In marketing, experience is king – or so we’re told. Brands don’t just want an agency; they want a proven track record, award-winning campaigns, and big-name clients.
But here’s the industry’s best kept secret – agencies don’t create great work, people do.
When a company awards a contract based on past agency work, they assume they’re buying that success. The reality? The strategists, creatives, and producers who made those campaigns great may have long since moved on. The knowledge, the thinking, the magic, it’s not in the agency, it’s in the people.
Mark Ritson has famously torn into marketing’s obsession with “shiny agency brands” over real strategic thinking, calling it “bullshit masquerading as best practice.” And he’s right. The industry is set up to reward reputation over reality.
Referral bodies and procurement processes reinforce the illusion… they tend to choose agencies based on historic work rather than who’s actually behind the ideas today. That’s like picking a football team based on trophies won a decade ago, without checking if the same quality of players, coaches and the manager are still in the squad today.
Famous adman Bill Bernbach once said, “Creativity may be the last unfair advantage we’re legally allowed to take over competitors.” If that’s true, why aren’t brands demanding to know who their creatives actually are?
Instead of buying into agency legacy, brands should insist on transparency and be asking some pretty basic questions:
While some brands do take individual talent into account, it’s surprising how little emphasis is placed on the people behind the work in most new business pitches.
Imagine if marketing case studies worked like film credits. You wouldn’t watch a movie just because “Warner Bros. made it”… you’d want to know the director and the cast. So why do brands settle for just the agency name?
The industry loves to talk about experience, but it’s time to start valuing the right kind of experience. If marketing is all about people, let’s stop pretending agencies alone are the reason campaigns succeed.
What this means in practice is that agencies should feel proud of the work that their people can claim credit for. Let’s see a showreel of their work, see their thinking, and their successes. After all, they’re the ones who’ll be doing the work.
Next time you’re choosing an agency, forget the logo and ask for the names.
