Business Builders Podcast

How To Choose A Marketing Agency

• Brenton Gowland & Ron Tomlian • Season 3 • Episode 43

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The success of your rebrand or advertising campaign heavily relies on choosing the right marketing agency. If that sounds like a daunting task, don't worry, we've got you covered. Today we're discussing a tried and tested process to help you select the agency that's best for creating the outcomes that you're hoping for. 

The topics we discuss in this episode are: 

  • Why do organisations even have agencies?
  • What is a marketing agency?
  • How social media has changed the nature of media?
  • How to decide what type of marketing agency you need?
  • Establishing your selection process.
  • The shortlisting process.
  • Why you need to be clear with agencies about your process?
  • A paid pitch vs a request for proposal.
  • After the second interview, it's time to trust your gut.
  • About the next episode.


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Helping businesses find their new shape.

SA Business Builders
Business leaders social group based in South Australia

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Thank you for tuning in to this episode of the Business Builders Podcast. Until next time, KEEP ON BUILDING !!

Brenton Gowland:

Hey there Business Builders. The success of your rebrand or advertising campaign heavily relies on choosing the right marketing agency. If that sounds like a daunting task, don't worry, we've got you covered. Today we're discussing a tried and tested process to help you select the agency that's best for creating the outcomes that you're hoping for. Well, welcome to the Business Builders podcast. We are your hosts. I am Brenton Gowland.

Ron Tomlian:

And I'm Ron Tomlian.

Brenton Gowland:

And Ron, it is great to be here this week. We had obviously, last episode Oswin Gegenhuber from pegs who talked about his rebrand and what he went through and all that. And we're going to talk a little bit about that today. But before we get kicking, I started using, well, I've been using AI for a while, but I used it in a different way this week. And I was quietly surprised with the result and how good it was.

Ron Tomlian:

Okay, how did you use it differently? Tell me more.

Brenton Gowland:

Well, I was listening to this podcast and I do a l ot of that.

Ron Tomlian:

Oh you what you preach. You listen to other people's podcasts?

Brenton Gowland:

I find it's a really good way to learn. And I actually think we should do one of these episodes on the podcasts we listen to so that other people can tap into that.

Ron Tomlian:

Great idea.

Brenton Gowland:

I think why not? So anyway, it was Dr. JJ Peterson's podcast. Have you heard of him?

Ron Tomlian:

No.

Brenton Gowland:

They had a guest on the podcast, a lady who was basically talking about AI and the fact that she thinks of AI as an assistant, but not just one assistant. Seven assistants.

Ron Tomlian:

Wow.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah. So I can't remember all seven, because I got stuck on number two. And that one's the one that stuck in my head. So the first assistant that she said, she thinks of AI as was the writer, that's pretty obvious. That's what everyone thinks of it as.

Ron Tomlian:

It's what it's known for at the moment.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah, well, it's a writing platform. But the second one was the researcher. And that one's stuck in my head, I thought researcher, researcher, essentially, AI is connected to, obviously the internet. And it's looking through lots of documents on all sorts of different topics, all sorts of different skill sets. That's how it trains. And I thought I was looking at running some workshops. And I thought, I wonder if this can help me do research for the workshops. And it did.

Ron Tomlian:

Wonderful.

Brenton Gowland:

I typed in a bunch of questions about the kinds of people I'd have there. And how do I explain what a persona is to a group of people who are basically tradespeople rather than university educated people potentially? And, you know, it really did it gave me the right definitions. I asked, this is the structure I've got, which make any tweaks and they've made a couple of tweaks. And I thought, yeah, I could do that. So I was just really impressed with the way that we can actually use AI. Again, as a helper, it's gonna be everywhere in no time flat, I think

Ron Tomlian:

it is already is number one. It's how we use it. And I love that idea. That concept of not seeing it as a threat, but seeing it as an aid. Yeah, well,

Brenton Gowland:

I would have had to do the research for this thing anyway. And I thought, How do I speed up my time? And that's when the podcasts that I listened to popped into my head, and I thought the researcher? Right, let's try this out. And yeah, I was really pleasantly surprised with the preparation it helped me do.

Ron Tomlian:

I think that's the key is just experiment, try and do different things.

Brenton Gowland:

See it as a helper see it as a junior helper. Actually, I think that's a good way of thinking of it. Because you would expect a senior helper to get it right every single time. You wouldn't expect that of a junior helper, you check their work, but it would still be pretty useful. Yeah.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah, Absolutely.

Brenton Gowland:

Okay. So today's topic, we're going to follow on from our interview with Oswin.

Ron Tomlian:

Fantastic.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah.

Ron Tomlian:

And what are we going to talk about?

Brenton Gowland:

Well, we're going to talk about and I was expecting you to say this, because we've just been talking about this for the last half hour.

Ron Tomlian:

One. Yeah, absolutely. And it's how to choose a marketing agency.

Brenton Gowland:

That's correct. So that was one of the big things that I was when was talking about in his description of going through a rebrand from Mrs Peggs to Peggs. And he said, that was one of the biggest decisions they had to make. And it took a while. So we thought, well, wouldn't that be good to follow on from talking about the rebrand this is a big marketing 101 kind of thing. Because when you think about, from my experience, a marketing manager within a business, their responsibility is, of course, to set the direction of the marketing strategy, and what are we going to do but one of their big decisions or responsibilities is working with the agencies that we employ, keeping them organised,

Ron Tomlian:

Why even have agencies? Why have an agency? I mean, we'll talk about what different types of agencies there are, but why even have an agency? Why why not just do it all yourself?

