Daniel Weiner’s Post

Full service agencies are, often, not always, like the Whole Foods hot bar. You can get get a lot of different stuff, but nothing is THAT great. I usually prefer to grocery shop the a la carte route. 👀

One of the many reasons I like to think YouShouldTalkTo exists. Agencies embellish, often. I know this, because every day I talk to agencies who embellish. Agencies embellish logo's on their site. Agencies embellish the extent of their relationship with brands. Agencies embellish the services they provide and their specialties. Agencies embellish the type's of budgets they work on. Agencies embellish having 'proprietary' stuff. Agencies often forget that in 2024, it's pretty easy for someone like me or a CMO to back channel and fact check. Great agencies do NOT embellish. They stay in their lane. They of course want the whole pie, but only their pie. They confidently know what they are great at and what they are not. They know what services they provide and what services they do not. They will turn down business because they value the long game v short term financial rewards. This should be the norm but it is far from it. It keeps me in business but also makes my job harder.

A tale as old as time. Agency: we've hit a cap on hours for the month. CMO: WTF!? Left without comment. I see both sides. From Jennifer's purview -- she doesn't want an agency to tell her they've reached a limit and can't do more without more budget. It makes her think the agency didn't accurately scope the work. From an agency perspective -- something along the lines of 'we DID scope it accurately but for X and Y reasons, outside our control, additional time was needed.' Who's right? Well, no one, usually. It's why, in my opinion, hourly billing kinda sorta sucks. No one wants to track time. But, everyone DOES want to work towards the agreed upon deliverables that hopefully lead to the desired outcomes. How to combat this and proactively get ahead of this scenario? Two ways. 1) Contingency. Every agency that IS giving a preset # of hours per month should have a gameplan for this exact scenario. I'd argue there are 50 different ways to approach this convo that are NOT "hey we can't do more this month." 2) More communication. And when you think you've communicated enough, communicate some more. Check out my full convo with Jennifer from Sonar, linked in the comments.

Having a lot of full circle moments lately. Went to college and raged my face off with Brad Smith 🧙♂️, who I'm having dinner with later tonight. Brad Co Founded Sonar many years ago. TODAY, I'm posting a podcast episode with Sonar's SVP of Marketing, Jennifer Hopkins. Jennifer loves sushi, agencies that don't feed her bullsh*t metrics, and is inspired by her husband both personally and professionally. My favorite takeaways: 1) Everything can't be perfect in the client agency relationship. And, agencies that exclusively paint a rosy picture rather than calling out what's not working...are doing both them and their clients' a disservice. Jennifer says: “I think there's like this connotation that everything needs to be positive and it's almost more alarming in my opinion. From a reporting standpoint, if everything is always like everything is just going right, I'm like, no. It's not, I think it's about owning it, and every week is just not going to be the best, especially in performance marketing.” 2) Jennifer talks about how the best agencies are the ones that focus on what the client wants, not fluff metrics. Jennifer’s best experiences have been with agencies who prioritized the North Star metrics and delivered what she needed. Full episode linked in the comments. From software to pizza, I'll be chatting with Kimberly Bean of Papa Johns on the podcast later today. 🍕

Great agencies do free work. A lot of it. Did this give you a visceral feeling of anger? I don't mean it how you probably think I do. Great agencies proactively do so much 'stuff' that never lands in a scope or an invoice. - They proactively reach out to see how the relationship is going. - They proactively schedule time to chat and meet. - They proactively do research on trends / new shiny objects. - They proactively come to the table with new ideas. - They proactively bring up the bad -- the things not going so well and how they plan to rectify them. - They proactively meet internally, to talk about the account, the results, new ideas, etc. - They proactively send meeting agendas. The #1 thing I hear from brands looking for a new agency? "Lack of proactivity" "They got too comfy" Sticking to your scope by the letter of the law, rigidly, is a recipe for losing clients. It just is. And if that pisses you off...I'm sorry...but it doesn't make it any less accurate. The day you win a client is the day you start losing them and it's safe to assume every agency out there is trying to eat the lunch of their competitors. I'd argue doing the stuff that never lands in a scope is equally as important as the stuff that does land in the scope. THAT is how you truly differentiate.

"Have you heard anything?" "Should we follow up?" Agencies ask me this question 32904385x per day. My overall opinion on following up as an agency is this. If you have expressed interest as a brand or you've asked me for something, anything really... ...I will follow up with you until you tell me no, or one of us DIES. Literally. And, I'm feelin' pretty healthy these days. It's that simple. Tell me no. Tell me you've gone in a different direction. Tell me literally anything. Otherwise, strap in for the next 40-60 years because I am feeling SPRY AF.

"Scrappy" A word I hear frequently in my conversations with brands. 'We want a scrappy agency'. During my time leading sales at an agency, scrappy was a dirty word. A red flag word. It almost always implied 'cheap'. I've changed my tune. While scrappy is still a code word for 'cheap' or 'less expensive', sometimes, lately, I think it really just means nimble. Nimble in the sense that brand needs change so so quickly. Your agreed upon scope on day 1 may not be 100% relevant on day 30, day 60, day 90. Brands want an agency that is easily able to pivot and go with the flow WITHOUT the need for some massive rescoping conversation. In 2024 speed is crazyyyyy important. Speedy communication. Speedy delivery. Speedy pivots. I understand that a client <> agency relationship is presumably 'easier' from the agency standpoint if the scope never changes and the engagement ONLY grows. It's just not realistic. There's definitely a time and place to talk about scope and budget, but every engagement, in 2024, should have some built in flexibility to expand and contract, quickly.

Friendly reminder before the holiday that there are 5 distinct qualities that separate a good agency from a bad agency. 👇👇👇 1. Pick 2. Up 3. The 4. Damn 5. Phone 🌭🌭🌭

I've been trying to come up with what my ideal day looks like. What does that perfect day look/feel like for you? Here's what I've come up with so far... - Good nights sleep - Coffee - Being around people I respect and find interesting - Working on stuff I find interesting. - 10k steps - Some sort of physical activity/competition. Tennis, basketball, etc. - Eating healthy'ish throughout the day. - Talking to my family at some point. - Not a ton of social media (except for my comfort TikTok scroll at night). - Some sort of mental stimulation -- NYT Games. Liveeeee for Connections. What am I missing? What makes you feel like you had a 'full/awesome' day?