Welcome to episode 67. You’re on for a treat as I chatted to a very experienced marketer, Gareth Turner, who’s been an agency client for much of his career.
He shares his own experience of being on the client side. He has also carried out a study of the best and worst client-agency relationships, and how to improve them, and he’s published the results in a white paper, which you can download here. During our chat, we talked through the findings of this report. Whether you’re in marketing on the client side or managing the relationship on the agency side, you’re going to benefit from the insights he shares.
If you’re working in agency account management, and you’d like to get some formal training in how to offer the highest level of value to your clients, so you not only retain your client relationships, but grow your accounts, then visit the Training page, and check out my Account Accelerator programme.
Transcript:
Jenny 00:02
Today, I am delighted to have as my guest Gareth Turner, who is currently Head of Marketing for Weetabix and founder of his own marketing consultancy, Big Black Door. Gareth has over 23 years’ experience working in food and drink, and he’s led the marketing for brands such as John Smith, Bulmers, Lurpak, Arla, lots of FMCG brands, so lots and lots of experience. He’s worked with many agencies as well and often shares his views on how to improve client-agency relationships on LinkedIn. So, if you’re not following him, I would highly recommend you do. Now recently, and one of the big reasons that I wanted him to come and talk to me was he published a white paper on the topic of agency-client relationships, and he called it, ‘It’s Time we Grew Up.’ I’m going to ask him about that title in a minute. But he details the results of a study of the best and worst client-agency relationships and how to improve them. So hopefully, this is super relevant to anyone listening on the agency side. So, Gareth, welcome to the show.
Gareth 01:10
Hello, thanks for having me. We’re in a slightly strange situation here. I am, indeed, Head of Marketing today at the time of recording but I’m going all in. So, by the time it goes out, I think I won’t be Head of Marketing at Weetabix, I’ll be all in on the Black Door Consultancy. So yes, thanks for having me.
Jenny 01:29
It’s an absolute pleasure. And I know that you’ve got lots of opportunities lined up and you’re already talking to lots of people who want your marketing expertise. That is fantastic news. Would you mind kicking off and just spending a couple of minutes talking about your career to date, Gareth? Tell us a bit about you and your background.
Gareth 01:48
So, the first part of my career was in sales. I was in a number of different sales roles at Diageo and Heineken and was a sales director for the East of England for a while at Heineken but always had more than a passing interest in marketing. I was always sticking my hand up to be the marketing volunteer, the sales volunteer and marketing project. So, the opportunity arose to take on the John Smith’s brand and Mark Given, who’s the CMO at Sainsbury’s now and Sarah Warby who was the CMO at Sainsbury’s before Mark, took a punt on me. They gave me a chance, back then I had some credibility and so they gave me a chance and on John Smith’s and said, ‘Not even you can mess that up, Gareth!’ So that’s what got me into marketing. I did the last set of Peter Kay advertising with TBWA for John Smith, that was good fun, and then moved across to Bulmers which was a more strategic marketing position and did some good stuff there with St. Luke’s -that was the main agency exposure, we did work with them. Then I joined Arla, did a number of different roles there. Some bigger roles there – I was the marketing director for butter in the UK, so brands like the Lurpak and Anchor labels were in my remit there. I also did the global Arla brand role. I was consolidating down all the different agencies across Europe into, we hoped it would be one, but it didn’t quite work out that way, but to one creative idea. All the different Arla brands and agencies did a lot of great work with Wieden and Kennedy there. And most recently, I’m at Weetabix. So, I’ve done a few ads at Weetabix and some good marketing. We did the Beans on Bix tweet; we did a great partnership with the FA and had some good fun working with BBH as our lead creative agency at Weetabix.
Jenny 04:02
I can’t wait to dive into these questions because you’ve got such a wealth of experience. I am just dying to ask you loads of questions. So that sounds like you’ve worked across the board, lots of different brands, lots of different agencies in lots of different capacities. So, you’re at this point of a changing career, doing your own consultancy, so can you explain a bit about Big Black Door? What problems are you solving and for who?
Gareth 04:29
I’ll give you an anecdote here when there were some pennies dropping for me that there’s an opportunity here to help brands. So, when you get to a certain point in your career you get phone calls all the time, I got one from recruit people they say, ‘I’ve got a job got marketing director job for you, Gareth.’ Brilliant. Tell me about this. Is it in a start-up company or scale up company? Ooh, that sounds interesting. So, I said, ‘So tell me about the department.’ And they say, ‘Well it’s you!’ So, I say, ‘Okay, I don’t think you need a marketing director. I think you need a good marketing manager, or good SBM, someone who’s got some experience, someone who knows what they’re doing, someone who can get stuff done. But you don’t need the salary of a marketing director 24/7 or however long it is. What you do need is someone every now and then to give some direction to those people and to help them and to coach them and to help them prioritise, etc.’ And that’s what I’ll do. So, I spoke to a business the other day and the head of marketing said, ‘I’m swamped. I’m just bewildered I’m so down in the weeds doing what I’m doing that I don’t get a chance to step back and see and create a strategy and set the right KPIs etc. That’s the stuff I can help people with. So basically, it’s to be a marketing director when you need it, without the salary when you don’t.
