Stop pitching like it’s 2012: The new rules for growth – with Duncan Wood (ENGL) | #36

Was können Agenturen heute tun, um wirklich neue Kunden zu gewinnen – und warum entscheidet oft schon die Website über Erfolg oder Absage?

Darüber sprechen unsere belgischen Teamleader-Kollegen Robin und Louis in der neuen englischsprachigen Podcastepisode - mit dem Gast Duncan Wood, dem Managing Director von Ingenuity – Europas größtem Vermittler zwischen Agenturen und Marken.

Ein spannender Deep Dive in die Welt von New Business, Pitches und Positionierung.

Viel Spaß beim Zuhören!

An dieser Stelle möchten wir euch mal verraten, worum es uns und unserem Partner Teamleader in diesem Podcast überhaupt geht. Wir laden zu jeder Folge spannende Persönlichkeiten aus der Agenturszene ein, mit ihrem Wissen und Ihren Erfahrungen möchten wir Inspiration und Motivation schaffen. Am Puls der Zeit für die Agenturwelt.

Und genau dort setzt Teamleader mit seiner leistungsstarken Agentur-Software an. Diese hilft bereits über 4000 Agenturen dabei, Terminfristen einzuhalten, Budgets zu kontrollieren, Gewinnmargen zu steigern, Kapazitäten zu planen und vieles mehr. Damit ihr euch voll und ganz auf eure Kreativität konzentrieren könnt. Von Agenturen für Agenturen und los geht's mit unserer heutigen Folge. When we're working with brands, we hear things from brands about agencies that they would never tell agencies.

And therefore, I cannot tell you how important it is for an agency to have a really good shop window, a really good digital estate. It's so, so key. The amount of clients that will cancel an agency without even speaking to them, just from how their website looks, whether their blog's updated.

It's so, so important. And and because people are nice and brands don't wanna be negative towards an agency, and that's that's a nice thing. That's a human instinct. A lot of these agencies don't hear it, but we do.

Is your agency still doing business development as if it's two thousand and twelve in this competitive market? Then you might be in trouble.

Welcome back to Agency Live, the podcast where we explore what it really takes to run a modern agency without losing your mind, your margins, or your lunch breaks. My name's Robin.

And I'm Luise. And today, we will discuss the most euphoric, nerve wracking, and sometimes heartbreaking part of agency life, bringing in new business, the dream clients, the dead end pitches, and the long shots that somehow land.

We're joined today by someone who's seen every stage of the pitch process from close by and who's actively reshaping how agencies and brands find each other. Duncan Wood is managing director of growth at Ingenuity, Europe's largest connector of agencies and brands.

Ingenuity helps run two hundred and fifty pitches a year. They host matchmaking events like Mad Fests, and they guide agencies and brands on building better relationships before the first slide deck is even opened. So if you've ever thought there must be a better way to grow my agency, this one is for you.

But but but before we dive in with Duncan, a short message from our sponsor, team leader Orbit.

Business development isn't just about landing the pitch. It's about staying on top of your pipeline, your team's capacity, all of it. So that's where team leader Orbit comes in. It helps agencies track every deal, every prospect, and every open thread while giving you real time insights into margins, planning, and billability.

So you're not just chasing growth, you're managing it properly. Find out more at team leader dot e u slash orbit and book your free assessment today.

Hello, Duncan. Welcome to the show.

Hey. Let's let's start our questions for today by using the old funnel, more specifically, the top of the funnel from an agency's perspective. Now you said before that it used to be quite possible to just grab a coffee with a marketing director. What changed?

Yeah. Look. I I still think it's it's possible if you mix in the right circles, etcetera, etcetera. I think what I meant there more and, actually, what's more relevant is when we talk about the whole industry and we talk about agencies from, you know, from all shapes and sizes, I think that comment is very relevant.

I think it's become a lot more competitive now.

There are a lot more agencies out there. So it's a, you know, less demand, high supply marketplace.

I think that's that's pretty clear to see.

You know, the UK market is about twenty five thousand agencies in the UK.

