While talking to a number of our clients and agencies partners, it’s clear that many of them are viewing the ‘credit crunch’ not as a threat, but as an opportunity to carve out market share.
But how should they approach this? The obvious answer is to offer a service or product that is so valuable and compelling that customers feel they can’t afford to be without it. But in the current climate, that has to be at the right price.
That got me thinking. For years, creative agencies across all disciplines have been united by the common complaint that clients think they know best about how to get the most out of the agency’s specific area of expertise. There are real dangers to this perceived meddling for everyone involved – the agency team become disillusioned, the project is riddled with compromises, tensions increase within the agency/client relationship, and the final project doesn’t achieve its objectives. This then culminates in finger pointing, mutual antagonism and the likely demise of a potentially beautiful and profitable relationship.
The reason that this story will resonate with people on both sides of the client/agency relationship is because of the inherent lack of facts involved. There are not enough facts involved in the process – we have poorly defined objectives at the start of the project, followed by woolly thinking in the strategy and no single decision maker with a clear vision of what must happen.
“How is this an opportunity?” I hear you ask. This is the perfect time for agencies to prove their expertise and value once and for all. In the current economic climate, clients are desperate to generate measurable response and quantifiable ROI and are only investing in projects that will deliver it.
They also have lower budgets to spend on achieving these objectives and want to reduce the initial risk in committing significant elements of their budget to unproven concepts.
So what can we do to help? Well, because each penny spent needs to be accounted for, clients have a much more focussed idea on what they want to achieve. And because budgets are so much tighter, agencies have the opportunity to take control: “If you want to achieve these results, you need to do these things at this time.” The only thing that’s missing is a compelling reason for the client to trust its agency.
That’s where the idea for our CPA deal came from. We’ve proved time and time again that we can deliver results for our clients, provided we are working towards a common goal in a relationship of mutual respect. By putting our budgets on the line, we’re showing our clients how confident we are that we’ll deliver on our promises. and by lowering initial costs we’re able to lower the risk to clients and give them the confidence that they will be able to do more with their budget – not less.
To find out more about our current CPA offer, give me a call on 020 7631 3278.