Jenny 06:06
Amazing. And I can imagine that you would add so much value by stepping into a business. You could probably see a lot very quickly given how many years you’ve been doing it yourself?
Gareth 06:15
I’ve worked with some businesses already where there are some savings that we made with agencies. I think there are some agencies who are not treating some of the less experienced people fairly. So, I’ve seen some retainers there which looked out of kilter, shall we say? I’ve seen people selling media channels which I don’t think are relevant for brands at that size or at that point in their lifecycle. I’m not a super-duper person, I’ve just got 23 years miles on the clock you might say. I’ve got experience to go, ‘That just doesn’t feel right. You’re spending more on agency retainers than I was at Weetabix – that’s out of kilter. So, they’re the kind of conversations that, just with experience you can see straight away and hopefully, have a bigger impact on a smaller business than I can have at the bigger brands.
Jenny 07:18
Just staying with this theme for a moment because obviously, you’ve got so much experience and I suppose people who are holding the reins of a company in the marketing capacity would really benefit from you coming in. You can probably see a lot very quickly. One of the first things you mentioned was things around the relationship with the agencies. So that’s obviously quite a big chunk of, probably, your cost savings -analysing the cost potential cost savings? You said they’re not treating them fairly. Can you sort of elaborate on that a bit?
Gareth 07:54
I don’t want to break any confidences, but I see people being sold stuff that they don’t need. I was chatting to someone the other day and they’d been sold some broadcaster VOD creative. They don’t need broadcaster VOD; they’ve got other things. I think anyone who was being truly media agnostic wouldn’t be talking to them. I’m going to guess that that agency wants to make something. I might be being totally unfair to them. But it felt to me, that anyone could see that wasn’t the right thing to do for that business at that point in their life. So, I don’t think that’s fair. And perhaps we’ll touch on the white paper stuff in a bit but the number one reason for good and bad relationships was understanding. So, when you have a good understanding of each other’s business objectives, each other’s human objectives, their career aspirations, all these things, when you have a good understanding, you have better relationships and when you don’t have an understanding then you have worse relationships. So, in that example, I don’t think that agency had that client’s best interests at heart.
Jenny 09:17
Fair enough, so they weren’t asking the right questions, they weren’t getting under the skin of the business, they weren’t understanding priorities? And who knows why that project or that broadcaster VOD was presented? So, pausing that for a minute, you mentioned so many agencies that you work with. Can you give me a flavour of your experience working with the agencies? Typically, who are you dealing with at the agency? What kind of remit did you have? How did you tend to treat your agencies when you were working with them?
Gareth 09:53
Well, you’d have to ask them! I think I’m on good speaking terms with every, almost every agency person I’ve worked with. I see these guys, these agencies, as an extension of my team. Because, if I’m making a TV ad for example, I can’t do that. And actually, I shouldn’t have the expense of having those people on my books 24/7 as brand marketing. And sometimes there’s a bit of in-housing and I’ve not worked in, in-housing and I can see how that works for some people. It’s not worked for the businesses that I’ve been in whilst I was there, anyway. But they bring in that expertise when I need it. And so how do I treat them? I hope I treat them with respect, I hope I treat them like another member of my team, I hope we have fun. A creative meeting, for example, should be the highlight of my day at least, if not my month. And sometimes one can suck the joy out of those meetings by a client’s bad behaviour and an agency behaviour, they’re not fun anymore. And that’s sad, they should be the highlight. So how do I treat people? I hope I treat them like human beings. I treat them as is respected equals. I hope I try and understand them a bit. I know I don’t ask enough questions about people’s private lives, but my partner would always say to me after I’ve seen my best friend down the pub, ‘So is he?’ ‘He’s fine.’ ‘His wife and kids?’ ‘Um, I can tell you how Newcastle are doing!’
Jenny 11:52
Exactly, exactly. Now, you mentioned lots of networked agencies. Did you have, typically, a group of agencies that you dealt with for different things? And if so, how many were you managing? Who was your key point of contact? Can you give us a flavour of how that relationship was on a logistics level?
