. And I think it’s a really positive thing, but it’s about finding the right partner. And I do know people that have selected the wrong partners. So it’s important that there is an affinity or some knowledge of that person’s working pattern, what they believe in, what they value, all those different things.
Jenny
And it sounded like you had experience of working together with Steve, so you to kind of you knew what it was going to be like. Okay, so, just to finish off this story about the agency. So Steve, joined you? And then did you just find from that moment onwards, that the journey was easier for you personally? Or was it new challenges, new types of problems to face?
Simon
New opportunities more than problems. I think that that’s, that was the motivating thing, it was two very seasoned practitioners, in that hilarious moment that they’re almost like a bootstrap startup mode. I mean, I remember, our first office, there was sewage coming up through the floor. And, we were networking our computers, by sticking two sorts of cables into the back of each computer. It was brilliant, it was exhilarating. And all we were focused on was building great relationships with clients, doing great work and getting fair compensation. And so it was it was a moment. And then Steve had the requisite skill in terms of understanding what would be a great employee for a studio that he was going to build, or who would be a great friend to do that piece of work over there, if we needed to continue using the friends network. So it was an exhilarating time, and full of energy, making great decisions and bad decisions. But, we were doing something together.
Jenny
Love it, love it. And you said that you focused primarily on relationships? Can you share any tips around what did that actually look like? How did you create those strong relationships?
Simon
Yeah so, and I believe that this is where the planning part of my career helped massively, because we weren’t ever a transactional type of business, we have never been a transactional type of business. And I think that the only way that you can build deep, long standing relationships with your clients is to really get under the skin and to be seen as a trusted advisor. And so therefore, you have to have the vernacular, you have to have the understanding, you have to learn the technical parts of your client’s business, no matter what their business is. I mean, some of our some of our clients are pretty, pretty dry. I think, I mean, we’ve got clients in the pension space for example. But what I couldn’t tell you about self-invested personal pension isn’t worth knowing, because I put the hard yards in to learn the client’s business, even understanding their jargon, their lingo, and everything else because then you become an active participant in the conversation. And when you have that level of depth, you become a trusted adviser, because you’re not thinking just about the brief at hand, you’ve got a more 360 view. And that is for me, which was the really powerful thing. And then with Steve, like, also being a very much a strategic thinker, we were able to deliver brand, comms positioning sorts of advice to our clients, as well as wonderful, inspiring creativity and execution. So it became, it was, that was our whole focus, but , build those great relationships really have them cemented. And the other thing I would say about that, is that my word, the equity that that gives you, because when things go wrong, invariably they do, the client will remember the investments that you’ve made into their business. So I have a saying about giving without the expectation of receiving. I’ve always thought that that is a really important trait, no matter what you’re doing in in the agency world. And I am still receiving now, inquiries for major, major pieces of work from people that I worked with 25 years ago.
Jenny
Wow. So Simon, as your agency grew, and you weren’t, you and Steve weren’t the key people who were getting under the skin of the business, and really understanding the language that the clients were using and understanding their environments, and really micro level, and I can see why that, , developed really strong relationships. What happened when you started employing more people? Did you feel a sense of ‘Oh, they’re not gonna be able to do it as deeply as me?’ Or was there any moment that you felt a little bit of loss of control? And how did you kind of cope with that? If you did?