Brenton Gowland:

Well, it's about combined skill set, isn't it?

Ron Tomlian:

Do you really want to be an expert marketer, given you're running a business, and what level of marketing expertise can you bring to bear versus what other people can help you with?

Brenton Gowland:

Yep.

Ron Tomlian:

And I think that's That's a critical element. I mean, I know some organisations in the past have had a marketing department inside that they basically have their agency inside the organisation. Nothing wrong with that. But there is an issue of what sort of experience can those people have in terms of breadth of experience that can be brought to bear...

Brenton Gowland:

Now.

Ron Tomlian:

...in terms of your organisation,

Brenton Gowland:

I've seen a lot of what you're talking about over 20 plus points longer than that. It's almost 30 years Ron.

Ron Tomlian:

You spring chicken, you.

Brenton Gowland:

You spring chicken, it's scaring me. But that means that he is working in advertising and what I've seen, and there's a couple of companies we work with, that I worked with it, an agency that I was at years ago, and I saw the in house department get disbanded? Because what happens with an in house marketing department often because I think the other aspect to your question, why would you get an agency involves because marketing is a multidisciplinary, or it takes multiple skill sets to make it work. You can't do it with just one person ever. I mean, the tools are getting better. So one person could do more, but it's never going to be just one person, right?

Ron Tomlian:

Well, I think the other thing too, is it's perspective. One person will only ever have one perspective. And it's very rare that an organisation only has one customer or one individual, as a customer. So your customer base is going to be about multiple different perspectives. How could one person encapsulate all that?

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah. So back to the observation you heard about the in house department. So I'd love to say the name of this business, but I won't.

Ron Tomlian:

I'll just clarify that oftentimes you have an in house marketing department, but I'm talking about an in house agency.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah, I'm talking about they had this company that I'm thinking of had an in house agency, they had graphic designers, they had the whole bit and as one of it was one of Australia's biggest agencies, and the whole group got disbanded, I was working with an agency. And we came in, and they asked us to do some work. And we did some work that blew them out of the water. And they basically went, well, our agency, our internal resources are not creative anymore. And what happens is because the internal agency is looking at the four walls, that they're surrounded by all the time, they get indoctrinated with their own message. And sometimes they lose their creativity. So there's a whole nother episode on how to keep their internal agency creative, because you got to keep them going out and doing things. But that happens. But then what happened three or four years later, what do you reckon happened three or four years later, after they disbanded the agency.

Ron Tomlian:

They recreated it.

Brenton Gowland:

They rebuilt it. And I've seen that happen at a number of large businesses over the years, they have an in house capability, then they outsource, then they bring the capability in again, then they outsource. It's like a boom and bust thing. It's like a cycle that I've seen.

Ron Tomlian:

I'm just gonna say it's a cycle. And these sorts of things follow a natural rhythm, I think within organisations, and there are flavours of the month, you know, one new marketing manager comes in and says, I've always had an internal agency, let's create that. Move on to a new guy. And I've always used external agencies, let's do that. So it goes.

Brenton Gowland:

So the topic today, SMEs with or without a marketing person, they will need at some point to engage in agency and how would you choose an agency and for a project, like a rebrand or a major piece of campaign work? Yeah.

Ron Tomlian:

And that's what we're going to go through today. Because I think a lot of organisations recognise that they need some marketing capability, they need to develop some marketing plans. Yeah, they're looking forward as to how they can grow their business. And sometimes the look to see whether they can get that capability by going out to an agency, right. And I think one of the things you really need to do before you go down the path of finding an appropriate agency, is to determine what you're trying to achieve with your marketing. And that's often best done like Oswin did. By getting some direct support for developing a marketing plan or something like.

Brenton Gowland:

Well, that's really like step one, isn't it? Yep. But can we just before we get too far into it, because we're talking about marketing agencies, what exactly Ron is a marketing agency for the people listening? Because over the years, that's kind of evolved?

Ron Tomlian:

Well, I mean, if we went back 50 years, we wouldn't be talking about marketing agencies. We'll be talking about advertising agencies. And, and the classic was the Madison Avenue. You see it in a lot of sitcoms, and you know, like Bewitched, and so on. Darren worked for an advertising agency. And that was purely about different types of media and developing creative for that media and selecting the appropriate media for that. It has ballooned way out of that. So now we talk about marketing agencies we talk about integrated marketing communications agencies, there's no, there are as many different types of agencies now as there are colours in the rainbow. So the truth of matter is, it's very difficult to pin down what a marketing agency or what an advertising agency is now, but I think they fall into four basic categories. For my estimation.

Brenton Gowland:

Yep.

Ron Tomlian:

First is what we call a full service agency.

Brenton Gowland:

And what's a full service agency?

Ron Tomlian:

They can do everything. They can do marketing planning, they can do advertising, they can do search engine optimization, they can do PR, they can do graphic production, they can do printing they.

Brenton Gowland:

So a full service agency yes?

Ron Tomlian:

Every every type of marketing communication you can think of, they can help you with. Now, I'm not saying that's the be all and end all because trying to be all things to all people is problematic. But there are full service agencies and they still claim to be full service agencies. And for some people, that's the most appropriate.

Brenton Gowland:

Yep.

Ron Tomlian:

Then there are the second category is a specific capability agencies, they might be experts at Search Engine Optimization, SEO, they might be expert at website design, they might be expert in digital marketing, they might have a particular media that they are expert in, they have significant depth and capability.

Brenton Gowland:

Yes.

