People’s business

Secure and assured that this was yet another business win in the bag? Or would you have more confidence in the gooning chimps from a 1980s Tetley’s Tea advert to do the company justice? Too often, agencies think the former, but potential clients experience the latter.

I heard about TAXI in Toronto and their major win of Boston Pizza’s North American business. Sure, they went through an in-depth process and multiple discussions with the bigwigs. But when it came down to the wire, it was TAXI’s people – all and any of their people – who won the business for the agency. The client asked to speak with staff from different departments and levels, like, now, to get the real, unrehearsed feel of the agency as a whole. Smart. And potentially scary.

What Boston Pizza found was a unified team from top to toe, on point, and on message. The client was quite clear – this impressed them and was the major factor in winning them over.
After all, agencies don’t win business – people do.

I have seen too many agencies which would fail this test dismally. It goes without saying that every agency should be able to wheel out the big guns when required. But when it comes to investing in people, in bedding people in to effectively live and breathe the company culture, so that everyone has a story to tell?
Well. Instead of helping staff take ownership of their part in the bigger picture, agencies are creating disenfranchised brand assassins who are talking the company down all over town.
And the quickest way of ruining a reputation? Word of mouth. An untrained, clueless member of staff is an unwitting double agent, working on behalf of any agency but your own.

How did we get ourselves into this pickle? It doesn’t help that the industry relies heavily on freelancers who, by the very nature of their short-term contracts, aren’t there to learn the company song, get involved in the politics, or play on the five-aside team. In-out. Job done. Most companies these days are too busy actually doing the job, to let the new people know how it’s done. And when cheap labour is inexperienced labour, best practise can fly out the window when your eye is on the bottom line.

With a little investment, though, things could be different. People are an agency’s greatest asset. Hang on to them, before they fly the nest and start learning the words to a different company song. It’ll really piss you off when you hear them at it.