Simon
You can read my mind! So, absolutely, absolutely. Because we had a certain quality that we would just refuse to dip below. And I think that when the agency got to about 15/20, people, I certainly started to become a blocking point, because I was still doing a lot of the brand work, the brand planning work, then. And I certainly started to become a blocking point. And, when you bring new people in, obviously, they have their own processes and perceptions of what quality looks like and things like that. So, I think that there was a point, when we started to get worried that the magic that we’d created in the early years, was starting to get watered down a little bit. And so therefore, that was when we decided it was really important to re-energise the business with some pretty senior hires. And we’ve made a number of senior hires. Two really amazing hires one in Kate Gorringe, who’s our creative director, who basically is Steve’s 2IC. And Kate bought in such a level of experience into the team, not just from a creative point of view, but also from a studio management point of view as well. And that freed up Steve up to develop, to continue developing the creative products of the agency. And from my point of view, I, we bought in Adam Partridge, who’s our planning and strategy director. Adam has taken what I was doing, and really accelerated it and made it significantly better. And that enabled me to then start to grow the business in other ways, as well. So, I think that having that humility to be able to accept that you need people better than you, is a really fantastic trait for a leader to have. And, and yeah, they came in, and they started to build their own departments and take what we had done and just make it better.
Jenny
Did you, was there any I mean, Adam was obviously very experienced anyway. But did you have any kind of training for Adam in the way that you were doing things with clients? Or did you have a coming together and sharing your approaches?
Simon
Yes, definitely. So what was fantastic was I, I shared with Adam, our process that we like to do and what and what, how we define brand, strategy and brand frameworks. And he came in, he really liked what we had done already, but he identified areas in which we could improve it. And that’s exactly what he did. So effectively, the thread of what I had started is still there, but you can just see that it’s supercharged. Now it’s much better,
Jenny
Do you I mean, now you’ve freed yourself up to run the agency and have more of the vision and the strategy, do you position your agency in terms of favouring a certain sector of the market? Have you got quite a narrow focus with your positioning?
Simon
So that is a really an amazing question because agency positioning is the hot topic. How do you create a hugely highly differentiated agency? One of the fears, of course, is that by going through the positioning, the true positioning process, you end up actually reducing your addressable market to the point of even one or two sectors and things like that. So what we’ve done is that we, if you go to our website, you’ll just see it says brand expertise. Okay, that’s what we do. And brand is a transferable and scalable business discipline. And so that’s what you will see from the outside, but when we actually go to market, we will talk about brand expertise in and we have two really core sectors. The first is the financial services sector. And the second is technology, media and telecom. So we do work outside of those. But those areas are the founding sectors of the agency and still the two verticals that we have got the strongest portfolio in, and the most reputation. So yeah, we have a broad positioning around what we do. But we also tried to create distinction for our brand, by talking about no added nonsense, we try to just get to the point, we talk in very straight terms, we do not sell clients something that they do not need. If a client comes to us with a business problem, the answer is not always a brand strategy solution, , we might actually send them away and ask them to go and speak to another friend or another agency. So what we’re trying to do is create an identity for the business on how we do things. And brand expertise is what we do.
Jenny
I love that. I mean, you said this earlier on but I think the sign of a good plan for me is simplification, the ability to simplify. So I love the no added nonsense. And I’ve been through your website, I think it’s fantastic. And also sometimes, presumably, for clients that come to you with a problem, it’s defining whether that is the problem that you need to deal with, right?
Simon
Yeah, of course. I mean, you should never prescribe until you’ve diagnosed. And to borrow a term from Blair Enns, actually, but it’s interesting, we spend a lot of time in the immersion phase in order to help the clients to understand the business problem. And the types of conversations that we have are so wide and varied. I mean, that’s why I love working in the agency world, I don’t think I could ever be client side, because I don’t think I would have the discipline just to work on one brand. But so we have loads of different clients coming to us with different problems. And what we’re really good at is getting to what matters most and actually helping the clients to either confirm, validate or change their opinion as to what’s needed to be done. And that’s where the strategic nature of brand planning becomes so exciting because you are effecting change at an organisational level, not just at a marketing level, we’re talking about, we’re talking about the fortunes of organisations, we’re talking about people’s jobs and the role, the culture in which they operate in. And then of course how the world sees that organisation. It’s a really exciting business to be in. And it’s the thing that the agency is set up to do and it’s the bit that motivates people more than anything else.
