AGENCY SEARCH - CHOOSING AND USING AGENCIES

We are Europe's leading agency independent search and selection consultancy across all the marketing communications disciplines.

Finding the right agency fit, intelligently and impartially

We help our clients to find ALL TYPES OF AGENCY – advertising, media, PR, new and digital media, BTL, TTL, business consultancy, brand positioning, brand valuation, design, market research, packaging and NPD, sales promotion and event management.    

When we are selecting agencies for a specific client brief, we don’t just present them with a long list. Instead, each agency we put forward is hand-picked from careful research; intelligently sourced and considered before making it to our recommended short list.  

It is important that clients visiting this page understand that we are unique in that we are not a registration company – this means that we do not take money from agencies so that we can then recommend them to our clients.  

Agency search has now moved on from the days where agencies just pay to be on lists so that they can then get to meet clients. Registration companies will feel obliged to recommend agencies because they pay, and this can’t be impartiality at its best.

Professional accompaniment

Marketing and procurement professionals now rationalise the need for guardianship throughout the selection process.  

The IPA and ISBA also recommend clients get professional help. During our process we encourage our clients to ‘act themselves’ and not what is written on their business card. Working with us will be cathartic - and that’s a promise.

Getting you and your new agency relationship started

Our process will get you to a point where you have 80% confidence in the ideas that have been developed by a winning agency during the process –you will then be able to take the ideas and your new agency forward through to implementation. 

We have nailed the myth that ideas developed during the process of agency selection are wasted. Norwich Union, Halifax, Diageo, Johnson and Johnson, Vodafone, Yahoo and adidas have all appointed agencies through Agency Insight and have taken the strategies and ideas developed during our pitch process and then turned them into successful campaigns.   

Here are some of the key questions that we address with our clients at the beginning of the process:  
 

  • What will success look like at the end of the process – try not to use the following words in your response: ‘synergies’, ‘harmonisation’, ‘due diligence’ and ‘alignment’. What are the real things that you would like to get from this?
  • If you are looking for ‘innovation’ - use the word in a proper context. Where and how do you want innovation?
  • Are there things that you think your brand should be doing that you really need to tell agencies at the briefing stage? It is better to do this than to regret not mentioning it when you see the agencies’ ideas.
  • Are you running this process to save money?  If so, please tell us the circumstances, and we will be able to advise you on other strategies that may not require a tender.
  • What will the brief ask agencies to do in order to further your business objectives?
  • Why has your existing agency not been working to these objectives already?
  • Has your brief really understood the changing climate of global media consumption?
  • What has been good, not-so-good and what could have been better about the incumbent relationships that you have? 
In our experience, great ideas come from small groups of people that like each other and bad ideas come from large groups of people that don’t.

To see some of the projects we have completed in agency search and selection, please see the links, below:

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