The Great Agency Reset

During the pandemic, agencies saw their ranks shrink as many agency personnel decided to hang it up and either leave the agency business altogether or take an extended leave to do their own personal reset in life.

As agencies now prepare themselves for the growing movement into more of a technology driven and performance driven marketing landscape, agencies have turned the tables.

They are not only demanding that employees come back into the office, but they are also letting mid-level staffers go and in some cases eliminating high paid creative positions.

Many think that 2024 will be an interesting and transformational year for agencies.

Those that have really leaned into the technology play will likely fair better than those that are simply focused on a services-only approach.

It doesn’t mean that service-focused agencies can’t survive, it just means how and what they do may need to change in order to stay meaningful and relevant in the marketer’s world.

With more marketers bringing work in-house, agencies will need to adjust and must be willing to accept project work that isn’t quite as exciting as the things a lead agencies with more of a technical leaning might be tasked to do.

And with marketers being asked to do more with less (in terms of staffing and budgets), their agency partners (regardless of whether they are tech or service centric), will need to be more visible and more flexible and agile in order to keep their marketing partners ahead of the curve.

So if/when you start looking for a new firm to  support your company’s business, you need to think about:

• What you need. “Are my needs more service or technology centric?”
• What they have. “Does this agency have the resources we need?”
• What have they done? “Do they have case study examples of work that mirrors the challenges we’re dealing with?”
• How sustained have their relationships been? “Do they have client relationships that have evolved as the market has changed?”
• Where will you fall? “Will we be the biggest or smallest fish in their world?”  Neither are any good.

If you’re ever looking for a new firm, we helped marketers answer these and many other questions to ensure that the agency-client relationship is super solid from the first day forward.

If interested in talking, give me a call (513-293-6785) or drop me a line (mark@rswus.com).