Gareth 12:17
When I’ve been working on some of the bigger brands, you’d have your media, creative shopper. When I’ve been at Heineken you might have an on-trade shopper and an off-trade shopper. You might have experiential PR packaging. So that was a good six, seven agencies and some of them you’re speaking to daily, some you were speaking to once a quarter or maybe even once a year – packaging, you don’t change packaging that often. So how do I manage it? I would, again, you’d have to ask them how I really do. But how I’m going to say I do is that I like to think I’m quite collegiate and collaborative. So, when I’ve been actively managing those agency relationships, I would have an all agency meeting once every quarter or so. Back in the day when we all got together a bit more often, we would physically get together. We’d have sandwiches or a buffet lunch, but lunch it together. So, we’d have some time away from the presentations, hopefully to connect at a different level to just talking about the work. And I’d want challenge and I’ve also seen the benefit of a lead agency. So, in the past, it’s either been the creative agency, the above the line, the TV advertising agency or the media agency. Generally speaking, in recent years, the media agency in the brands I’ve worked on has been the only one that’s been on a retainer. So, most of the agencies I’ve worked with have been project-based and therefore the media agency ends up being the lead agency because they’re the only ones getting paid every month.
Gareth 14:08
Makes sense. And tell me, did you invite those agencies into your yearly planning process?
Gareth 14:17
Yes absolutely. There are some things you do on your own there but the sooner you can get agencies into the planning process, the better. So, at Weetabix, I think we have a great process. but it does start with a bit of state of the nation, marketing department on their own and we get sheep dipped into the market data, how we’re doing, what our business objectives are. So, you’re getting the input. We then start to distil that and then we’ll have a session with all our brands, with all our agencies. So, one big kick-off session – so this is what the business is trying to achieve. And then we go away into our subgroups with brands and agencies together – What are we trying to achieve on Weetabix? What are we trying to achieve on Alpen? And what are we trying to achieve on Weetos, etc? Have those smaller all-agency groups and I think it’s a very well-worked process.
Jenny 15:27
I’m so glad you responded like that because it’s actually a conversation, believe it or not, that I have with lots of agencies who are smaller, independent and one of the key things I say is, ‘Are you involved in the clients’ yearly planning process?’ And sometimes I’m looked at blankly, not always, there are probably reasons for that but I’m glad you responded like that. And how cohesive – you’re going to look at a lot more ideas earlier in the process. So, let’s move to this report you wrote, Gareth because I know that you write, typically, these fabulous posts about client agency’s relationships. But why did you decide to publish the paper?
Gareth 16:15
There are two reasons. Probably the truth is, I was running a course. I was doing some work on how to turn client service from a cost to a thing to be valued. ‘A cost to be challenged, to a thing to be valued’ something that was the title. And I thought I need some research on this. I need to do some digging to see how other people are seeing this, not just me. I got a lot of stuff back which confirmed what I was thinking. And at that time, I’d had a very difficult relationship with one of my major agencies but we’ve got through that. And so, you put these things together and you think, ‘Okay, maybe there’s something in this. Maybe I’ve learned some ways to help people get out of the pit of despair when it’s not going well.’ And we did a kick-off meeting – not at the kick-off of our relationship, we did a recalibration kick-off meeting. I think kick-off meetings are so important but they don’t need to be at kick-off, they can be an intervention if needed. So those two things together, I had to do some research to try and bring some data to some training I was doing. But also, it’s been something I’ve been thinking about for a while. I’ve seen the good, the bad and the ugly of agency relationships and over the years, I’ve just picked up some good tips on addressing those because I’ve worked in some great agencies who saw the same thing. No one likes to be in that relationship where you turn up to a meeting and you’re just head on the whole time. It’s exhausting. No one likes that. So, fortunately, I had group account directors working in these agencies who saw the same thing that I was seeing, and we went for a coffee and went, ‘This, this isn’t fun anymore, is it? How do we sort this out?’
Jenny 18:29
So why was that happening? This is the difficulty you’re referring to? So, what was happening there?
Gareth 18:33
I think when everyone got a chance to fill out an anonymous questionnaire about how they were feeling – basically, respect had gone. We were doing a big strategic project and it was difficult. It was challenging and the work wasn’t always testing well. There’s just pressure and sometimes pressure brings out unhelpful behaviours in both sides. It isn’t that agencies were bad, and we were good. Absolutely not. And there were some different approaches in different countries. So, it was an international team that I was corralling. I was trying to herd an international team and some people’s approach to agency relationship was very different to a UK based approach to agency relationships and that led to some tension when you’ve got a UK agency.
Jenny 19:47
Were they more JFDI and you are more collaborative?
Gareth 19:51
Yes, ‘Agency is the slave.’ was a term that was used. So, one of the outputs, when we developed the charter on how we wanted to behave with each other, was, ‘Remember your P’s and Q’s’. How have we got to place where we have to write that down? But it helps just to remind us to be respectful of each other.