And I'm sure it's wider across, you know, I'm sure it's a lot wider across, across Europe. But, I mean, not all of those agencies are are big. So the majority, probably eighty percent are between zero and maybe zero and twenty twenty people.

So it's a it's a large amount of agencies. So how do they get time with with a marketing director? And I think the reason why it's less easy nowadays is it's a bit of time. I think it's a little bit of, like, I'm trying to think of the the term where you have too much choice.

The burden of choice.

Yeah. There's a there's a specific term for it. I can't think of it now. But when you have so much choice and every single agency now will say they can do what a brand is asking for, you know, I've got a brief. Who can do it? Every agency puts their hand up even if they maybe aren't perfect for it.

So I think brands now have got a a really difficult difficult job in navigating the agency landscape and therefore have become a little bit more closed to taking meetings willy nilly. So I think that's probably one of the key reasons.

It's more, it's it's more just an absolute multiple of agencies in the last ten years. I think we've seen that change. And probably ten, fifteen years ago, you had agencies that were quite clearly in certain disciplines.

And if you go back long enough, it was advertising, PR, DM.

Mhmm. You know, in in the twenty years I've been doing this, you've seen, obviously, the whole digital space open everything up. So I think it's more just a a a fear of not really knowing how to navigate the the landscape from a brand point of view. Yeah?

Yep. I would I would guess that the word we were previously looking for might have been the commodification.

Everybody's doing it, so it's not worth anything anymore?

Yeah. A little bit. I think commodification is is quite a strong word actually because I think there you know, when you talk about worth, I think there is definitely value in worth. I think it's just a a blurring, and that's quite that's quite jarring for for brands.

I mean, it's good for our business because we help brands navigate the agency landscape. But from a brand point of view, that's that's tricky. You know? And I can see why they are a little bit more they hold off a little bit more.

So if you look at, like, the typical buying cycle now of a brand, they meet an agency way farther into that buying cycle than they ever used to. So they consume a lot of content. They look at a lot of content. They make judgment without meeting agencies, you know, far further into the buying process than they used to.

Mhmm. Does that mean that that content in in the top of funnel approach of agencies has become more and more important in the in the past years?

Yeah. It has. Definitely. And I know, you know, some of the questions that we're gonna get on to around agencies marketing and their content, I think, will become and has become incredibly important.

So, yes, to answer your question like shop window and how you look and how you come across is, like do you know what's really interesting?

When we're working with brands, we hear things from brands about agencies that they would never tell agencies.

And therefore, I cannot tell you how important it is for an agency to have a really good shop window, a really good digital estate. It's so, so key. The amount of clients that will cancel an agency without even speaking to them just from how their website looks, whether their blog's updated.

It's so, so important. And and because people are nice and brands don't wanna be negative towards an agency, and that's that's a nice thing. That's a human instinct. A lot of these agencies don't hear it, but we do.

So yeah.

Can you give an example of something that Rand says to you, but not to the agency directly?

Oh, I mean, there are so many examples, but, you know, I'm looking at this agency's blog. They haven't updated it in the last six months. You know, how are they gonna stay relevant and reactive and on point for my brand? Or, you know, this website looks out of date if they can't look after themselves.

How can they how can they help us stay front of mind and stay ahead? And lots of that kind of comments that you just that that that a brand would never say to an agency, but we hear that. So that kind of stuff's really important. Yeah.

Okay.

You've seen many agencies try to get noticed by brands. From your perspective and from your conversations, what separates the agencies who just show up on the radar from the ones who actually make a lasting impression and and get the business?

Yeah. Yeah.

It's a good question.

I think I think I think the very nature of how businesses and people, it's not just business. This is like us.

It's very, very, we want it now, and it needs to we need to achieve something now. And I think one of the biggest things that hopefully will get across in in the time we got to speak today is the appreciation of how long things can take in the new business space. And that's not saying be patient, but a brand being aware of who you are. You may not know if they're particularly aware of who you are because they might not reach out and say I want to meet you. You were amazing.

Now there are different types of MELs, marketing engaged leads that you can look at, and there are signals and markers that you can spot.

