After doing Insight Chats with Tomasz from McDonald's on the Client Perspective on Building Client-Agency Relationships, here are my random observations:
- He has never answered a cold email he received from an agency.
- He gets connected to new agencies through trusted contacts; there is always some kind of link.
- In a given year, McDonald's works with 10-20 different agencies.
- He cares about the methodology used for research, but his stakeholders only care about the outputs of the research.
- To them, anyone who supplies any type of work is an agency, even if you don't consider yourself to be one.
- The soft skills needed for an agency or client insights role are the same, but the technical ones are quite different.
- The most important factor for an agency to be successful is to try to understand client problems and their broader context.
- It's really difficult to onboard new agencies. This process can sometimes prevent trying new agencies/methods, etc.
- "We probably have an answer to every question, but it's hard to get to it."
- Writing a good brief is actually much harder than you think it is.
- The two most important things to build a client-agency relationship are trust and managing expectations.
- Research is as good as the clarity of the brief.
- Internal engagement is particularly hard, and you need to spend a lot of time internally understanding your stakeholders' problems.
- When choosing an agency, you are also putting your reputation at stake, as their work will represent you as well.
- Agencies sometimes focus too much on the approach, that they forget the outcome.
- In research focus 80% on the outcome, 20% on the approach.
- In one week, he gets on average 15 new agencies trying to pitch.
- People insights is one of the fastest-growing insights areas.
- Not delivering on the agreed deadline is probably the most common mistake made by agencies.
- They have internally defined what kind of research they go to a certain agency for.
- The best agencies create a reputation and content to make a client go to them. πΆπΌ
Check the full recording here ππ»