Jenny 20:18
I’m going to go even deeper. Do you think that was cultural to the country? Or was that individual to the person?
Gareth 20:25
A bit of both, I think. If I go down that path, I’ll give it away who it is.
Jenny 20:36
Don’t worry. You called this paper, ‘It’s time we grew up.’ I love the title, why the title?
Gareth 20:52
Actually, I toned it down a bit as it had a bit of swearing there originally so I pared it back. But
the behaviours are just so childish from both sides. I’ve written some posts that I didn’t actually include in the paper as I was trying to cut it down a little bit but there’s the ghosting that goes on, there’s the hiding agencies away and not introducing them to other people, there’s promising agencies work if they do this little thing for you now and then it never comes around. All this is really shitty behaviours. And let’s be fair, agencies aren’t blameless in this either, it’s a two-way street. But between us, we’ve just got to grow up. And if a budget gets cut, you know what, budgets get cut sometimes so tell someone the budget’s being cut. That’s okay. If the shoot has gone over budget, tell the person that the shoot has gone over budget because it won’t be the first time that’s happened. So, let’s just treat each other with respect and have an adult conversation and then work together to fix it because, from my point of view, the agencies I work with are some of the cleverest people that I’ve had the pleasure to meet. So why wouldn’t I share a problem with them because they could help me? They’ve helped me look good. I’ve built a career on agencies helping me to look good!
Jenny 22:21
Love it. Honestly, everything you’ve just listed, I hear all the time from the agency side. So, this report came out with the six themes, which I’ve got in front of me. Can we just go through those themes, and can you just give us a flavour and a nugget because obviously, I’m going to include the link so everyone can look at this report and download it, but the first one I think you’ve already mentioned is, ‘The value of mutual understanding.’
Gareth 22:46
This was the clear winner. I think 40% of people who answered the questionnaire, no matter what side they were on, said this was the most important thing. Or actually, they quoted it as a reason behind their best and worst relationships. But I think when you dig beneath that, it is more than just business understanding, although there is a large amount of business understanding. There’s understanding the human behind the job title. There is understanding my consumers. Understanding the business pressures, understanding my aspirations. A great example of this is, the planning director exposure when I was at Heineken, I was struggling to get a piece of work through the business. And he saw that he and he asked me why. Why are we struggling to get this piece of work through the business? And I said, ‘Blah, blah.’ I was struggling just to convince somebody that it was the right piece of work and there were some objections and my confidence had been knocked. He helped me. He coached me in the way to present it and the way to deal with that, to give me the confidence to be more relaxed in that presentation. So, he helped me indirectly by understanding what’s going on for me. In another world, ‘Oh, bloody hell, Gareth can’t get that stuff through business. He’s terrible.’ That’s not being shoulder to shoulder, it’s just butting up against each other. So, he stood shoulder to shoulder with me and helped me. And that’s what I mean by understanding beyond the job title, beyond the business objectives although you need to have that as well. You need to understand what’s going on for me individually because I might want to progress my career and I’m feeling I’m not able to because I’ve got a block there.
Jenny 24:44
I’m going to assume that when he was asking you about getting this through the business, he did it in such an empathetic way that you felt confident enough and safe enough to actually share with him the struggle you having?
Gareth 24:59
Yes, I’m a fairly open person, so it doesn’t take much to give me that but that’s another thing. One of the other themes in the research was about Respectful Challenge and you have to create the environment where that’s okay. Some of the quotes in from agency said, ‘The client doesn’t treat me like a human.’ But then I think a quarter of all clients said they wanted ‘brave work’ as we’re not getting it. If you’re not treating someone like a human, if you haven’t created the space, the psychologically safe space for someone to bring you some bold work, they’re not going to do it. And so, in that example, the planning director created an environment where it’s okay for me. I hope to, it doesn’t always work. You try and sometimes you forget and sometimes you’re not perfect on these things, but you try and create an environment where when someone brings you a piece of work, you’re thinking, ‘Is it on brief? How could we make this work? Could this be a great thing?’ So, the Beans on Bix thing came from, I hope, creating the right environment with my team and my team creating the right environment with agencies where they were prepared to push the boundaries a little bit.
Jenny 26:26
For an agency person listening to this thinking, ‘Yes, Gareth has just said it. I’ve got this situation with my client. He’s not treating me like a human or she’s not treating him like a human.’ What the hell can they do?
Gareth 26:40
I come back to sort of ‘adulting’. As hard as it is, you’ve got to call it. You’ve got to say it. I don’t think anyone sets out to treat another human badly. Not in this sort of job. This is just marketing stuff we’re doing. It’s not anything…
Jenny 27:07
…that involves surgery.
