In a marketing career spanning over 20 years, fortunately or unfortunately, I have been involved in the process of hiring agency partners at various junctures of building the brands I was responsible for.
Having the right agency partners can be a huge asset to any marketing head. The teams contribute significantly to consumer trend-spotting, mining of market and category data, competition intelligence and finally to building the brand together to create a differentiated positioning through the right creative and media presence.
Here are some mantras that I learnt over the years which helped me identify the right agency partners:
Big fish, Small fish: In the early years, as a marketing head, I would tend to hire the top agencies as my partners. In hindsight, I can see that I was only playing safe to get a minimum guaranteed level of output. More often than not, this strategy would backfire as my brands were nascent, and was looking for impact with limited budgets. I would often end up fighting to get the right resources to work on my brand. The experience on either side would end up becoming sour over time. With experience, I learnt to work with small hungry boutique agencies for whom my brand seemed like a BIG fish to catch.
Trust me, this strategy ended up paying well. The MD/ CEO from the agency were part of all key discussions, the best team led our brand thinking and very often, their involvement bordered on passion.
Cultural allies: This is a big one. Right from the introductory meetings, the one aspect I learnt to focus on the most is cultural connect. Can I work well with this team? Can my team gel with this team? Are we talking on the same wavelength? Are they able to grasp our perspective thoroughly? Are we even laughing at the same jokes?
My own work values are in-depth, focused on the big picture, jargon-free, forever staying true to objectives, with brevity, practicality and a lot of common sense. While I look for complementary skills, at a deeper level, one tends to work well with an agency with similar values. A certain familiarity and comfort can get built from the very start and teething troubles can be mitigated.
Consumer connect: Is the agency close enough to the consumer to understand them? Do they have prior experience of working on brands targeting this consumer? Category connect? My biggest learning came while looking for agencies in the US to launch an Indian luxury brand. I discovered the biggest criterion: the team had to consist of Indians in order to understand the Indian cultural nuances and category fit along with the evolution of the category under local influence. An expat-run agency just would not have understood the NRI mindset.
Dreaming big: While all agencies want to win new businesses, I would emphasise looking for genuine love and respect for the brand – a belief in the brand. This becomes an essential prerequisite for the team to dream big and help you take risks to build the brand. I have been fortunate to work with agency partners who constantly looked for innovations to push the brand agenda forward. If the team comes across a new AI-powered outdoor opportunity, your brand should top their list.
Vandana Bhalla was the former marketing and digital head at Titan Company. Views expressed are personal