Ron Tomlian:

The third type is I think, the consultant, the marketing consultant, who doesn't necessarily have a marketing communications, exclusive bent, but can be more if these are the type of people I think you'd get in to help you define what you're trying to do in terms of marketing, before you go to the execution stage, which is what you're often using an agency for.

Brenton Gowland:

Yep.

Ron Tomlian:

So some of them have capability in certain areas. But their expertise is mainly in an overview of marketing in general.

Brenton Gowland:

Well, it could be narrow, or it could be broad. Yeah. But generally, a consultant would have a field of specialty Oh, yeah, maybe a few subsets of that. But you know, I fit into that category as well. So I work with all sorts of clients, I worked with pegs through their process. Same deal. But yeah, that's literally where I see it.

Ron Tomlian:

And the final agency type is the production house.

Brenton Gowland:

Yes.

Ron Tomlian:

You know. And oftentimes, you find, as an example, printers, will have graphic designers on board so they can help you with production. Sure, you'll have people who can do graphics. Specifically, if you're looking at a television advertising, they do television, advertising, production, digital marketing, and then we started crossing over into into areas like CRM, we go back to the consultants. So I think it's quite fluid in those areas. But basically, those four categories. And what you choose or what you will be looking for will depend on what you're trying to achieve.

Brenton Gowland:

100% Quick question. So why do you think agencies have changed from remember back when you said, in Mad Men days, let's talk like that, but because that's a bit more of a modern show, not the old vase? That one you talked about?

Ron Tomlian:

Oh Bewhiched.

Brenton Gowland:

Bewhiched. Yeah.

Ron Tomlian:

Well, that was a character. You know, Darren.

Brenton Gowland:

Darren. Right. So why do you think it's all changed?

Ron Tomlian:

Well, I think one of the problems is that when people become familiar with an archetype, they start to react against it. And advertising agencies, I think, in the past have maybe made a rod for their own back in terms of maybe not being so transparent with their clients, sometimes they claim to be all things to all people. And they've seen that happier, they found that the specialists who could do the job better. I mean, one way of looking at it is let's get the agency to do all our marketing and take care of everything. And I can relinquish that responsibility. Basically, the good thing about that is you don't have to worry about it. The bad thing about it is they can charge you whatever they like, and you lose control.

Brenton Gowland:

Yep. So I used to obviously work in advertising agencies. I've worked in a few. And that was right when it was predominantly advertising just as the whole social media thing was coming in. I remember my first job, they made me use what's called a bromide camera. And I'm like, why don't why aren't we using a printer? What's this giant thing in this room? Anyway, to do it only lasted about six months before we started using a printer. But the point is that my view on that change is the channels, right? Because there were three key channels that we used when I started working, and that was television, radio, and print air. And then what's happened is, webs come along and the channels have increased dramatically. Sure. A lot of them are online channels, but it takes real X parties to understand and manage and deliver on these channels and the nature of how people engage with content has changed. And you know, we call it content now.

Ron Tomlian:

So the jargon term for that is fragmentation of media.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah, I love that. You must be a uni lecturer.

Ron Tomlian:

And you know, in the last 20 years in particular, there's been huge fragmentation of the different channels. In fact, we can even in some cases, call the media anymore. You can't. You can't talk about Facebook being a media, it is a mechanism, but it's not a media. Yes. So I know well, the people who put up the constellation of what's available to people at the moment, and before, like you say, it was television, radio, print.

Brenton Gowland:

And that was about it.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah. Well print could be split into.

Brenton Gowland:

There was outdoor as well.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah, outdoor, you could split print into newspaper magazine.

Brenton Gowland:

Oh publications. Yeah, sure. Your right.

Ron Tomlian:

Trade publications, you know, but now, just think about it in terms of television only. There's broadcast television, then there's the streaming television. Yeah. And then there's a multitude of different channels and every streaming product.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah. Well, you're you're right about the print. Because if you were to compare print and web, there were multiple channels in that print category. There's multiple channels in the digital category. And as you're saying, there's multiple channels in the life to air or Well, if it's live to air or free to air, paid to air categories, as well. So huge amount of fragmentation. So all of a sudden, reaching your audience becomes way more than just putting an ad on the television like, used to happen in the old days.

Ron Tomlian:

Well, yeah.

Brenton Gowland:

And that would be pretty successful.

Ron Tomlian:

In Australia. In those days, you had three paid media channels. And if you wanted to get complete coverage, you only had to put it on three different channels. Now, it's a bit of a different story, just in terms of free to air TV.

Brenton Gowland:

Oh it's so interesting. And So therein lies the problem when you want to choose a marketing group to work with you what skill sets you need. So that brings us back to what you said earlier? What do you need them to do? And in this particular case, we're going to start, as we said earlier, at that top end, what if we're doing a rebrand a really massive project light was one who spoke about his rebrand in our last episode. How would you approach that? Because I think you talked about those four groups. I think if you start with one of those really big projects, or a massive marketing campaign, something that's going to cost you over 100 grand, if we start there, you can scale this approach back to suit those other groups that you were talking about.

Ron Tomlian:

Or specialist agencies, yes.

Brenton Gowland:

Or specialist agencies, or if you're looking for a group, a graphic designer, or a web developer or a marketing consultant, you're not going to need this process, but a stripped back version of it might work.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah. And again, it depends on what you're trying to achieve, how important it is, and what sort of risk there is, you know, are you putting up a lot of money? Yeah. And with a campaign you are? Or is this a decision where you can trial?

Brenton Gowland:

Well, and we were talking earlier, and you were saying that? You did a lot of trawling, when you were the marketing manager at TSA, for example. They had a bunch of money, I think, what was your size, your budget?