Gareth 27:09
So why can’t people just say, ‘The way you said that thing… but the way you said it didn’t land well with me.’ Or just calling stuff out for what it is and learning how to give feedback. Unless you tell someone, because I don’t think that person will have set out to be a dick, but you’ve got to tell them, ‘Gareth, you’re a bit of a dick there, I’m sorry to say that.’ And I’m like, ‘I’m so sorry. Yes, I can see how you might have thought that. That wasn’t my intention. I’m so sorry.’ I’ve said that before when someone’s called me out on the way something landed which definitely wasn’t my intention. And I’ve apologised, I’m happy to apologise if I’ve got it wrong.
Jenny 27:59
Lovely, nice advice, Gareth. Very on point, I think. Brilliant advice. Tell me a bit more about Respectful Challenge. So how much did you enjoy your agencies challenging you? Give me give a flavour of what that might look like.
Gareth 28:17
So
Respectful Challenge. I had this conversation with the Creative Director at BBH a while ago, Felipe and he had a line, ‘It’s not you, it’s the work.’ And so, by keeping the conversation about the work you can have a more challenging conversation because it’s not about whether I think he is any good at his job or not, it’s me talking about the scamps he’s done, or the team have done. So that’s how you can do it. So, in terms of challenge, our agencies at Weetabix fairly regularly present us work which wasn’t briefed, it’s just speculative. The Beans on Bix thing was part of the wider strategy but that was quite a bold thing. And that agency challenged us to be bolder. On zero to 10 you don’t want to be a 10 but you don’t want to be a zero either. How can we push ourselves around to an eight or nine so it’s all calibrated? That’s one way of doing it.
BBH presented some work to us, it seems like a lifetime ago now, when Theresa May resigned and there was the new leader of the Conservative Party who was going to be then the new prime minister, we took out an ad, ‘He’s going to need his’ when it was announced. And we also ran a Dragon’s Den a while ago, a couple of years ago before the lockdown and things have sort of moved on a little bit now, but we had a bravery pot, a pot of money which we said, This is our overall objective, we want to drive penetration, we want to drive awareness, you want to do X, Y, Z. The rule is, come with anything.’ And so actually, we opened that to agencies, and we also opened that to colleagues. So, we had two Dragon’s dens. And one was for colleagues to come in with ideas and the other was for agencies to come in to pitch us ideas. We got the chairs out, we had to fake £50 notes and stuff, it’s really a bit of fun.
Jenny 30:52
Brilliant!
Gareth 30:52
Again, that builds a relationship as well, just a bit of fun. And we gave everyone proper feedback we all stayed in character. But we got some good ideas. I think the idea we did from there. I think it was BBH actually, they had an idea where we took out some outdoor advertising in the Czech Republic when England were playing the Czech Republic in the Euros, and it said, ‘Watch out, our boys have had theirs!’ Now we only took one site, but we PR’d the backside off that in the UK. So, it was a nice thing.
Jenny 31:30
Very nice. Hopefully, this is going to be listened to by other marketers as well because you are followed by lots of other marketers so maybe that’s given them an idea as well, if they’re in a similar situation. If they want to drive penetration, that ‘Bravery pot.’ What a fantastic initiative and then getting both colleagues and agencies to present ideas, genius. So, we’ve talked a little bit about the value of mutual understanding, respectful challenge. The third point that came up in the study was ‘Dedicating time to process’.
Gareth 31:55
Yes, for me, there are two elements to this.
I think the root cause of a lot of tension is when you’re under time pressure. So, creating the right amount of time to breathe properly, not to be rushed, scared or thinking, ‘Bloody hell, we’re up against it, we need that ad out.’ You’re not going to get great work like that. So, dedicating the right amount of time, getting the right people to dedicate the right amount of time, as well. But also a bit of understanding on my time pressures. So, for example, I think I was working, let’s be generous, call it 40 hours a week, then with departmental stuff with team meetings, I reckon half my time is spent on marketing. And of that half, I’ve got X number of brands, I’ve got the four P’s, I’ve got some strategy execution, it’s about half an hour per project I’ve got. So, when you turn up late for that meeting or you send me the pre-read after the start of the meeting, that’s why I’m get a bit tetchy about that because you’ve already wasted the time that I had. And I know it’s not quite as black and white as that but I’m not sitting there waiting for that call, I’ve got plenty of other stuff to be getting on with. So that’s probably a bridge between understanding and timing in there.
Jenny 33:28
I love that we’ve had it from the horse’s mouth, so to speak, because actually, I get a lot of account managers saying to me, I can’t get hold of my client, they haven’t responded to my email. They’re working on this one project and you have to remember, the client is not their key priority. So, an understanding on both sides and also from the client side, not giving unrealistic timelines.