Jenny
What is that skill that you have, that allows you to do that, because not everybody can go into a client’s business and look at, to use your words, the spaghetti, the – we’ve got this, we’re doing this and another and make some sense of it? And then also to simplify it enough, so that you identify the key problem and then start addressing it. So tell me about, if someone’s listening to this, maybe they’re thinking about going into the planning role, or maybe an account manager wants to transition over to the planning role. What are the skills that you think someone that’s really good at the role has?
Simon
Okay, I think that a core skill is to understand how business works okay. So I think it’s really important that you understand how your client makes money and what prevents them from moving forward. And I think that once you actually can start to picture, the different departments of an organisation, you can then start to understand each individual part on how it all sits together, it’s that, , I’d never say that Mr. B and Friends is a business consultancy, but there is a level of business consultancy in what we do. And so having the frameworks in which to , I suppose segment business problems, having the confidence and I suppose the parameters that question and to dive deep into an organisation is really, really important. Having past experience because we work on, well, how many, how many clients have I worked with over the years, , probably hundreds. And you’ve probably seen all of the problems in common sorts of problems that other businesses in other sectors have had. So, drawing on that like, huge resource of , within your memory in your experience. And then breaking things down into smaller bite sized chunks. Somebody once said to me that if you try to eat a salami in one go, you’ll choke on it. So slice it up into small parts, and work on each part, and then put it back together. So I think that the ability to step back, see the big picture, and break up the problems into small bite sized chunks, and then start to elegantly put them back together in a logical way that will enable the client to also move forward, unblock a problem that might may exist, because the problem may be in the market, or maybe internal. And to then move forward.
Jenny
Really, really good. I think not enough agencies actually have that level of business consultancy acumen. And I think, our industry, there are so many management consultancies that are taking over, buying up creative agencies left, right and centre, you’ve got the Accenture’s of the world, you’ve got the PwC. And that trend, I mean, I use one of the charts, the trend that’s happening, it’s only a matter of time before that traditional management consultancy skill blends quite nicely with the creative skill, and then they have something really powerful. I mean, I don’t know what it’s like behind the scenes and internally, whether that’s all joining up, but certainly, I’ve noticed a trend of agencies starting to change the title of account director into consultant. So I think there’s definitely a trend. I mean, can you say, Simon, I know you’ve probably worked with hundreds of businesses, but can you say that there’s like top three business problems, broadly, that businesses come to you with?
Simon
Yeah, definitely. So I think the top three challenges that we get will be around positioning. So an organisation is unsure of the value that it delivers in to their consumers and in relationship to their competitive landscape. So their positioning may be set up in the past and not fit for the future. The second, I think, is probably brand architecture. So there’s a lot of consolidation going on in many vertical sectors. There’s a lot of money, private equity money, and VC money and everything swirling around. So there’s a lot of companies who are on the acquisition trail, and that prevents that presents itself a distinctive problem because, , how do you integrate an organisation into a larger and swallow it up? What do you do? Do you kill it? Do you track transition it? What’s the migration programme? So we do a lot of consulting around that. And then the third is about creating distinction around visual and verbal identity where, it’s just not connecting with people, it’s not motivating. And when you’ve actually got a really exciting positioning statement, how do you then bring that to life? And how do you make it connect externally and internally? And I think that when you combine, I mean, we sometimes we get briefs, which have all three elements of that going on, and those are the really exciting brand programmes that we run. But sometimes the work’s done internally sometimes and we validate and sometimes the work, , is done with us. There was a fourth one I’d like to just add, if that’s okay, it’s around organisational culture as well. And we are doing so much work around EBP at the moment, employer brand and setting, really inspiring internal culture, in order that people can really understand that the business is brand and brand is business and, , what we hoping to do when we do internal work is that we’re creating an army of ambassadors for the brand and at least, at the very least they can articulate what their organisation stands for and what it’s all about. That’s the hygiene factor. But actually, some of the work that we’ve done is about helping to retain talent, helping to attract the very best talent, creating an employer reputation, which is outstanding. And we’ve been doing that since day one.