But, you know, a a typical buying cycle, there is nothing wrong with the appreciation of winning a client might take a year. You know, it might take a year and a half. And I think a lot of agencies now are thinking, well, why am I not getting an immediate traction? Why am I not getting bought? Why am I not getting buying signals immediately? So as you have a a more competitive agency landscape, you know, I think that the appreciation of the fact that new business can take time.

So how does that come full circle to answering your question about, you know, which of the agencies that are getting, I think, awareness the fastest you spoke about?

I really, really strongly believe that simplicity, I think, of your proposition, and we'll come on to talk about propositions later, is key. But also also really thinking about the types of people that are showing up in front of clients.

Again, we're probably jumping around a little bit here, and we'll maybe come to that when we talk about effective pitching. But I do think that some agencies and I know this is really difficult when you haven't got many people in your business. Some some agencies will think, right.

These three people here, these will always be the people that do new business for our agency. These will be the people that meet clients all the time. And, actually, you need to think about what types of clients would like, what types of people in terms of how they show up, how they speak about stuff in your content, etcetera. So I think that's really important to to to people match.

But one thing we have seen a lot about people that are getting more awareness from brands is the value add piece.

So naturally, when you have more agencies in a marketplace, you need to offer a little bit more value to brands in order to gain traction. Mhmm. And that might mean doing some research. That might mean being going the extra mile and having some opinions.

Not giving away the answers, but maybe giving away more than you might think you have to. And I know some people feel very strongly about, you know, that's our IP. That's what brands should pay for. I think they need to wake up a little bit and understand how competitive the environment is.

And I think that's really, really key. And I'm not asking you to give away creative ideas to give away the answers or solutions. But, certainly, let's say if you're putting on an event to attract people, there needs to be a real strong value exchange there. And when I say exchange, the more value you put in, the more exchange of traction and awareness that you'll get back.

I think a lot of a lot of agencies might sit there and think, well, we've done some good work for this client. Why aren't people calling us, or why aren't people getting in touch?

I think you need to offer a lot of value, and a lot of that's being done through good content or events, etcetera. You know, we're seeing a lot of events working really, really well, agencies putting on their own events and attracting people. I think that's a a really strong methodology at the moment.

Is this the era where agencies should really invest more in in presales than they did before, like twenty years ago? More personalization, getting the right people in front of the right people Yeah. Organizing events and whatnot, giving away, let's say, more value upfront to close the deal.

Yeah. I think, I think what's really key here for agencies and brands or both is to understand the kind of the the horses for courses is a term that we've got in in in the UK. I don't know if that's something similar in Europe. It basically means the right horse for the right course or the right course for a horse. Mhmm.

I think you you need to when you to answer that question really well, I then you need to look at the different, like, ICPs, we call them. So ideal customer profiles. So if you are a a smaller independent agency, that doesn't mean that you can't work with a really big brand, but it depends on what that brand is looking for. So let's say and equally, if you're a big agency.

So a nice example would be so let's say I'm a a a big integrated creative agency, and I wanna target an airline. You know? I don't have an airline, and I'm and I really wanna work with an airline. It may be the case that the ten big airlines in the UK or across Europe are all working with agencies at the moment in that space.

So, therefore, rather than not thinking about you know, they might all be working with an agency. They might all currently be on a two two year contract.

This sort of information is possible to find out.

You need to really then understand what does good look like for you with airlines. Clearly, you're not going to win an airline this year unless one of those agencies mucks up or, you know, does a really bad job and gets fired. So what's what does success look like for you with an airline? It may be that by the end of this year, if every marketing director at those airlines at least knows your agency or has heard of it or has turned up to an event that you've done or has downloaded a piece of content, that's success.

You're on their radar. They're not in buying mode, and they might not be for another year and a half. So I think it's an appreciation of how long these types of things can take. I think sometimes, going back to my point earlier, agencies can can feel like they need stuff a bit quicker.

But equally, you have a lot of smaller independent agencies who can offer more disruptive tactics, new, new discipline work, new styles of approach, and they can go to brands that are maybe less of those bigger brands.

And those brands tend to be more receptive and more, I think, reactive to smaller agencies, and that's where work can be picked up a bit quicker. So more project based stuff as opposed to two, three year retainers.

