Making brands more distinctive

I’m always interested when a new agency launches (although new is usually a metaphor for the phoenix-like resurrections from the ashes of a failed venture). Of special interest is how these new agencies position themselves to potential clients. What new services will they provided? How will they deliver a better creative product? What makes them different?

However my genuine interest (based on a desire to hopefully learn something that I can steal) soon turns to frustration and often anger as I read the same old press releases re-hashed by those who must genuinely think that the audience is denser than the desk on which it has been typed.

There is a tiresome consistency to these agencies as they offer, not only a vague promises of “a new way of doing things” but also faux business processes that will “transform your brand”. What is wrong with simply having intelligent, hard-working, dedicated people or a desire to produce compelling and effective creative? I guess it’s because they can’t offer either of them. Or worse, they don’t believe in themselves so have to offer the moon on a stick in the vain hope of catching someone’s attention (by poking their eye out with it I guess)

What lowers my blood pressure is seeing well-thought out creative ground out first thing on a Monday morning, not only on time but also on budget. Creative that makes clients stop and think and their customers respond positively to their brand. If agencies spent less time trying to reinvent the wheel and instead focussed on understanding their clients business then there’d be much less churn in the market place too.

So I ask myself why do clients change agencies? Is it because the agency doesn’t have a new and never been done before flexible working package for its staff? No. Is it because the agency hasn’t created a “bespoke” and “unique” branding process that “will transform your business”? No, it is not. Clients change agencies because the promises they have been made by those who make these ludicrous, pointless and banal statements about what they can deliver are broken. Clients change agencies because the agencies produce poor creative due to a lack of insight, lack of idea-generation and lack of nose-to-the-grindstone hard-work. They lose clients because of poor project management, quality control and budgeting. They lose clients because they spend too much time thinking about themselves and not the brands they should be serving.

Why should I be bothered? Because it makes the whole creative industry look like a bunch of cowboys. A group of constantly shifting characters who think that the agency name, bright orange furniture, table football and hastily constructed branding processes (always given absurd names such as Brandcarrot©) makes them attractive to clients. <sigh>. I suppose it works occasionally because clients can become blinded to what a good agency can do for them because there are so many flag waving charlatans out there obscuring the view.