Jenny
Wow. Do you work with external consultants also, so where your work finishes, and then perhaps, I can just see that, is there a cultural specialist that trains the team in making sure everyone is, , talking about the company in the same way? I mean, do you have a network of different companies that you bring in at certain points that you work with?
Simon
Yeah, certainly. But we also have the experience and talent with the internal team as well. So yeah, so we’ve got that internally organised and there will obviously be certain people who are specialist in the area of talent, HR law, and things like that, so that’s important. And I know of a lot of internal comms consultants that are available, and they operate with us on a friends basis as well. So yeah, but we do have that talent in house, it’s become really important to our own proposition.
Jenny
I think there must be agency leaders thinking we don’t currently have a planning function within our business. You mentioned before that it was a big hire for you, your first ever kind of Director of Planning? At what point in an agency’s development would you say that having a full-time planning person is essential?
Simon
Yeah, earlier than we invested, I can tell you, but I’ll just say that we waited and got the very best, so it was great. I think that when you get to some critical mass within the business and the conversations with clients are oriented around their organisational strategy or brand and things like that, I think you’ll get a know, I mean, we should have brought a Head of Planning in when I was getting swamped, which would have been around that 15 head counts really. We did work with freelancers, and brought them in, but they just weren’t invested in that they were hired guns, , they’d come into a great job and everything but then they’d go off. And what you need, when you have that long term account with a client, is that you need the planning capability there all the time. It’s like a corporate memory bank, and you don’t get that when a freelancer has done the work. So I would have said around 15 people, I mean, at our height, the agency got about 42 people, and we have 4 or 5 in the planning team.
Jenny
Would you say that’s the reason why you managed to have these long-term relationships with your clients, because you have that planning function, is that a big contributing factor?
Simon
I think is a contributing factor. And it keeps the agency relevant, it helps to do, it should fuel the account growth plans and things like that. It’s not always the case, I have to say, but I think that it provides a different level of depth to the relationship beyond the brilliant work that the client services team are doing. And it’s that intelligence and 360 vision, which unlocks future opportunities. And therefore, I think that you move into a trusted adviser status when you have that within your stable.
Jenny
How does it work internally Simon, with your account management team and your planning team? How did the account management team know when to bring in the planning team and when not to and who leads the relationship? And how does that kind of work?
Simon
So client services, our client services team, they will know when we’re talking about something that has a strategic nature to it. I also encourage them not to boil the ocean as well. Not every single discussion needs to have a plan out. It just needs to have a really good Client Services person asking the right questions and writing great briefs. But, if we’re talking about brand strategy, are we talking about major projects and things like that, we tend to just make sure, check in with the planning team, just double check that, , they believe that they should be present. But the Client Services team own the relationship, and that is crucial, absolutely crucial that there’s no ambiguity there.
Jenny
Agreed. So I’m just conscious of time. I didn’t realise that, I could talk to you all day, especially reminiscing about advertising in the early 90s. I’m sure there’s lots of stories that we could swap. And I’m just curious about someone listening to this thinking, wow, this sounds really exciting. And perhaps they are in a planning role. And they think, well, I’ve got all the skills like Simon, it really helped him, then going to an agency owner role. Are there any tips or advice that you could share, anything that we haven’t discussed already, that you think would be valuable to keep in mind?