I think that's really where a lot of independent agencies can win a lot of work. A lot of smaller independent agencies can win work in those kind of spaces. So you might call them, like, tier two brands or tier three brands.

We're gonna dive into the, indie versus more giant agencies in a minute, but you said something very interesting.

The appreciation of how long something like this will take. Do you think agencies have the financial breathing room to say, alright. We wanna land an an airline in twenty twenty seven, so we better invest our time and resources now?

It depends again on what your agency's commercial model is, what you're set up to do, you know, whether you you wanna scale the business or not. But some of the successful agencies we see growing in a sustainable way is a is a kind of a two pronged attack. So they might be looking at attack is a bit of a strong word. Sorry.

A kind of two pronged approach, where actually, you know, the flexibility to be able to work on multiple projects and also then look at building up bigger retained pieces of work, I think is a really healthy way to look at things. So and some of those projects, you know, you might be looking at a a hundred, two hundred k project, a fifty k project with a brand that you know if you can do a good job and is certainly maybe in a slightly smaller space. Your your agency needs to be able to take that on, but also, you know, across the next two years, it would be great to win two retained pieces of work at five hundred k each.

You know? And I think that kind of two tier mentality is really, really important.

So to answer your question, you know, it's not about consistently putting all your eggs in one basket from a new business point of view trying to win those two big pieces of work. Your business if that doesn't pull off, you've wasted a lot of time and money. Right? So you need to be able to think about what your your smaller project by project approach is as well. I think that's a really healthy way to run an agency.

Is there, like, an ideal distribution between this long term, trying to win the big airline and these short term, building on on existing clients? How how much of the budget should agencies invest in the long term?

I think that depends on the type of agency and the type of work and and, you know, are we talking about communications? Are we talking about creative? Are we talking about tech? I think it really depends, Louise, in terms of what your breakdown is or you may already have one you you know, this is typical of a lot of smaller agencies. They'll have one big client, and they'll be so reliant on that client that they lie awake at night so nervous should they lose that client. Now clearly, you know, trying to win one other big client, that could be quite dangerous, although it sounds like a clever move.

If it's gonna take a year to win another client, that's a long time to wait. So, actually, you probably need to invest more in building up some project work.

But, yeah, it depends on which agency you're talking about, really.

Mhmm.

You work with both designs and the indie shops.

Where do these smaller agencies have the edge compared to the to the large agencies?

Where do they have the edge?

Yeah. Look. I mean, the interesting thing there is and I need to be really, really clear in terms of what I say here because I don't I I don't really mean what I'm gonna say, but not many brands want to work with huge cumbersome, and no big agency will say they're cumbersome. Of course, they won't. But the reality is the the reality is they're less flexible and smaller agencies. Right? Yeah.

So no brand really wants to have a a big slow moving agency model. Sometimes they just have to do it because of the global situation or the global lay down of that agency or the ability for them to produce assets at scale that a smaller agency can't.

So I think what those smaller agencies need to do is, one, obviously, concentrate on working with the types of brands that maybe the bigger agencies can't. So that's naturally a much smaller pool that they can work with there, which is great, and slightly more pinpoint to them. But they also need to think about how they can be attractive to bigger brands and how they can I'm I'm not gonna come on to talk about something that I'm hearing so much from brands at the moment is brands are looking for agencies that can help them see two or three years ahead.

So a lot of agencies will get caught up in the now and how they can help brands now. And I know that's important and it is for their current clients, but the one thing that we keep getting are certainly currently because I don't think I have ever seen so much change going on in the marketing industry and within the agency model space as I'm seeing at the moment.

It's I know that everyone says that every year, but at the moment, it's really, really speeding up.

And, therefore, I think a lot of these smaller agencies have the ability to be quite disruptive and talk to brands in a way that can help them foresee what's happening in the next couple of years.

And I think maybe some of the bigger agencies have probably got a model that they need to feed and work with, and that probably makes them a little bit slow and less flexible even though they can see ahead. They can't change fast enough. So I think that's one of the big things that smaller agencies have got going for them that that bigger agencies haven't. Yeah.

