Motivation, Experience, Client Lists, Network Reach, and Brainstorms
I love listening to successful people. Especially in business because what they tell you has nothing to do with what they taught you in Business school. In fact, usually what they tell you has nothing to do with the foundation of your MBA classes at all. I was thinking back to one particular piece of advice and I pass it along here as well. The gentleman was explaining to me how he always hired salespeople that were married and had a family. While most of the larger agencies didn't like family people since they had family commitments that got in the way of client work, called in sick more to take care of their sick kids, and couldn't travel at the drop of a hat...(seriously, they said that) he liked to hire them because they were committed and motivated. They were motivated to provide well for their family, so those salespeople were more "hungry" and often outperformed their counterparts.
I thought about that a lot. And now in applying that to the argument of large agency vs. small agency, there seems to be a large discrepancy. Now, everyone is motivated by different factors, so the following is a generalisation. However, there is enough evidence out there to really look at this point. At small agencies, the motivation is providing for the staff. The agency is doing everything it can to stay in business and fight it's way up the reputation ladder. Their name is on the door, pride is at stake, and most importantly, they will do whatever it takes to please the client and provide a top-notch product so they can get repeat business. Like Avis, "we try harder."
Now, I was working on a proposal team at a large agency, and heard more than once this: "why are we going to such great lengths to prove we can do this job? we're one of the top agencies in the business and they should hope we take on their business." The motivation, the "hunger" is not there.
Now that's not to say there is no motivation in large agencies. There is. Junior account execs want to work their way up the partnership ladder, so they will go to great lengths to prove their worth. But there is a stronger motivation: profit and loss. But let's look at network reach to really drive this point home. One of the top reasons a large agency will prove their worth is in how many offices it has and how that network reach of offices, affiliates, etc. can bring resources to bear on your project that smaller agencies simply can't do. Now, the interesting point here is that large agencies beef up their network through affiliates. Look at the maps on their websites. Look closely at the squares and triangles and diamonds and see what each represents. It's a pieced together network of entities that are not under complete control of the agency. So now, to compare apples to apples, how does that network compare to the networks of sister agencies that small boutique agencies belong to? The reach issue tends to be mitigated a bit.
But those networks of separate entities don't necessarily work as a cohesive whole. Let's go back to the motivation argument. The companies, heck, the individual profit groups and cities within the actual company owned offices aren't motivated or incentivized to work as a cohesive whole. More often than not, the groups compete for work, and when they do have a multi-office project, it becomes a political firestorm if anything goes wrong. The finger pointing, and more importantly, the unwillingness to help the other group because it doesn't benefit them or their city's P&L sheet becomes a hinderance to the overall success of the program. Much to the contrary of what the PR and Marketing of the agency says.
You can see this in the brainstorms as well. The hallmark of creative firms, and a staple of new ideas, the brainstorm can be seen as the central impetus behind the success of any program. So let me ask you this...when an invite to a brainstorm is sent out, and the question most asked is "...is this billable?" do you think that the best ideas are being brought to the table? Maybe, if you are paying for it. But what about the brainstorms that are not billable? Who goes to those? Some do, but the creativeness that you so need in your program is probably busy being billable on another project. But this goes back to the motivation factor again--billable. Not great work, not achieving business goals, but billable percentages.
One last thing that has come up a lot in competing between agencies is the age old client list. Hire [insert agency name here] because we have experience with top companies in your field, just like you. And then the parade of names starts. Now, I can't deny that larger agencies have longer client lists, and usually larger-scale projects. Yes, between many years of business, thousands of employees, and acquisitions of other companies that have good client lists as well, the cumulative of work is going to be impressive. But let's go back to the initial argument a few posts back: it's about people. So before we begin to think that every employee has all of that experience built in, let's ask what projects the account manager has worked on. Let's ask how many projects of this size this particular project manager assigned to your account has. It's going to be a very small subset of the larger master list. And let's hope that true. You may get the new employee that was hired to staff your new project because the group was running lean and hires contractors to expand with the workload. What is his/her experience since they'll be doing the day to day work on your project?
Now, small agencies hire contractors too. The only difference is that those contractors are supervised by a lead person that had enough client experience at the larger agency to break off and create their own boutique agency. And they are small enough that that supervision is more than just looking at the numbers.
But in totality, the large agencies do good work. That's not the argument here. It's that small and boutique agencies are every bit as qualified to produce the same caliber of work. If there is anything that needs to change in the cycle of competing agencies, it's the "get out of jail free" card that decision makers (and check-writers) seem to feel they have with hiring a large agency. I hope that the decision of agency goes back to when the quality of the person and team mean something. And that the "board" takes this decision seriously enough to know that just hiring a large agency may actually be a detriment to the success of the program or the company's goals. Instead of saying "Nobody ever got fired for hiring IBM," how about looking at the way we view government overspending and start saying "Can you believe Bob hired that overpriced, underperforming group, just to save his own reputation. There went my Christmas bonus." Or better yet... how about "Nobody ever got fired for hiring a smart agency that did what it said it would do."
More to come...