Simon
Yeah, yeah, I think the first question is, what’s your motivation to moving from employment to self-employment, and then to the employer status. If it’s like me, you’re impatient, and you want to, I suppose do something on your own and prove that to yourself, you can do it, then I think that’s a great thing. And I love meeting people that are entrepreneurial, and people that have that confidence in their own ability to go for it. But I think the things that, some tips, I think, is that never forget that it’s all about clients, okay? Never forget, if you don’t have clients, you don’t have a business, and therefore, you have to be client centric all the time. And that’s in terms of winning clients, servicing clients and helping clients out and being that go to person when the client needs you. Understanding how, planners may not know how the commercial side of the business works. So for example, there’s a lot of planners that I’ve met, and we’ve employed, and it’s the first time that they’ve ever been exposed to the machinations of agency. Learn that. How does an agency stay afloat, make money and, that’s really important to learn. And then I think, knowing your value, and how to price, for the long term, not for the short term. And that’s another judgement that you have to make. And once you have that going, as I said earlier , build up a bit of a war chest of money on balance sheets. Use the Friends model, make everything a cost of sale, not a fixed overhead to start with. You don’t need to employ people, we’re now in this incredibly agile environment, where it’s the gig economy, work from anywhere, , this is the perfect environment for somebody to set up an agency. And once you have that critical mass in the business, you start to hire and then bring in some experts to help you with legals and employment and infrastructure, even an office if you do decide to go for it. So I mean, loads, the journey that I went on was, , stumbling from mistake to mistake and things like that. And eventually you just get it right. And, and once you’ve got those foundations, right, everything can then just accelerate.
Jenny
Some great tips there. I love the thing about the war chest. I think that’s so practical. Lots of really great tips for anyone listening and quite inspiring as well. So how do you see the future for agencies? And maybe planning and account management? Is there anything that you see coming, that you think is significant for the agency world in general? Any kind of trends or things you’re saying?
Simon
Hmm. So I think, I’ve just got a view on this, which other leaders may not agree, but I see that clients are wanting to choose expert agencies in particular roles. So therefore, I think full-service agencies are going to really struggle to keep themselves relevant. And therefore, niching down actually is quite an interesting strategy and something that we’ve very much done over the last few years where we have decided what we are absolutely brilliant at and we decided what we don’t want to do as well. So I think that’s an interesting one. I think that client services becoming so important to the client environment. There was the Up to the Light report that came out just recently again, which demonstrated the importance of client service, great client service, in the client and client agency relationship. And I think that we have to move people to a trusted adviser position where they, consultancy actually is interesting because as you say, , if you look at the management consultants, , they drive up the value of their services, they provide a significant amount of value to the client beyond the job in hand. And I think that us creative businesses, we need to start pushing our client services team up that value chain. So the perception that’s held of the team by the client organisation is much greater. The last thing I ever want is for a client services person to be the person just taking notes, that’s not where we need to be. And from a, from a planning point of view, I think that the opportunity to bring some really great skills into the mid-market is a great opportunity as well. I’m seeing a lot of organisations that, outside of the FTSE 300, and all that stuff. Now, thinking brand is a really valuable business tool. And therefore, there’s an opportunity for us to apply that strategic thought to smaller businesses and to start to help companies become more brand led than branded. And there’s a real distinction there. And that’s something that we’re very active in so. Yeah, so I think that’s a really exciting moment.
Jenny
Amazing. Thank you. That was brilliant. Brilliant advice for agency owners, account managers and planners. So this has been amazing. Simon, if someone wants to find out about you, more about you, or almost a billion friends, how can they get hold of you? How can they reach you?
Simon
Okay, so I’m on LinkedIn, of course. So you can connect me on LinkedIn – Simon Barbato. If anybody wants to reach out my email addresses is on our website, mrbandfriends.co.uk. And I sometimes muck around on Twitter, but I’m trying to do that less and less.
Jenny
Another distraction!
Simon
I just don’t have time for anything.
Jenny
Exactly! Simon, thank you so, so much for sharing so many valuable tips. I think this is going to be really a great episode for many people who are thinking about possibly moving from account manager to planner, or a planner to an agency owner. I think this is hugely inspiring. So thank you so much for joining me and thank you so much for everything you’ve shared.
Simon
Thank you. It’s been lovely to have a walk down memory lane, actually. So yeah, I look forward to listening back. Thanks a lot for having me.
Jenny
Lovely. It’s a pleasure.
Simon
Cheers.