Mhmm. I had an AI question for you.

Oh my god. I knew you were gonna ask one.

Yeah. Yeah. It's it's it's a small one.

It's a small one.

There's all sorts of AI tools. You know this, but there's also this the category of, AI tools for business development. Now some say they might undermine the human touch and make outreach feel a bit generic. Others believe they will free up time and improve targeting.

What's your take?

I think there's lots of things that we do in our, I mean, in our general lives, which AI can help. Right? And this this is a pretty obvious question, answer to your question. But I think some of the menial tasks that people do can you can save so much time using using AI. I'll tell you one thing that's been incredible as well. And certainly from a global point of view where people are doing a lot of this stuff, you know, we're talking talking online here rather than face to face.

I think the ability for AI to and I I'm not I don't know. Maybe twenty times a week, I speak to a brand about what their challenges are. And I sit on a call and I hear from them what their challenges are.

And my job is to help that brand understand what those challenges are, help them translate that into what that can mean from an agency requirement point of view, what that can then look like from an agency brief point of view, and then how that's translated to an agency.

There are some tools that will sit with me on a call.

Yeah. And at first, I thought there is no way that these tools are gonna be able to understand what this client is talking about. Clearly, I'm prompting them in a clear and relevant way as in not the tools, but the client. So I'm asking good questions to the client.

Every time these tools come back with an unbelievably clear, absolutely bang on dissemination of what has been talked about, how that can then be pushed forward into an agency brief, that kind of stuff for a new business team is is absolutely fascinating, and that can speed up a lot of, a lot of time and a lot of effectiveness. So I think when it comes to, you know, capturing information and making that clear across a business, I think it's brilliant.

Very rarely get it wrong. You know? Very impressed with that. So I think that's where it's great.

K. Thanks for that.

Let's, go to the next topic, which another big one about the old pitching process. You probably see hundreds, or dozens of pitches a year. What do you think is broken about the current traditional pitching model?

Okay. So I feel quite strongly about this.

And there's a few things to to talk about here. I think when people and the word traditional has, for some reason, in our industry and my god. We could go into depth on this. But for some reason in our industry in other industries, traditional is a really good thing. Right?

In our industry, people tend to hate the word traditional. It's kind of against the very nature of of what we do in the marketing industry. Right? We're always trying to look ahead. What's next? What's next? What's next?

There are some really bad connotations around the word traditional.

And actually, look, I think it would be maybe I should say the word stupid. I'm gonna say the word stupid. I think it would be stupid to think that there will never be a competitiveness to new business. Right? There are gonna be businesses who need to compete to win something, and that's fine. I think the negativity around pitching is from behaviors, not the model or, the way a competitive situation.

It's a really fine line. Right? There are a lot of bad behaviors that could be no feedback. That could be ghosting.

That could be not giving agencies budgets when they start the pitch process, bad briefing. These are all behaviors.

They're not a model. So when people talk about, you know, is it broken, etcetera, there's always gonna be a competitive element to new business. I think the key is just ensuring that brands understand what the right behaviors are when it comes to competitive environments. Right?

And I think I will I will say this absolutely. There are no brands out there that want to behave really badly. Just doesn't happen. It's just no brands want to behave badly towards agencies.

They just don't understand different. They don't understand any better. And I think the key job is to help brands understand what good behavior looks like in a pitch.

Now, yes, there are a couple of things where you could say and this is what I mean by the fine line. So when you say model, is having too many agencies in a pitch process, is that the model or is that bad behavior?

I'd call that bad behavior.

Right. So, actually, it's kind of bad behaviors that people are a bit upset about as opposed to the competitive pitch. I think if a competitive pitch is run really well either by the brand or by an intermediary, great. Everyone's always happy with that. Clearly, the winner is often more happy. But, you know, I I think that's a really, really key thing is to understand the difference between behavior and model.

Now one thing I would say, and this is typical, right, in the pitch space, everyone always talks about this, and they always you know, the most noise we hear about the traditional model or the pitch is broken or where's it going is from the creative industry.