Ron Tomlian:

Oh, we had big budgets back in the old days. But this is a Middle East 30 years ago, almost now. But it was an unusual their budgets in the millions.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah.

Ron Tomlian:

Multiple millions of dollars.

Brenton Gowland:

So you had that luxury of a big budget. We'll talk about that later. But needless to say, if you choose an agency for a major piece of work, and someone to form a relationship with over time, it's important you make the right decision. Because if you're a SMA, you're turning over five $10 million a year, and you want to do a rebrand that is huge. Ly going to impact you. It will if you're in an editor as well, but maybe not so much in the sense of you know, money in the bank. But with an SMA, it can sometimes make or break you depending on what you do.

Ron Tomlian:

So yeah. And again, is this a project based thing though, we just want to rebrand and then we're going to use a we normally use? Is this an ongoing relationship that I want to start forming. So that these people can be our advertising agency for or marketing agency for years to come?

Brenton Gowland:

In other words, we feel we may have outgrown the people that were already with. Yeah, it could. There's a lot of questions to answer, but the process would always start with creating a brief.

Ron Tomlian:

Yes. And no, I think this is the thing in my experience that people fall very short of I have sat literally, in an advertising agencies boardroom talking to someone. Another client has come in and interrupted our meeting, just because it was going to be brief, talking to the account manager and then Right, I kid you not the brief was this, we need a new ad. I'll see you later. That was it. We need a new ad. Now to me, that's not much of a brief. It's not a brief now. But and what we mean by brief is, what am I trying to achieve? Who am I talking to all the detail that somebody who is going to develop something on your behalf needs to know, in order to develop a successful outcome for you. And it was interesting when we were having this discussion before, you had an insight, as we were talking about this, that it's a bit like hiring someone.

Brenton Gowland:

That's right, it's like going through an interview process.

Ron Tomlian:

And when you think about it, if you do a hiring of an individual or a new position, if you do it well, you create a job description, you just create a job specification, you create a skill set that you're looking for, you create needs, and you know, things that you absolutely have to have must haves. And this would be nice to have, you know, what skills you're looking for what expertise, it's not any different than that. The more work you put in upfront in the specifying what you want, the better the outcome is going to be.

Brenton Gowland:

100%. And I think it's very simple. If you want to know what how do I create a brief, it's simple questions. What do we want to achieve law? I'm a big advocate for not being technical, there's a million brief forms and like.

Ron Tomlian:

You could go onto the internet and find a thousand different briefs.

Brenton Gowland:

Well, actually, I would suggest you get on a I mean, seriously, remember how we talked about that being the research and type in, What questions do I need to answer to create a brief for a marketing agency to help me with a rebrand? I swear, just type that in? My point is, I would have questions like this in a brief and let me put this in context for everyone. I might spend three to four solid weeks writing a brief for something like this, because you got to do research, right? So you got to research, what am I going to give to these people to help them understand me? What am I going to give to them to help them understand who I'm competing against? What am I going to give to them in this brief, to help them understand where their business is going, et cetera, et cetera. Because if you want someone to come on board with you, you want to know that they've got some sort of understanding that they can respond to so you can see it and measure it, about your business and how they understand it. It's important.

Ron Tomlian:

And it's questions like, Who am I going to be able to answer for the agency.

Brenton Gowland:

That question I'm, I got passionate about that one, I always ask them, who's my team going to be for the whole project? Tell me why I wanted to get that in before you said this.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah, but it's, who am I talking to? Who's my target audience? You know? And again, we don't want to get into marketing jargon. But it would be the same. If you're writing a presentation, you know, who am I talking to? Yeah, that's a that's an important question to be able to answer for the agency so that they understand. And the level of detail you go into will depend on your level of sophistication.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah, the first question for me might be, what do we want to do? What do we need to achieve? Then? The second question would be, what do we want from you? Think about that, how easy is that? But it's what you put under there? What are our challenges? What are we up against? What are we measuring you on? What's our criterior.

Ron Tomlian:

What does success look like? And how are we going to measure that success, very important things for whoever is going to work for you to understand upfront, so that they can decide to we want to work with these guys? Do we have that level of control over the various factors that will affect the success? And I've had agencies say, we don't have that level of control, you're going to measure us on an area that we can't influence. So thanks very much, but see you later. And that's fair enough too.

Brenton Gowland:

really good. So when you think about it, actually, because, you know, our process that we were talking about earlier, there's a few things involved. And I'll just read out what we wrote down, right? So he said, first, you need to work out your brief, then when you need to create your evaluation criteria, right. And the evaluation criteria is really important, because you need to set up a spreadsheet by a matrix with at the top column, each of the contenders that you're wanting to choose from, and then you want to have each of the areas running down the left. And are you writing them out of five out of 10 based on their responses if they give you a proposal, so you set up a valuation criteria before you go out to the agency as part of creating the brief. And then you also got to decide on your process. This is all before you reach out to an agency. So there's a lot of legwork to do before you talk to anyone out there. Right and so what I mean by the selection process is so everyone might be familiar but there's a thing called an RFP, which is a request for proposal or an RFQ, which is request for quote, I'm going to leave tenders alone because they tend to be government or multimillion dollar contracts. And we're assuming here we're sitting around, a rebranding process might be one to 200 grants for SMA. Right. And a lot of people out there just going What did he just say? It's true? Because Have you thought about it? Have you thought about all the signage on your vehicles that you have to change? Have you thought of the letterheads? The websites, the clothes, the uniforms that this the that there's a long long list? It's not just rebuilding the website, there's a lot, a lot of stuff to do. The panel, never think about,

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah, my personal opinion, only go down that path if you really need to.

