The Core Competencies of an Agency

I've been doing a bit of thinking around the core competencies of an agency lately. Considering what makes an agency great and all that.

At first, I was just looking at the idea of thinking vs. making after seeing a booklet/brochure created by MCAD about Kinji Akagawa and some of his views on design and art. I really liked this way of looking at it. Thinking and making need each other. A great idea can't get past being a theory until someone can bring it to life brilliantly, and very few people can actually do both of those well. The agencies that do, get rewarded.

Then I recalled experiences in the past, observing client / agency relationships outside of my own agency (but with my clients) and recalled the importance of service. There are some agencies out there who do very well financially simply by being great at service and good at making. As I thought this, I asked myself if this kind of agency still had a place in the world.

From where I stand today, I think the days of getting by on great service are done. If I were a client, I'd nix the retainers and pay for ideas and execution of those ideas. I'd hire people and agencies great at thinking and get them to give me their best ideas. Then, I'd find the best makers and get them to bring them to life. I wouldn't want to pay an agency to suck up to me with a bloated staff. Just bring me great ideas and if you can't make them, help me find someone who can.

Anyway, just a thought or two I wanted to share here and see what you had to say about it, if anything. Would especially love to hear from those on the client side of the world...

Comments

[josh]

as a buyer, i want to buy value - not hours. i want to buy results - not layers. i'll pay for the creative process and the scrapheap as long as i get the gem. if you can't bring it, don't charge me for it.

[Tom Asacker]

Thinking, making and service are all necessary components of an agency. The key question to ask is, Thinking, making and servicing around what particular focus?

Unless, and until, agencies start focusing strategically on that "what," e.g. creating customers for clients, they will be disintermediated and diminished in importance.

As Josh made very clear, he wants "results." The value in the creative process lies in its ability to create attention, interest, trust AND ongoing support and engagement of a client's customers.

[mark]

At the intersection of Thinking, Making and Service...execution.

[Tim B]

I think execution sits squarely in the making. I also think service is much maligned. Maybe because you perceive it as sucking up to clients. Maybe because you're a confident marketer who needs little support to wade through the myriad of stimuli that have contributed to the thinking. Or maybe you don't see that what you do is actually service as well as thinking? As a director of a small agency with a role that squarely straddles thinking and service, I am acutely aware of the value that clients see in both.

[Leo]

Interesting post. Whilst I suscribe to the idea that clients shouldn't have to pay for useless bureaucratic smarmy service, I'm not 100% convinced that its easy just to buy great thinking and great making.
Seems to me that so much great thinking and great making is a lot about trail and error, about revisiting promising leads that withered for whatever reason. Don't you only really get the great stuff if you are prepared to invest in its gestation? I'm thinking here of longstanding client-agency relationship (e.g. DDB London + VW, but take your pick). Isn't the buying of all the 'Service' and longevity of relationship part of what delivers brilliant executions?

[eric pakurar]

What if your agency isn't set up to make what the client needs? Making advertising, say, because your agency's infrastructure is set up to make advertising, when the client really needs an employee training program doesn't make a lot of sense. The onus is on the client, I suppose, to know what it is they need before hiring the agency in question. But what if they aren't sure?