“Just a few more additions.”
Advice to Small Businesses Who Seek Out an Ad Agency.
If you think advertising is done by a bunch of artists who are just good at making Word documents look pretty and know how to use Photoshop, you are probably barking up the wrong tree by hiring an agency. You may want to consider hiring a freelance graphic designer and supplying them with a batch of photographs you like from Shutterstock.com and some headlines. You can write them. It’s not hard to write something that sounds like an ad. “We take good care of our customers! [website URL, address, phone number]” Pick the places you want to run ads or put billboards and the Designer can put the pictures and words together to look pretty. Nothing wrong with that! All exposure is good exposure.
Surprisingly, that’s exactly–and all–many “savvy” business people want. Or think they want, either at the outset of a project, or far worse, half way through it.
You may want to consider an ad agency when you want to create or strengthen a brand. When you want to have unignorable ads in the right place at the right time using a strategy based on numbers and years of experience. When you want to get away from provincial clichés and the kind of ads almost anyone can put together with a pretty picture and an adequate headline.
The numbers are important, but the years of experience are far more important. Small business people seem to get cold feet along the way and discount the experience of the agency they have hired. You may think you know your business and your customers better than anyone. You may be right. You are probably wrong. Entrenchment blinds. It blinds owners and managers to their dated look. It blinds them to where new customers are coming from. It blinds them to different ways of doing things. Most of all, entrenchment blinds business people to the possibility that someone may know how to promote their business better than they do. That’s where the years of experience comes in.
Business people trust most professionals. They say to the electrician, “I want more lights in this room.” They usually don’t then look at the new lighting plan and say, “I don’t know, I think ALL the light should be in the entrance, where people see it right away. And then they will see it from the street, too. Never mind that there will be little usable light in the room. No one cares about that. We just want to get new customers in the door. Oh, and can you use orange wires instead of black? Bradley in accounting doesn’t like black–too dark. Also, we’ve always used fluorescent boxes. Let’s stick with that. We can just cram them all in there.” Of course, if they did say that, and insisted on it, the electrician would probably do it. But when the businessperson came back and complained that they couldn’t see in the room, they would be out of luck. They would have to pay to have the original lighting plan installed. They probably wouldn’t say “You were the electrician who created this mess!”
“Why the long analogy?” You ask. Because clients, especially smaller clients, don’t see advertising as a profession. They see it as art, subject to all the whims of the artist. They feel the deep need to guide the artist to be more business focused. Business people often just don’t get that advertising is like other businesses, and advertisers are like other professionals. They know what they are doing. For the relationship to work, client and agency have to have some trust that the other one knows what they are doing. Provide input, but don’t wholesale second guess the agencies decisions and steer them in a completely different direction, especially one that comes to you half way through the process.
It’s not unusual for clients to have new insights during the process, and decide on a direction different from the original plan. If you do change mid-stream, don’t expect things to cost the same as the original estimate. Not even close. Expect the price to double.
If it’s not important enough once you realize that your original goals for the project were off the ideal to pay double, then don’t change anything midstream. Where it ends up will certainly be less expensive and aggravating than what it you would change it to. And it will probably be more successful. If you do completely change the direction, don’t expect to see the results you set out to achieve at the onset of the project in addition to the new results you decide on. One project done once, and done right, is far more economical than a project in which someone comes in and tosses some random ideas in that have to be incorporated into the whole without watering it all down to nothing. Maybe agencies should say more often “We can do that. It’s a terrible idea and will make this a waste of time and a poor use of money. But if that’s what you want and are ready to throw the original goals out the window, sure. We can do that.” More likely, a professional will say, “Yes, we can add that. It will make things more complicated.” Honestly, although it sounds more professional to acquiesce to the client’s demands, the first response may be the most honest. Clients don’t want to hear that, though. It’s likely to put them on the defensive, and will probably ruin the client-agency relationship.
Even small, constant tinkering is likely to dilute the message and the plan. Picking fonts and colors is the agency’s job. Remember that although ads should reflect your business, they aren’t personal. This is a billboard, or an ad, or a brochure. You may not even be the target audience! Establish goals. Establish initial direction. You may need to keep things on the original track if they go off into the weeds. A restatement of the original goals, both to yourself and your agency, is probably sufficient. I add “you” because we get many miscues from clients. Business people often have quickly changing focus, and can forget that there was a bigger plan in play. Yet, things come up, and advertisers should address them. Sometimes it’s easy to get caught up in a minor concern and have it waylay the whole project.
Advertisers know buyers. Probably better than you do. They probably know ads better than you do. We think about them almost all day every day. We don’t want you to make poor choices and waste time and money. Advertisers want you to see the best results for your money. We like to have successes they can brag about.
If you don’t want a plan from someone else, then don’t even start down the path. You are going to waste everyone’s time and money chasing red herrings around and around. If you want experienced professionals to achieve some goals, then hire them and let them do their jobs.