Brenton Gowland:

Correct.

Ron Tomlian:

And there's some valid reasons for doing it. But just be aware that it is a big process. Yep. And that's what we're talking about. We're starting at the top in the big end of the type of projects, you're going to get somebody to do and then scaling it back.

Brenton Gowland:

Okay, so we went, what are you trying to achieve? So in other words, what's my brief was my evaluation criteria, what's my selection process? Who are we going to approach? So we decide on all those things before we decide what agencies we're going to approach? And we'll get on to that in a minute, then, how do we invite them? What's our invitation process? And like you said, you might go to some people, they read the brief, this is the whole purpose of the brief. They read the brief and go well, and I had this with a job we did recently. So we did an RFP process. And the incumbent, for this company that we were working with actually opted out because they realised they couldn't answer those questions, they wouldn't be able to respond, they didn't want to go in with someone else. But the business had outgrown that incumbent. And that happens, that's okay. They fit in a certain part of their lifecycle as a business, they had to move on to a new, new place. So that invitation process is really important, then is, I always suggest that we start with the RFP. So that's a proposal that you get or a quote that you get whatever it is, and we have our member, we created our evaluation criteria, we go through the answers that come back to us. So part of the brief might be in the RFP, you actually put down this is what we're going to be evaluating you on and this is what we want to know, then you mark them on that and you might get you might go out to 1012 groups, that's a lot. Actually, if you've done your research, well, it's probably going to be really four to six, if you do your research really, really well. But you might have one, two or three of those, that you can just straight away by doing the assessment on the proposals, you can say I know these people are probably not going to hit the mark, and you can shorten the amount of time the process will take. It's like this is where this job interview process came up that we talked about earlier.

Ron Tomlian:

You start with 30 different applications, and you get shortlisted down to a manageable number. It's not any different here.

Brenton Gowland:

Correct. So you might end up with probably three but two or three options, and then you go through evaluating the shortlist. And that usually, with marketing agencies goes to that process we call pitching. But generally we'd have a meeting. But I always say, don't ask them to present creative to you. If you are not doing what's called a paid pitch, which I think you'll talk about in a second. Don't ask them for creative. Ask them to tell you how they're going to approach solving your problems or answering that brief. Get them to talk you step you through it, and then ask for them to talk us through your proposal. Tell us how you're going to in the meeting, when we get together, talk us through your proposal. Tell us how you're going to manage this process and tell us how you're going to help us achieve this brief. And then give us a few examples that you've done with other people that are similar, and step us through that. And that then takes in a sense the onus of the people that you're talking about to create some creative because I always think if you're getting people to present you with some concepts, there's always a danger that you choose based on the pretty pictures. Oh, absolutely. Do you want to talk us through? I know what you're going to be talking about? I think it's very valid.

Ron Tomlian:

I think it would be worth going back to those points that we talked about before you have developing the brief. We've talked about that generalised sense. What's your evaluation criteria?

Brenton Gowland:

Yep.

Ron Tomlian:

And how are you going to make a decision? Ultimately? Is it about the level of expertise they demonstrate? Is it about the skills of the people isn't about the individuals who are going to be working on your programme? Is it about the results they've been able to demonstrate that they've achieved for other clients in the past? What are you going to be evaluating them on? And how are you going to make a judgement about them? So that's your evaluation criteria in the same way as you would develop evaluation criteria for an individual who's applying for a job. And that comes down to that spreadsheet that we talked about before. For what process among gonna use now you describe the process. And I think it's a good one where you get them to put forward a proposal based on a brief and then go through a shortlisting. He need to be upfront with that you need to be clear in your mind, I think of what you're going to do, or how you're going to do it. And then you need to be transparent. I mean, I've, unfortunately, come across people, where they say, Could you put forward a proposal? Alright, we'll put that with the other five that we've got. I didn't even know there were other people going for the same amount of work, or the same type of work. Agencies, just like individuals can feel incredibly betrayed? Yeah, when they put in a lot of effort, and then finally realise that it's not just them that's being evaluated as a whole bunch of other people. Yeah, you need to be upfront with the process.

Brenton Gowland:

Yep.

Ron Tomlian:

You get a very bad reputation as an organisation. And it gets around industries like the marketing consulting, or the marketing agency industry, that that's the type of client that won't tell you what's going on. And I wouldn't use the word blacklisted, but you certainly get a bad reputation. I don't think you want that. And then the whole question of once you've developed that whole process so that you can articulate it, who are you going to approach that's desktop research? What type of agencies doing work for SMEs? I think it's desktop research and, and Oh, absolutely. Talking to people. But I think it's a lot easier nowadays. You go to the web, and you say, Yeah, I've heard about agency X, Y, and Zed. And I've heard about agency, ABC, you can look up what they've been doing for their clients, they'll gladly tell you the type of work they've been doing. They'll gladly they'll give you an impression of the way they approach things. They'll certainly tell you who their clients are. And there's no reason why you can't go and talk to one of their clients and say, I see that you use agency X. Tell me about what it's like to work with them.

Brenton Gowland:

Well, that's the and part. Isn't that?

Ron Tomlian:

Yep. Yeah. And I think the more research you do, the better handle you get on an agency that's going to work best with you.

Brenton Gowland:

Agreed. And Oswin said in the last episode, that he was suggesting that you want exactly what you've just said, that you determine who's gone through this process, ring them up and talk to him, and they'll probably talk to you. So I think that's really good as a research backbone. And who did you go to? And why?