So in the creative space. And let's not forget, that is quite a small part of the marketing industry now. Mhmm. And becoming more and more small.

You know? So there is a world of tech pitches going on out there. There is a world of PR pitches. There's a world of I mean, there are so many different disciplines now where pitches are happening.

And I think you just need to take into account that not every pitch is a creative or an advertising pitch. That's that's that's now the minority. You know?

I do think that you need to look at the amount of budget that's being invested by brands, and therefore, the level of endurance that you're asking agencies to go through for that budget, I'm I'm I'm absolutely fine with that. And, you know, there is a lot of people out there that say we need the pitch to change, the pitch to change. The pitch is changing. You just need you just maybe haven't been involved in some of those pitches that are changing.

Ingenuity for one, and the Ingenuity group. We have a variety of different flexible models depending on what the brand is looking for and the budget they've got to spend. And in many cases, they might come to us and say, no. We're we're looking for an agency.

We will tell them to go and talk to two people and decide which one they liked because their budget's here.

The the budget is of a certain level. The amount of agencies out there are a certain level, and we have the confidence that those two are right. They don't need to go through a competitive situation for that. It can be a lot smaller. So, yeah, I think there's a lot of noise, and I know where that noise is coming from. And I I I think it's slightly misplaced if I'm honest.

Mhmm. Yep.

So let's take Ingenuity as an example, the way you organize pitches. What according to you entails a healthier modern pitch?

Yeah.

Really, really, really open communication and complete honesty. And I one thing I would say that I found so so much over the last, I don't know, four or five years, is there seems to be in the in the in the traditional intermediary space we're not a traditional intermediary, far from it. In the traditional intermediary space, maybe a little bit of, like, fear to tell the clients what they need to do. And when I say clients, obviously, I mean the brands. Mhmm.

Brands are really, really open to whatever it is that's gonna get them the best result.

And if the best result is, you know, real openness with the agencies around certain things, and there are a huge list of things that we could go into there around budgets, around even in some cases, as long as, you know, you'd need to make sure that the incumbent agency knows if they are gonna be taking part again. But openness about the types of agencies that are involved, that's really important.

There's so much that goes into it, but it's just openness and and a confidence as an intermediary to talk to a brand to tell them, look.

You know, at the end of the pitch, are you likely to want to tinker with maybe some of the results and that you've heard, because you might have a a difficult decision making process to go through? Yeah. We might be. Well, in that case, you need to make sure that on top of the fee that you might be asking paying the agencies or contributing towards the agencies pitch fees, you might need to contribute some more, which will enable them to do some reworks around that kind of stuff.

And the brand's like, okay. Fine. Completely agree with that. So I think it's just maybe a laziness of not being really confident and open with all the people involved.

I think that's probably where it happens a lot Mhmm. Where it goes wrong.

You mentioned pitch feeds. It's interesting that in UK, this is this is common to to use pitch feeds because in the Netherlands and in Belgium, we hear that agencies don't get those fees often.

It's it's becoming more common in certain areas. Right? So I think it's something that again, it kinda depends on the endurance levels that a brand is asking an agency to go through within the pitch process. You know, if they're asking them to fly people in from different countries, etcetera.

There's a balance there. I think there's a really healthy balance. Like, clearly, if there's a big prize to be won and it's a huge account and, you know, that's gonna be really important for the agency from a commercial point of view, then, you know, the agency needs to put some efforts into winning that. And and, you know, you, you know, you you you put money towards that as an agency.

That's a cost of new business. But equally, it's really, really important that the a that the client understands the levels of in the levels of cost involved. Now what we're seeing is more certainly from ingenuity, I can speak from our from our point of view. We're asking, brands to contribute towards some of the the costs involved from an agency perspective.

We're probably not seeing brands reach the entire cost of of a of a pitch for an agency.

I I don't know whether we'll ever see that. We might. I think it's it's becoming better. I think it it's improving in terms of people respecting that, actually, we probably need to contribute towards that, and that comes from a variety of areas like us as a as a as an intermediary. You know, we we recommend to the to the client that they should do that. I think it's a good sign. I think it's a sign of of good partnership.