Gareth 33:52
But agencies need to push back on that as well. I’m going to push for it to be as fast as it can be, of course, but you need to also tell me, ‘Mate, you’re mad if you think you can do it in that time. You’re absolutely mad. What, two days for feedback? You can’t get feedback in a week.’ Just let’s just be honest about this.
Jenny 34:20
Again, it comes back to having that direct conversation, doesn’t it? I love this theme. The other, number four was Honesty and Trust that came up in the white paper. Tell us about that.
Gareth 34:33
Honesty and trust were mentioned by agencies and clients as the reasons for good relationships. It just made me flabbergasted that we had to call that out. It’s not just assumed that there’s honesty and trust in the relationship. So that shocked me a little bit. And thinking back to that idea of the budget example or when I was struggling to sell something through the business, just being honest with people because it won’t be the first time someone’s heard that there’s a budget cut. It’s common. So just telling people that – you don’t need to ghost them. Just telling someone, ‘Joe, I’ve read your proposal, but I’ve decided to take another option. I’ve got three options on the table, and I’ve taken option two.’ That’s also okay. I just don’t understand what stops people doing that. If you see it, say it. It just saves a bit of time and pain further down the road.
Jenny 35:43
Makes total sense. You work with agencies. Did you tend to work with agencies over a long period of time to build up that trust? And just as a slight side question, when there was a change of personnel, so maybe your group account director left, how much did that affect your relationship with the agency?
Gareth 36:09
So, I have tended to work with agencies for a long time. I haven’t changed agencies too much. I talked to them about pitching the other day. I reckon I’ve probably only done two or three big pitches in all those years. It seems exciting when you get told about it the first time, it’s not. It’s painful for everybody. It’s painful, it’s such a drain on time. And if you do it properly, it’s not as much fun as one might think it is. You get to tell one person it’s good news, you’ve got to tell other people, it’s bad news. It’s not fun at all. So I’ve tended to work with agencies for a long time. And sometimes personnel change, you’re right. And I think right now, there is a higher churn in agencies because people aren’t as invested in that business as they were when they were going to sit in that same desk all the time. Because I’m sitting here talking to you in my little bunker, but I could be here working for a company A, B, or C and I’m still in the same place, still having the same similar conversation. So, I think the loyalty to businesses has decreased. And so, there is more churn and that’s a challenge for the leadership at agencies to retain the best people and to bring on board the new people in a way that keeps the consistency of service. All I’m worried about as a client really is, ‘Am I getting a good service? Am I getting what I’ve asked for?’ I don’t have to like people. It helps we like each other; it makes life a bit easier but I just want to not have to go over the same old ground time and time again.
Jenny 38:13
And presumably, keep updated about the change and also that’s a seamless change and you’re not seeing any fluctuation in service.
Gareth 38:22
I’ve had it where it’s been worse. An agency called to say, ‘Dave left this morning.’ ‘Okay, and what’s going on with Dave’s replacement?’ ‘Yes, we’re working on it.’ Sometimes it happens when the person is working on a competitor brand where I can totally understand, sometimes it has to happen. But it has probably happened more than it ought to have over the years. I don’t need to be involved in the recruitment process, that’s totally their bag, I just don’t need to be involved in that. I just need to be given the confidence that yes, we’re spending money, right. And that’s one of the confidences that we’re still going to get great service.
Jenny 39:12
It affects trust a little bit there, doesn’t it, Gareth? Because probably, that guy put his notice in a month ago, if not three months ago and you get told on the day, that he’s leaving. So again, how does that leave you with the perception of the agency and how much respect there is? So, there are some learnings here for sure. Let’s move on to number five in the paper, which was The Power of the Brief.
Gareth 39:35
I think that’s well documented, although it transpires that it still seems to be revelatory news and I can’t quite get my head around that. I think there was some research from the Better Brief Project a while ago, which had very similar findings, but I think that’s all about the brief that they were writing, they were saying (I think I’ll get the numbers wrong here), something like 90% of clients think they’ve written a good brief. But 80% of agencies think they’ve written a bad brief. How is that a surprise? A client needs to create with better sort of trust and honesty and need to create an environment where the agency can say, ‘I’m sorry, Gareth, that’s just not good enough. I want to challenge X, Y, Z’ And even better, we should be writing the blooming thing together. We should be in a room with all stakeholders in the room and co-creating a brief where we’ve thought about every word that’s in that brief, every word means something and is considered. Not something I just dashed off as quickly as I could and emailed it over to them, copied and pasted it from last year’s one. We’ve all done that, but it doesn’t make it a good brief. But then you’ve also got the summary document of all the thinking that’s gone before. That’s like the contract for more thinking. But you’ve also got the theatre of how you deliver it and are you engaging people, are you as a client making that agency give any discretionary effort they’ve got on your stuff? Do they think about that in the shower? That’s when you’ve written a good brief and you’ve delivered a great brief – it’s when people are just excited about it and want to write more and more.
