Focus on the Goal, not the Mechanics
June 3, 2008 by Eric Eggertson
Filed under Marketing
Why bother hiring an agency, if you’re not going to let them do their job?
At times I’ve been guilty of second-guessing agencies, and jumping straight to tactics before a strategy has been agreed upon. Tactics are the most visible aspect of a campaign, so it’s easy to zero in on them.
That kind of thinking undercuts the work of the agency to identify the end result that is desired, and how best to arrive at it.
Jay Moonah describes the dilemma well:
“If you are working with an agency, what you need to help your agency partners understand is WHAT you want to accomplish, not HOW they should do it. The trained designers, copywriters, programmers, etc. will do what they do best to make sure the execution achieves your goals. That’s what you pay them for.”
Indeed.
Photo by Sorenson Photo, used under a Creative Commons licence.
Technorati Tags: business,communications,advertising,creative,campaigns,strategy,tactics,goals,objectives,roles,responsbilities,jay moonah
Eric, thanks for the props. I think it’s a natural inclination for people to jump to tactics because it’s our instinct to DO something! That’s certainly not a unique characteristic of people on the client side by any means, and I know it’s something I’ve been guilty of as well. But I do think everything has to back-up to the WHY.
I also believe one of the potential benefits of having well-defined goals is that it’s that much easer to measure success. Metrics is a hot topic these days, but if you don’t know what it was you were trying to accomplish, how do you know if you succeeded?!?
Right on! How many initiatives have we suggested that have been turned down. One month later, “Why didn’t the press release work?” A self fulfilling nightmare.
Jay:
I think in some cases it comes down to mistrust.
Some agencies get so good at generating billable hours that clients start to view the agency relationship as a parasitic one, rather than a partnership.
If you can get past the distrust that those two assistants at the meeting are just there to pad the billings, you can start to focus on identifying your objectives and creating a plan for achieving them.
Establishing and maintaining trust is key, for both parties.
And of course the irony is that you often eat up MORE hours trying to backward engineer an overly-specific into something that actually works. (As in “they said they wanted this but it doesn’t work… what do you think they actually MEANT?)