What it Means to Partner As A Small Agency
We make your digital media work with everything else. It’s the tagline on the homepage of our website and we lead with it on every pitch deck. We do that because modern advertising is complicated, fragmented, digitally focused, and the reality is that no one group can do it by themselves. It might sound a bit hokey, but the team aspect of modern advertising is the only way to be successful and we need to embrace it to get the best results.
In 2023 just over 60% of our business was in partnership with another agency (5 different partnerships to be exact), almost always a creative/strategy agency that needed media support to help bring the campaigns to life. We want to discuss what makes a good partnership, why we have been successful at it (we think 😊), and what pitfalls others can avoid while bringing in partners for client work.
No White Labeling
We don’t white label. Literally ever. We were brought in as a partner to help elevate the campaign and be a part of the team to hit goals. Fundamentally we push away from any white-labeling for 3 reasons;
It takes a quick LinkedIn profile search to see we don’t work at the agency we partner with. Why hide it when it’s easily observable in a social universe?
After the first email a client sends, they will never care again about the company handle you work for, and just focus on who on the team can help with the problem/solution. We should accept that partners exist in agency life and clients are smart enough to figure it out.
Agencies trying to hide that they don’t do all elements of a campaign are ripe with old-school thinking that doesn’t apply in today's ad market. Clients are ok with this because they get how complicated the ad landscape is. No agency can do it all, so being transparent about strategic partners gets ahead of it. Clients will just see how the team operates and evaluate it that way, not based on whether we have the same handle in our email address.
Fill the Gaps
We have worked with agencies that have media teams and some that don’t. It's about finding what they need the most and filling the gaps.
For the creative agencies without media, we try to prove their creative vision. A lot of times creative agencies want to do bigger, splashier tactics, and our goal is to show that there is value in that, while also educating all parties on the need for lower funnel activity. Sometimes clients want to just focus on the lower funnel, and you can see why, but media is often the bridge between upper and lower funnel approaches. We work with the agency and client to show the performance and how even a TV spot or billboard or a less tangible asset leads to real results for their brand.
For the agencies with media, we typically find ourselves more tactical and, in the weeds, but we need to be ok with that. The gap is they need execution help and if we have an ego about it, it just won't work. Sometimes we must work with someone more junior driving strategy while we execute. But if we fill the gap, we can help support that person and ultimately drive value and results.
Being a small agency is a blessing for this as we can fill the gaps of so many partner agencies, and we believe that for larger shops it's possible with the right mentality.
Being Extremely Flexible
We will join your Slack or Teams. We will certainly join your internal and external status. We want to be thought of as a media arm, not a separate company. The scope of work should imply that we are there at your disposal like we are just another member of the team. We won't lie, it doesn’t always work that cleanly because sometimes we aren’t on all client communications and the message of decisions being made doesn’t get passed our way. It's frustrating, but our goal is to break down those barriers and make ourselves an extension. We get that sometimes we sit between a vendor and another team member, but the closer to the latter we can be, the better. It's our job to be a seamless partner, and being a small shop, we embrace flexibility and push ourselves into as many meetings as possible. The more we know the better.
And if we don’t feel like we are in enough of the conversation, we keep bringing it up (in a polite way) because context is key to all parts of a campaign/client engagement. So, if we can be involved, we will do our best to be there and not just accept the game of telephone after the fact that is ripe with opportunity to have things fall through the cracks.
Don’t Be Everything to Everyone
Just like the agencies bringing us in, they don’t have all the tools and skills, so why should we try to act that way too? It's so easy to get outside your comfort zone and try to do more than you are great at. DNW is a digitally focused agency, but even in that, we have things we don’t do at an expert level. We focus on being transparent about our strengths while acknowledging our weaknesses and also finding smart partners to bring in. For instance, SEO, Influencer marketing, and TV get brought up in our discussions and we just don’t plan/execute around that. We find the right partner, be transparent about the process, and sell it to all stakeholders. Just like the no white labeling mantra from before, we need to see that process through when we bring in partners as well.
Recap
Partnering isn’t easy, but if we remove a lot of artificial barriers that have been created in our advertising ecosystem for decades, it becomes much easier. Be visible, transparent, and flexible and the agency partnership can thrive, while also doing great work for the client.