10 April 2015

Agencies, stop saying the same old s**t (by Lena Robinson, Founder)



One of the reasons I started Kiwi Girl Ltd was that I could see so many agencies failing to do one crucial thing...differentiate themselves. Nuts right, considering that's what they're supposed to be doing for their clients.

I wanted to work with agencies ballsy enough to allow me to shake them up. Where they could be woken from their malaise and start to step up above their competitors

I look around at this overcrowded market place and all I see, apart from a few exceptions, are thousands of agencies saying the same old shit over and over again. And when asked "what makes your agency different?" what I get usually get back is:

"Our people, our creative, our strategy.........blah blah blah" 

Seriously? That's it? Step out of your offices people, it's what pretty much every other agency is saying. So how does that make you different?

Whether you have smart, fun, interesting, caring people or not, whether your creative is out of this world, or your strategies are superior this is NOT going to make you stand out as different. That should be your baseline, a given.

Based on the philosophy of Simon Sinek, 'Start with Why' your story has to be about your 'Why?'. Why your agency exists, what you can do for your client's to help them with their challenges. You need to dig deeper than what you do (discipline) and how you do it (services) and build your story around a genuine philosophy, something you wholeheartedly believe in that will resonate with the types of clients you would love to work with (and would love to work with you). 

Great brands have a story, a reason for being, something that goes beyond what they sell, they pull on your heart strings first and you then use the benefits to simply post rationalise why you like them and why you bought from them. Agency brands are no different - yet they are treated as if they are.

So why do agencies spend so much time explaining what they do and how they do it? Scary isn't it. On the flip side if you do things differently and take the 'Start with Why' approach, it then becomes a lot easier to stand out in a crowded market place and build a brand that attracts the right clients, ones that will partner you rather than hire you as a supplier.

One of the challenges agencies face is that they stand on the wrong side of their brand. What do I mean? They build their brand from the inside out - which on one hand makes sense. But that is why clients often see agencies as cocky, arrogant etc. All they hear is "blah blah blah" because agencies are behaving like that awful date we've all been on where they yap on about themselves for hours (heinous).

What most fail to do is go around to the other side of their brand (or the dating table) and understand what the client (or date) wants to hear, what is important to them. This fundamental failure means they fail to resonate and engage in a language and context that has meaning to a prospective client partner.

So in conclusion. If you are struggling with attracting and winning the types of clients you want to work with, if you're failing to stand out from the crowd, then maybe you need to look at your 'Why' in the articulation of your story and make sure you put your client hat on to ensure you're saying what they want to hear rather than what you want to say.

Happy 'dating' people.


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