For brands, the marketplace is complex. Understatement of the year, right? But with years between reviews, it’s inevitable that marketers struggle to clearly navigate an agency landscape abundant with choices and on an ever-growing scale. Agency names disappear, talent moves on, consolidations mean initialisms replace agency names you were once fluent in.

Yet brand challenges might have grown in their complexity, emphasising the need for agency partners to help solve them.

Brand marketers needn’t feel intimidated though. It’s a very good thing that there are multiple agency brand options. As Sir John Hegarty said at our recent Creativebrief Explores event:

The key is that there’s a lot of choice out there. It’s about knowing how to navigate it. And one way to do this is to think of these agencies more as brands; to understand their offering is far more complex than those of mere suppliers.

And agency brands – those profiles built around agencies’ point of difference – are a crucial help in a brand knowing which agency to appoint.

Thinking of agencies in a different way

Let’s stay for a minute in marketer territory and ask what makes a good brand?

Kerris Bright, Chief Customer Officer for the BBC shared her belief on what it takes to build a brand: “You’ve got to know what you do, why it’s better. Or why it’s different in some sense. Values, belief why you’re doing it, the culture that you have.”

These things can and should be found at the heart of agency brands too. John Hegarty, the man behind BBH is adamant that agencies must have a strong brand. The person responsible for Audi’s Vorsprung Durch Technik and some of the best-known Levi’s ads, John elaborated that “a point of difference is at the foundation of a brand.”   

As we said earlier – complexity and abundance in the marketplace is fine. So long as it’s just not more of the same.

Lucy Jameson left Grey London in 2017 to set up Uncommon Creative alongside Nils Leonard and Natalie Graeme. They launched with a clear divergence from what was currently on offer in the industry. In a bid to usher in brands people actually want to see exist in the real world, Uncommon take a stake in the brands themselves, working together to launch them into the marketplace.

When she spoke at our event, it was never in doubt then that Lucy would think a point of difference was crucial to agency brands.

Distinction is ultimately what will make an agency stand out to a brand marketer. Kerris Bright said an agency brand can show a lot more to prospective clients about what they are like to work with.

“It’s a very clear point of difference about the product, the proposition, about what [agencies] are there to offer the world. About why they should be a good partner to work with.”

Not only realising the power of agency brands, but exploiting it, can make a foggy industry a lot clearer. But this goes hand-in-hand with shrugging off one of the predominant misconceptions brands have about agencies – that they are suppliers not partners. Get your head around this and suddenly you unlock the potential of what they can do for your brand.

After all, it’s partners that brands need. Kerris Bright laid bare the simple truth:

The best partners are surely those who not only understand brands, but have even built their own.

Find common ground, or take a leap into the unknown

If brands are reappraising the agency landscape as fertile, and not simply overrun with choice, then there’s another decision marketers must consider. Whether to appoint an agency whose brand is proven, or to go with the unknown.

Kerris’ view on this particular decision again reiterated the similarity between brands and agencies:

So, which do you go for? It really comes down to the direction you’re looking for your own brand to take. Kerris elaborated on the options open to you:

“You’re either going to be brave and say I’m going to go with hunger and newness that’s not yet proved through a client list. Or actually I’m looking to be in good company.”

Good company is more important than it sounds. Looking at the client list an agency has can be a useful guide – the living testimonies of their agency capability. Does that agency look like it’s solving the same brand problems that are going to be relevant for you?

Kerris continued, “If I see someone solving problems for others brilliantly and I think they are good clients, I’m more likely to think they’ll be able to solve my problems.”

But what if there’s no one you see demonstrating the kind of agency capability you’re after? In that case, it could be worth a leap into the unknown.

If no one took risks in our industry, then we’d be bang in the middle of bland and boring. Instead, a leap into the unknown could be trailblazing. If the biggest risk in going with an unknown is that you’ll end up with work unlike anyone else, then perhaps it’s one worth taking.

Your future with agency brands

Before our Creativebrief Explores event, we ran a survey with 50 senior brand CMOs on the future of agency brands. 63% of respondents said they agreed that, in its current crisis of confidence, the industry needs more strong agency brands.

The appetite is there, but we risk being utopic if we assume a strong agency brand and a gut feeling are the only things you need consider. There are more rational elements to consider. For Kerris Bright, it’s a question of considering everything.

“You’re often having to balance some of the more rational and functional questions … you’re trying to judge are they going to bring ideas to solve business problems, is this a group of people that I want in my team, can I balance that level of challenge but collaboration, and is there an operating model and a financial model that works for us. And we’re trying to balance all those things.”

To end on a high, let’s return to John Hegarty who explained to agencies why he didn’t think agency brands were doomed.

Flip that on its head and think of the exciting, daring worlds that are there for the taking. Suddenly the marketplace doesn’t seem so daunting anymore. In fact, it seems exhilarating.