Ron Tomlian:

I think you need to be aware that not everybody feel comfortable about telling you their experience? You know, I think people get worried about litigation and so on. So if someone says, Look, I'd rather not talk about it, accept.

Brenton Gowland:

Accept to move on

Ron Tomlian:

And move on. Yeah.

Brenton Gowland:

I haven't ever had too many problems with that kind of thing. It depends how you ask. And it's about being upfront with everyone. Well, I'm about to go through a rebranding process of saying you've done it. If they're not a competitor, why wouldn't they tell you? Yeah, exactly why? And you'd need to also decide, well, am I going to stick to my local providers? Or am I gonna go interstate overseas, whatever else? Because there's no borders anymore?

Ron Tomlian:

No, no. And again, it depends on what you're comfortable with and what you're looking for. If you have personal opinion. I like to eyeball someone I like to have face to face contact, zoom. Yep, yeah, maybe nowadays. But I still think there's an element of being in the room. But that's just me, I'm maybe a little bit old fashioned, I don't know. But if there's somebody who you can find, has done work in another country, and is interested in doing work in your locale. Fantastic, especially if they've got a great reputation.

Brenton Gowland:

The point is, the brief is pretty personal. So even doing that research piece you're talking about, it's personal, there's things that whether you've written them down or not that it assessment criteria in your own head about why you're choosing those people. So if I was doing an E commerce project, I'd be wanting to say that they've got significant experience in E commerce, not just making things look pretty, finding that balance is sometimes really tough. So you might end up working with, let's say, you're doing a rebrand, you might end up working with a branding agency and a digital agency. So this is where this complexity of multidisciplinary outcomes is starting to come to the floor. So what we're talking about here, if you want to do a rebrand, you're talking about that full service agency, or combining a couple of specialists together.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah. And in that situation, you're putting the team together yourself. And I think that's Ed's know, that's a level of sophistication that many SMEs might not have.

Brenton Gowland:

Sometimes. So for a rebranding project, we might choose a group who has a real specific specialty in ecommerce websites, and that is a real thing. Now, not every web developer might have that but those particular specialists might not have a specialty In brands development or brand execution. So I know that, for instance, with one tender process we went through recently, we reached out to a couple of expert groups who build ecommerce platforms. And they asked us if they could include a branding agency that they work with in the process. Of course, we said yes, but so you said, sometimes you build the team yourself. But

Ron Tomlian:

Sometimes.

Brenton Gowland:

You go sometimes if you want a particular specialty, the team will form around that specialty.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah. And again, it's being clear about what you're trying to achieve in the first instance. And we were talking about a rebranding or major campaign, you'd need to be clear about what you're trying to achieve, and accept that maybe even with full service agencies, you might decide to use later on down the track some specialists in certain areas.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah, exactly. And one thing I like to do as well, but this is all this, this is really looking at doing the research on who you're going to approach to give you a brief tour. That's right. So it's not a straightforward question when we interviewed also, and one of the things he said is, I wish I spent more time upfront understanding a lot of this. So all I can say, if we were going to give a tip, you really need to do the research and understand what it is that you're doing what it is that you're asking what it is that you're looking for. And that will really help the process, I would 100% Get a marketing consultant to come in and help me and, and walk me through this process, someone that you trust to help you with is someone who's done it before someone who's done a branding project. Some people hire a marketing manager or a CMO, just to take them through a rebranding process. So sometimes getting a marketing consultant is the same thing. Just less cost.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah, yeah. So it's about getting clarity upfront, so that you can choose the most appropriate agency for your needs. You then you're just thinking about that. But who am I going to write? What's the process I'm going to invite these people to use? I'm going to give them a proposal. I'm going to take them through the process, we're going to use bacon at that stage, and I've had agencies opt in and opt out. Okay, but so that helps, because they've decided they're not the right agency for you. So make sure that you think about how am I going to invite people and who am I going to invite?

Brenton Gowland:

Yep.

Ron Tomlian:

So that they're very clear about the process you're going to use?

Brenton Gowland:

Yep. So in other words, once you've decided who to approach, you go and invite them. And you be very clear with them. This is what we're going to do. Are you interested? We have a brief with some of the tenders I've done. I've said if you're interested, I need you to sign an NDA before we give you the brief.

Ron Tomlian:

NDA?

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah. NDA?

Ron Tomlian:

Non-disclosure agreement.

Brenton Gowland:

Yes. Sorry, non disclosure agreement. Because sometimes in a brief, there's very confidential information, particularly when you're doing a rebrand. And then should they say yes, and explain the process? We're going to get your proposal, we're going to create a shortlist, we're then going to go through a presentation from yourselves where we're going to ask you these questions. And then we're going to make a decision. There may be some clarifying questions after the meeting that we have. Or as you were talking about earlier, sometimes you do a paid pitch, in a sense, you get them to do a piece of work, and you assess the process.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah. And make sure everyone understands what's going to happen.

Brenton Gowland:

At that invitation level.

Ron Tomlian:

Yep. And then, so they can live, make it decide whether they're going to be proud of it or not.

Brenton Gowland:

And so if they opt in, we then send them the brief and we give them usually, when you give them the brief, you give them a timeline, we need to answer by this point in time. And this is what we require in the brief. So in the briefing document, you would usually go, this is what we're going to assess you against. And this is what we require as answers in the brief. And one of the examples we gave earlier is who's my team? Because the reason you said that is sometimes agencies will have a pitch team.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah, big international agencies in the past. I'm not saying that that's the case anymore. But we'll have international pitch team who will move around the world, literally, and pitch for business to multinationals at large organisations. And that's the last time you see them.