Jenny 41:35
Very overlooked actually, that’s a great point. Have you ever had any training on writing a great brief Gareth?
Gareth 41:47
Yes.
Jenny 41:48
You have. Who conducted that training?
Gareth 41:52
A number of people and it’s something I do as well. When I was a Heineken, I was on a three-day residential course on writing a brief. They’re difficult documents. They’re very difficult documents and each section is important. And this isn’t about the creative brief that the agency then gives to the creative team. This is about me saying to the agency, ‘This is the business problem I’ve got; this is how I think we can fix this and here’s a bit about my audience and here’s how I’m measuring it. Oh, and here’s the budget you’ve got.’ How many briefs go in with TBC in the budget? Ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous. At least give an indication.
Jenny 42:44
Actually, if people are listening to this, both on the marketing side and the agency side, you are very well versed in how to write a decent brief. And actually, it is the contract, it is the absolute bones of how you work together. And it can make the difference between spending too much time and money on something, going down the wrong road, it can cost so much, can’t it, getting it wrong?
Gareth 43:06
There’s a great quote in the research that I did. Someone wrote about the brief and said, ‘The agency didn’t answer the brief. I ordered a car, and I got a boat. Although it makes me wonder if I was unclear?’ Do you think it might be?!
Jenny 43:26
Maybe they didn’t talk it through, maybe this was all emailed? Okay, so I’m conscious of time and we’re on the last point of this white paper, which is fabulous. The Stakeholder Management – tell us a bit about that point.
Gareth 43:42
So, I think one in five agencies said that stakeholder management, the people coming in at the last minute, so secret stakeholders coming in last minute and kiboshing the work was a cause of the worst relationships. And I can relate to that. I think the Best Briefs Project again, said that 50% of briefs weren’t being signed off by the right people. So, for me, we’ve all been there, I’m not saying I’m clean on this, but other people can learn from my pain. When that’s been at its worst, the learning I took away from that was, as boring as this sounds, get a RACI in place- understand who’s responsible, accountable, who you’re consulting, who you’re informing. Because when you do that, I can think of a very clear example where there were me and two peers looking at a piece of work, we disagreed on something, and we said let’s go back to the RACI. And at that point, I said, ‘I accept it’s not my decision. I’ve said my piece. It’s your call.’ That moves it on. And if at that point I had really disagreed with that, okay, let’s just think about the RACI. And again, then it doesn’t become about a person, it becomes about whether we together got that RACI, right? It’s talking about something less emotional than, ‘I don’t agree with you, Dave.’ It’s a more tangible thing, less emotional that we can talk about. So that’s been a great help to me over the years, as boring as it is, getting one of those out, who’s whose decision is it? That helps.
Jenny 45:34
Great point, again. It’s up to the agency to ask, who are the stakeholders involved in the sign-off procedure at the very beginning, so it’s highlighted as a point? But absolutely, internally, if there are several stakeholders then creating a RACI is a perfect idea to keep it non-personal. There are going to be a lot of agencies hanging on your every word Gareth here. So, account managers specifically, I want to hear from you what great account management looks like?
Gareth 46:09
I think I’ve given the examples on the way through. Just understand my business, understand me, understand the brand, understand how we’re going to make that brand grow, understand the budgets. Spend some time with me in my business. Spend some time hot desking my business, once a quarter. One day a quarter, surely everyone can do it? And you’ll be amazed how much you pick up. And at that point when you’re in my business, you’ll be hearing other conversations going on about other brands, there’s a business opportunity for you there. But you also can bring your expertise. One of the things I value in agencies is that you’re doing a similar thing for a broad range of people. I never know if it’s a vertical or horizontal, I think it’s a horizontal? You’re slicing through a number of different customers. So, you can bring some of that expertise in that outside into us, in your field. That’s how you add value to our business. ‘Yes, I’ve seen that at a company X and they’re approaching it in this kind of way.’
Jenny 47:25
Golden nugget for agency account managers right there. Absolutely. This comes up in my training all the time. I think there was a survey done by Relationship Audits and Management and they said that, when they ask clients, ‘What do they want from their agency? Would you like your agency to leverage the learnings they have with other clients and apply it to your business or offer you ideas?’ 100% of clients say, ‘Yes.’ I can’t remember the percentage, but a tiny percentage of agencies actually do it. There’s an idea right there. So, thank you. Can you just touch on what absolutely not to do as an agency account manager? Do not do this if you want to have a good client relationship. Can you rake up any nightmares?
