AGENCIES: THE AGE OF PROJECT WORK IS HERE

With clients moving away from AOR relationships and towards more project work, agencies can’t rely on the same playbook anymore. Differentiation becomes even more important because you have less time and more Zoom meetings in project pitches to personally (or professionally) charm the clients.

I have a way to help your agency stand out. Way out.

YOUR OBSESSION IS YOUR DIFFERENTIATION.

You could have a “single point of difference” or you could have a “differentiating obsession.” Which do you think will resonate more with a prospective client? The word “obsession” forces us to think not only about what’s different about the agency, but the agency’s world view. Very different.

So when I audit an agency's existing marketing materials (e.g. RFPs, videos, websites, blogs, presentations, etc.) I look for evidence of an obsession. It may not be called out and articulated yet, but it’s usually there. Couple that with interviews with agency leadership, employees, and clients, and we’ll find it for sure.

Is your agency obsessed with a specific psychological effect that truly makes a consumer change behavior? Is it something about your own unique approach that you really believe in? Is it something about how you unpack a brand for its consumer? Is it about a common marketing enemy that you’ve identified and are built to slay?

Whatever the obsession is, I’ll help you find it and articulate it, so you can then BE it with passion. Watch all of your communications from RFP to the website to the presentations to the agency’s culture itself suddenly "galvanize" around this obsession. 

I've done this work for agencies like North Advertising, Heat, Deloitte Digital, Go Full Contact, White Rhino, and others. I am particularly proud of my work with the people at Heat, for in helping them to identify their obsession contributed to their sale to Deloitte in 2016. And, more recently, my work with North that led to their obsession, “Real is beautiful.”