Brenton Gowland:

Yep.

Ron Tomlian:

And so it looks very impressive. But the truth of the matter is, that's not what you're actually buying.

Brenton Gowland:

Yep.

Ron Tomlian:

At the end of the day, yep. You need to be aware of that. You need to be asking questions upfront who is going to be working on my business? Yes. Who, you know, what are their credentials? What what's their background? What's their experience? What's their skill level? Because that could be an important thing in developing a long term relationship.

Brenton Gowland:

Why is that important Ron?

Ron Tomlian:

Why is that important?

Brenton Gowland:

Because you might not be the most important client in their list of clients. So what does that mean? Yeah, so be aware that every client or every agency has a list of clients and using the vernacular you are on the pecking order some Well, yeah, yeah. And I've experienced organisation shins who have a major client, no big carrier company or something like that. And when they say jump, the agency says, how are you? And everybody else moves out of the way. And all the work moves out of the way. You want to know that upfront. And that look, that's fair enough. If he's spending $20 million a year, and you're spending 100, grand, what do you think's gonna happen? Absolutely. But that then comes into your decision making process as well, as you might come across an agency that's really good, that maybe they're the younger in their lifecycle, and they're trying to prove themselves and they're looking to do really great work.

Ron Tomlian:

And they're hungry. You are this. Yes. You're a big fish in a small pond.

Brenton Gowland:

Correct? Yeah. So that may not be important to you. But it may be important to you, but there's all these things. So we'll go through the thing. You've done the invite, you've sent out the thing. You've got their proposals, that assessment criteria you've got is so important, then in answering that, because agencies are good at dressing things up.

Ron Tomlian:

That's their job. Yeah. And that's what you want. Yeah, at the end of the day, you have to sift through the hyperbole and get it back down to the what's the nub of this? Yeah. And and part of that will be how much they dress it up.

Brenton Gowland:

Yep. And so you might write them on several things. Like, you might write them on their design capability, based on their proposal that they've put examples in, you might write them on their price. What are some other things you might rate them on.

Ron Tomlian:

The individuals who are going to be involved their experience in your industry or with clients who are similar to you, they're experienced with projects that are similar to the one that you're putting in front of them

Brenton Gowland:

Their process methodology.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah. And this is where I differ from you. I like to put them through the paces. And what I mean by that is, when you get to the point where you were evaluating the shortlist that you've come up with, and it's I don't think it's that difficult to come up with a shortlist on the basis of the proposals that are in front of you correct. When you're evaluating it, some people say, well talk me through the process that you're going to use. And that's the way you do it. I actually like to put them through a mini project, not just to see the outcome, because they can put an inordinate amount of work into developing creative for that particular project, just to win your work.

Brenton Gowland:

For those of you who are listening, creative is something that you develop over time you start with something so you don't expect an agency to come out with the exact right thing right from the beginning. It's often a process and a journey. I say that because I've worked in agencies and people expect it to be right just like that. No, no, no.

Ron Tomlian:

No. It like with anything and takes time. I like to in the past, I have evaluated not just the outcome. But I've evaluated the process they go through not the process, they tell you they will go through, but the process they actually go through to develop a piece of work. So my personal opinion, I don't think it's fair to any organisation to get them to do work for free. And you're certainly not going to later on anyway. Agencies in the past, we'll put a lot of money aside to when work and of course you pay for it later on.

Brenton Gowland:

That's right.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah, or, somebody pays for it. Because maybe they've lost the you know, they don't they don't get the word. But somewhere along the line, that's, that's built into their costing structure. So I like to give them a certain amount of money to do it small project, to demonstrate not just the outcome, or how we work together. If they say we will come back to you for clarification. But in the process of doing the small project, they don't do that. You've got an indication of well, they say one thing, they do something else.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah, I will say that not everyone can afford to do that. Because let's say you gave five grand to each for a piece of work. And that's not unreasonable. Yeah. That will make them do more if they think that oh, these guys are pretty fair, they'll do a bit more. But the problem is this.

Ron Tomlian:

You that's $15,000 is basically just to get you through the process.

Brenton Gowland:

Yeah, well, that's, that's 15% of the 100 grand. And if you've got 100 grand spent joy.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah, yeah. So does anyone can afford to do that.

Brenton Gowland:

That's correct. But if you're at a big company with a larger budget, I would do it every single time. I've actually had government agencies come to us when I was running, the agency that I own, and they would say, Oh, we got three groups. We want you to do creative for us. And I said, So you mean you want us to do free work? No, I know it's for an assessment. I'm that's okay. I say generally, that's what's called a paid pitch. So have you created a budget for that piece of work? And no, I said, I did this literally with an agency and I could name them and they came back with a five grand budget because I pushed them because this is I told them, This is the way you do it. And I would have walked away.

Ron Tomlian:

Your talking about a government agency.

Brenton Gowland:

Oh, yeah, I am,

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah. Yeah.

Brenton Gowland:

But the shoes on the other foot sometimes because you don't want to do free work. And I'm telling you from an agency's perspective, don't ask him to do free work, if you haven't got budget, ask him to show you how they approach other projects and how they'd approach this project.

Ron Tomlian:

And that's the trade off, can I afford to evaluate the process and evaluate the outcomes and put money upfront for it, then I will get them to do more work. If I can't, then I think it's incumbent on you to say, I'm going to do that evaluation of these shortlisted using another method, which doesn't require them to put a lot of effort in, okay, but does require them to be able to articulate the way they do things.