Gareth 48:11
I think the account team should be my voice inside the agency. And some of the worst stuff I’ve seen will be when, I’ll try to make up an example to illustrate it, but the work has been presented. And again, you know that’s not on brief here. I’ll make it up e.g. We wanted to drive penetration of product X and you just showed me something which is not about that, it’s doing something else, and you say to Dave, the account director, ‘Did you see that? Do you do this because you know what I’m going to say because I say that every time. Every time, every meeting we have, I’m saying how’s that going to drive penetration?’ And if you can’t answer that question, you know I’m going to ask the question. So, at its worst is when the account person isn’t a strong enough voice. I’m assuming back in the agency, when they may be bullied, bullied is probably the wrong word, but pressured into work, to share work from maybe the creative team or the planning team. But the account person is my voice inside their agency, and they need to be saying things they know I’m going to say.
Jenny 49:42
They’ve either not seen it or they’ve been bullied. You took the words out of my mouth. But it happens, Gareth, this is the reality. I was talking to Danny Turnbull about this just recently. We do get bullied, unfortunately, so it does happen. Tell me about your thoughts for the future of marketing. What are some of the challenges that marketers are facing right now?
Gareth 50:07
Back in 1980s or something, it would have been, how are we going to drive our brand? We’re going to have a nice TV spot and we’ll put it in the centre break in Coronation Street and then do the News – probably the Nine O’Clock News back then – and job’s done. Thanks very much everyone. High five, off to the champagne bar. The challenge now is that there are so many different media channels, there are so many different channels that you need to consider to get your message out there. Now, in one way, that’s great because it makes scale communication more accessible. But in other ways, there’s always a shiny new toy. There’s a whole conversation about the metaverse at the moment. So how is that going to work for me and what am I doing with that? The danger is one’s opinion gets swayed by that shiny new toy when you should really be thinking about brand fundamentals and what’s the right way to do this thing? Not, here’s this new thing, what do we use it for? That thing, the metaverse, let’s use that example, might be the right thing for your business challenge but let’s focus on all the things that could deliver against that business challenge and find the right solution. So, the challenge for the marketers in the future is just to remain sceptical about the shiny new toys and see them in the right place as another tool to use, another tactic to deploy against your strategy.
Jenny 51:48
How can agencies support marketers in terms of understanding those channels and all of the options they have and how to use them? What role does the agency play?
Gareth 52:00
Back to the two examples I’ve given you, they need to be agnostic, they need to understand my business objectives, my marketing objectives and show me the right tools that deliver those objectives and show me why the things they’re proposing are better than the other things? Not come in with, ‘I’ve got a broadcast of an ad for you.’ I’ll say, ‘That’s great. It looks lovely but tell me how that’s going to achieve my objectives?’ That’s what I’m really interested in and keeping it as simple as possible. Not salami-slicing my budget so thinly that nothing makes an impact. There are all these things that are coming together. Just do fewer, bigger things but do the right things that have the biggest impact on my numbers.
Jenny 52:51
Yes, there’s a coming through – business impact all the time. And just finally, have you got any thoughts on how the client-agency relationships will evolve in the future? Any thoughts on that?
Gareth 53:07
There’s a slight difference between what I hope and what I think. So, what I hope is that there’s more understanding. I hope that if I run my research again, in a year’s time, that people aren’t treating each other with a lack of respect, a lack of honesty and people are treating each other like humans. I hope that’s the case. I think the reality is nothing will change. Things move very slowly. I think, if you ran this research 10 years ago, I think people were saying similar things. So, I think that’s the way it is. So, there’s a tension here between what I hope and what I think.
Jenny 53:43
And do you think that account managers are going to become a thing of the past?
Gareth 53:47
I don’t think so. I think that all the ones I work with are valuable when they are championing my voice in the agency. That’s when they’re at their best, right? They’re filtering work before it gets to me, they’re saving me time by doing that – not showing work that we know isn’t going to work. They are my voice in the agency so yes, I can’t see a world without them. Well maybe for a small start-up where you get access to the founders, but I can’t see a world where, as they get scale, you’d do away with that role.
Jenny 54:30
Great. Well, thank you so much, Gareth, for answering all my direct questions. You really did. There were lots of golden nuggets in there for agencies particularly and not to mention marketers, so thank you. Tell me who would you like to be contacted by? And what’s the best place to reach you?
Gareth 54:49
Well, anyone who needs that sort of help, I suppose. As witnessed by today, I can talk, certainly! So, I think I’ve done some good stuff over the years, so I’d like to talk to any client-side people who are looking for a bit of direction and maybe any agencies who want to get the voice of the client inside their business. You can get me on LinkedIn, I’m on LinkedIn too often, so that’s where you get me.
Jenny 55:12
Great. Well, we’ll certainly put a link to your profile on LinkedIn in the show notes. So once again, thank you so much, Gareth. This has been superb and good luck with the venture of Big Black Door, and I look forward to seeing what happens next.
