CMO Leadership: Putting your agencies to work for you!

As an interactive agency, Pop Art works with many other agencies. Sometimes we are agency-of-record for a client, but most often, our clients employ 2, 3 or sometimes dozens of marketing agencies and consultants, and we are just some of the actors on the stage.

Having multiple agencies can be very expensive because of the necessary overlap in having a large team; but it has its advantages. If you can afford it, that’s great, so long as you actively manage it.

Typically we see that all of the following occur:

• All of the agencies want the client to be successful.
• The agencies want to interact professionally.
• The agencies have conflicting interests.
• The client fails to properly lead the agencies resulting in disastrous consequences.

Time and time again, I see inefficiencies in how agencies and clients interact. The more players you have, the more important it is for you to lead! You can have a team of all-stars, but if everyone thinks they are the point guard & wants to take the game winning shot, and if nobody crashes the boards for you on defense, you will probably lose the game.

The best CEOs and CMOS apply the same basic principles of leadership in how they manage extended teams to how they manage their employees.

What makes good leadership within your organization?

1. You develop a vision.
2. You articulate values and your mission, objectives and goals.
3. You clearly define job roles; you assemble great talent.
4. You delegate responsibilities and hold people accountable for both individual and team performance.
5. You communicate continually to keep everyone on the same page and to help your team to achieve its goals.

We have a rule at Pop Art, all job roles must be clearly defined, and to paraphrase the Patrick Lencioni book , The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive, it is the executive’s job to create and over-communicate organizational clarity and to reinforce that clarity through human systems.

How about applying those same principles to how you manage your marketing agencies and consultants?  And why not apply some inexpensive Web 2.0 collaboration systems to help with that communication? Your solution might look like this:

1. You sign-up for a $50/mo. Basecamp account that represents your “Marketing Sandbox” and you grant access to all the players.  You, one of your employees, or one of your agencies is put in charge of facilitating the sandbox. You can call this person the “recess monitor.” See if anybody gets the joke.
2. You post the roles of each internal and external players.
3. You articulate your values and the playground rules. The goal is to create an atmosphere of trust, collaboration and accountability.
4. You post your marketing plan.
5. You post your KPIs, ROI models and actual results.
6. Each agency posts its deliverables to the sandbox in real time.
7. You use discussion boards and wikis to debate strategies and tactics.
8. You supplement the online sandbox with monthly conference calls and quarterly in-person meetings involving all the players.
9. You make time for regular 1:1 interactions with each agency.
10. You communicate, re-communicate & over-communciate! You make sure everyone is kept current on what’s going on and where you are headed.

It very simple and inexpensive to do this. If you don’t have the time to do this, you probably have too many agencies and are not getting the marketing results that your organization needs.

Pop Artist Christi Stahl wrote a great related blog post on How to Engage Your Agency, including some tips and best practices for managing multiple agencies.

If you have other ideas for effectively managing multiple agencies, feel encouraged to post them here.