Brenton Gowland:

So I would also set up subsequent matrix or evaluation questions for that meeting is done, I'd set up an agenda for them, or get them to send me an agenda to see how they do it. Because I want to cover off on this, this and this.

Ron Tomlian:

It's like the second interview in recruiting an individual Yeah, you know, you'd have criteria for that second interview as well. Yeah, there has to be the case here.

Brenton Gowland:

And then if if it gets close, and often, you'll end up with maybe two groups that are like neck and neck, and you might have to, might not have answered everything, even through the discussion in the meeting, then you might come back with some subsequent questions or go have a private coffee or conversation with a key person in that business to get a feel about what they're like, I usually like to go and talk to the managing director, and to see if you'll actually get access to them.

Ron Tomlian:

What's really important is you're going to be working with these people on either a major project or over the long term. The chemistry has to be there the synchronous the values, the way of doing things. I mean, they're working in a large government organisation, I made an assessment about one agency, who were incredibly creative. Who would I assessed would be so frustrated with the way a government agency worked, yeah, that they'd eventually end up sacking us anyway. So what's the point of putting them and us to all that angst?

Brenton Gowland:

Yep.

Ron Tomlian:

And I told them that. And I think that's the other thing is, when you make a decision, give people the benefit of understanding why you made the decision, especially if they're not the ones who win your business.

Brenton Gowland:

Agreed. But here's the thing, here's the tip I will give now. So you've got this assessment criteria that we've talked about all the bits and pieces that we've talked about, it's come down to a bunch of numbers, and we know that this person rates here, this person needs to a neck and neck, and maybe their neck and neck, maybe one has answered things better, or they got a better price, and they're ranking better on our matrix. But when you get right to the end, that's where you kind of throw the matrix out and go, well, that got me to this point. Not saying that, yeah, 100% do this, that got me to this point. Now I've got my two contenders. I've had several interactions with them, I understand how things are gonna go, maybe they've put in a piece of work. And at some point, you got to trust your gut.

Ron Tomlian:

And don't underestimate the fact that you know, will, when people talk about gut decisions, it comes down to how do I feel about this. And that feeling will have an effect on your commitment to the decision that you make, will have an effect on the relationships that you develop with those people? Yeah, so don't, it's another form of information, a good feeling. And if your feelings should be taken into account in all this.

Brenton Gowland:

That's what happens in the interview process nowadays, right? So if you're going through, like we talked about earlier, you're going for a key role, you're going to have a minimum of three interviews, you might start out with the recruiter, then you might go to a board level meeting, right, where you've got several people of whatever level in the business, often they put together a group of people to make an assessment with an outside expert, or whoever See, marketing person might be sitting there and that the last one might be with just the owner of the company and the owner of the other company. But through that process, you will develop a gut feeling. And that's the point. It's like, again, in the interview process. It's like, as you go through those interactions with that person, you get a general gut feeling about what there'll be like, will they fit in with the team, all that kind of stuff.

Ron Tomlian:

To rely solely on that, I think is a mistake. Yeah. But to rely solely on the numbers is also a mistake. Yeah, it's two sources of information that should be used to help you make your final decision.

Brenton Gowland:

Correct. I 100% agree with that. So I hope this has been helpful. That was a lot and we kind of talked a lot about a lot of topics today really.

Ron Tomlian:

It is a big process. And it will depend. I think it will depend on the importance of the project that you're talking about. Whether you're talking about a long term relationship that you're looking for more something that's project specific, whether it's something that is a specific field of expertise, or whether you're looking for broad Under experience and a range of capabilities, it all comes down to first assessing or first developing, what is my objective in this process? And represent and being very clear about that and having clarity about what we're trying to achieve here?

Brenton Gowland:

Well Ron, today was a big subject.

Ron Tomlian:

Yes, it was.

Brenton Gowland:

But ah.

Ron Tomlian:

I feel exhausted.

Brenton Gowland:

That kind of went down some rabbit holes. I didn't think it was going to I thought this was going to be a succinct episode. But we ended up with quite a lot of content there even looking at the history of the advertising agency was interesting how that's morphed into a marketing agency.

Ron Tomlian:

Yeah. And and I think the difficulty with this subject is that it will be specific to an organisation and we've tried to cover sort of general principles. But it comes down to what are you looking for?

Brenton Gowland:

And look, the only piece of advice I would give you, if you've never done this before? Get someone get a marketing consultant, get someone you know who's done it before, and get them to help you because once you've done it once, it becomes more comfortable. You can do it on your own after that.

Ron Tomlian:

And if you don't feel comfortable doing that, I think that's an easy way of doing it, quite frankly. Yeah. and time effective. Yeah. But talk to other people who have done it. Yeah. How have you done it? You know, what have you used? What process? Talk to other organisations that you feel comfortable talking to? About how they've selected their marketing agency? What criteria they've used? And so on.

Brenton Gowland:

Sure. So that's all we've got for today, but next episode, because today we've been talking about how to select a marketing agency, most likely to do a piece of rebranding work or even a campaign. I think it's fitting that next episode, we start to talk about branding.

Ron Tomlian:

Yes.

Brenton Gowland:

And how to go about it.

Ron Tomlian:

It's a big subject.

Brenton Gowland:

It's a massive subject because branding never stops really. Well. I won't start talking about it right now because we won't stop talking but we hope you have a great fortnight and we will see you in a couple of weeks.

Ron Tomlian:

Fantastic. See you then.

Brenton Gowland:

Bye for now.