We’ve been in your shoes. We’ve been in your agency’s shoes. And that combined experience has helped frame a worldview that empathizes with our team and yours. With many years in the game, here is some of what we’ve uncovered.
1. Many agency leaders are agency lifers
A lot of top agency brass has spent their career climbing the agency ladder. It’s what they’re passionate about, what they’re skilled at, and where they feel energized. And that’s great. But as much as we advocate for putting ourselves in the audience’s shoes, they themselves haven’t (been in your shoes). When you spend time client-side, you quickly discover that even with the thousands of conversations and meetings you’ve had with brand leaders, CMOs, and the C-Suite while at an agency, it isn’t the same as being embedded within the company. You might think you understand, but you’ll never fully understand.
At Milk Truck, our team has been agency side and in-house for some of the biggest brands in the world. So we have directly felt the top down pressure CMOs get, the scramble when budgets get cut, the need to truly understand a product and audience intimately. And we’ve built a model predicated on understanding the complications brands have had with agencies (because we’ve had them too) and solving for it.
2. Speed and agility
Your business moves fast. You’re required to move fast to keep up. But too often, agencies have garnered a reputation for being not fast. Rigid. Immobile. And as agencies grow, the layers and hierarchy only add to the bloat.
Agencies are optimized to do impactful work (hopefully.) They aren’t often optimized to be efficient businesses. But the two don’t have to be mutually exclusive.
What if we could leverage the business operational efficiencies present in big tech, use that to solve for agency efficiency issues, and ultimately do so in a manner that produces an end product that can move with the agility client’s desire? Turns out you can, it works, and so far, the proof is in the pudding.
3. Misalignment on vision
Coming up in the agency world as a creative, your career opportunities are tied to the subjective creativeness of your work at a glance. And while that’s an ok measure of creativity, it incentivizes creatives earlier in their career to prioritize work that is beneficial to them.
You may have experienced the pain of getting back work that felt creative for creative’s sake, and seemingly disconnected from the potential downstream impact. There’s a time and a place for that work. At times you need an agency that will push you and your leadership team out of your comfort zone. But you also need to be pushed by someone who can see the bigger picture as clearly as you can.
The best approach for your customers isn’t always disruptive. It might be just a bit ruptive. The best agency partners are acutely aware of that balance.
4. Not a great cultural fit
When hiring internally, top performers are those who are highly skilled, driven, and a good fit within company culture. Hiring an agency should be similar. You don’t need (or even necessarily want) your agency to exactly replicate your company culture. There are boatloads of value in bringing a new perspective and pushing you in ways you’re not used to. But you need the cultural fit to be complimentary.
Sometimes the vibes and cultural fit seem great on the surface, but when peeling back the layers, you quickly learn there are too many areas where you’re not on the same page. And you start to feel the pain of it.
We put a premium on client fit and making sure we’re the right partner for you, just as much as you’re doing the same for us. And if we’re not, we’ll respectfully let you know, because we believe that’s the right thing to do for the both of us.
