How to Work Better With Creative Agencies

For a marketer, figuring out new ways of engaging our consumers and clients is the heart of the job. I have to stay up-to-date with their needs and consider how our brand can best serve their needs in a changing context.

This is where the role of creative agencies is so crucial. A creative agency will help create marketing campaigns or solutions for your brand and its suite of products and services. They are wired to create work that captivates the audience while effectively sharing the brand’s story. In a nutshell, they share the responsibility of creating compelling marketing stories for your brand.

A partnership with a creative agency could range from a short-term project of two to three months, or if all goes well, it could turn into a long-term relationship of several years. Similar to a marriage or really any relationship, a partnership with a creative agency has both good and bad days. And it takes time, effort, and investment to leverage the skills of the creative agency and create a partnership that works for both parties.

Sometimes, marketers who are just starting out in their career may wrongly assume that the process goes something like this: select an agency, write a brief, send it to the agency, sit back and wait for the agency to deliver. But this is not how it works. Like any successful relationship, active engagement will help you create better results.

Inspiring Creativity

Your relationship with the creative agency must be inspiring for all parties involved. It must stay fresh and new so that the creatives can continue to create, innovate, and overflow with novel ideas. The most important aspect of this relationship is trust. And building trust always takes time and effort. I cannot emphasise enough the importance of trust in a client-agency relationship because the brand and vision are essentially co-owned.

If I simply make all of the decisions and expect the creative agency to blindly deliver something that meets all of my expectations, then the creative inspiration and outcome that I receive will never be up to par. A creative person can only be inspired when you allow her into your space, invite her to share your brand’s vision, and give her space to translate your brand’s vision into something you may never even have dreamt about.