It doesn't happen everywhere, Louise. It doesn't.

And I again, to your point, I haven't heard it anywhere really happening in Europe to a, you know, to a big degree, but I think it's something that's improving for sure.

And therefore, also, if the client can't put fees towards it, they need to then think about what that pitch process is gonna look like so that it doesn't take the agencies through a huge, you know, cost pool, so to speak.

You mentioned that the best agencies can explain their value in about ninety seconds or less. What in your eyes would make a great ninety second value pitch?

So, yeah, I just think you need to from an agent's perspective, I think you always need to be quite customer centric. So who's the customer of the brand? Right?

So you can look at this in a number of ways. You could look at it right.

What type of brand do we want to attract? And, therefore, your proposition should say, you know, we are an agency for this type of brand. So you can look at it that way, and that makes you quite narrow and quite attractive to the right type of brand. You could look at it the other way around.

So how will a brand end up from working with this agency? You know? So we are a brand that help we are an agency that helps brands get here. So it's all about customer centricity, I think, is really, really clear in the proposition.

I think there is so much, waffle, jargon, self love of the wrong type that goes into agency proposition sometimes, a brand. You look at all the different types of brands that you can think of whether it's a retail brand. They need to sell food.

They need to sell cars.

These are quite, like, basic things that people need to achieve, marketers need to achieve. So I think being really super clear and quite commercial in your approach, I think, is really, really important. Now that is not to say that an agency culture is important. Of course, it's important. But if you're talking about hooking a brand off cold and making it super clear, you know, we are we are an agency that helps brands get here, or we are an agency for this type of brand. Like, really, really clear stuff. I think that's you could take a lot from that if you're an agency, and I think you'll find that that simplicity will get you cut through much faster than anything else.

So less waffle, more focus.

Yeah. Which sounds really generic. Right? Everyone probably says that in every business around the world, less waffle, more focus.

But, actually, agency propositions, like, you know, some agencies can lose their heads in stuff and it all becomes, like, so self fulfilling. And, actually, you need to strip it back to what brands want. You know, what are the types of brands you wanna work with and what do those brands need to achieve? Set your proposition around that.

And I think that's really, really key.

Yeah.

We often hear agencies, indeed, mostly creative agencies, like you said, but, who are very credible critical towards the pitching process. And we'd actually prefer that pitches just don't exist anymore, and they can just drink coffee with people and have chemistry meetings.

What would you say to those agencies who believe pitches should stop existing?

There's two different things here. One is I think it's unrealistic for certain brands to be able to do that because they can't. You need to understand the governance of some of these businesses.

You know, a bank in the UK can't. They're not allowed to legally. They have to go through a competitive situation. They're just not allowed to. And when you're talking about millions and millions of pounds worth of fee going to an agency, if they get that wrong by choosing one agency without, you know, doing the right due diligence, they will get fired.

People lose their jobs over this kind of stuff. So there's a lot of, like, unrealistic chitchat about that. Now clearly, I'm all for if there is no governance and the agency has got a great relationship and they fought their way into getting a good relationship with that marketing director and that marketing director appoints them without a pitch. Brilliant. Happy days. That's amazing.

But you need to understand that a lot of brands, you know, are their governance means that they have to go through a competitive situation.

It just can't not happen. So I think that's that's quite unrealistic in certain in certain situations. Yeah.

There's this saying, the plumber sinks always leaks or the cobbler's children have no shoes or the marketing agency sucks at its own marketing. Why do you think agencies are so bad at marketing their own business?

I don't think they're bad at it. I think they could be really, really good at it, and I think they probably are really, really good at it. It's just a classic mixture of, you know, you ask a to your point, you ask a plumber to do his own sink. He'd probably do it really, really well. It's just maybe they don't understand the importance of it. Going back to my point at the beginning, I think that a lot of agency folk are made up of brilliantly talented strategic leaders, brilliant creative geniuses, but I think actually that sometimes they don't realize the importance of their shop window, and I come back to that beginning piece.

And I guess we're here as an intermediary or as a as a new business and marketing consultant for agencies to let them know that it is so important.

And, yes, people can you know, whenever we say to someone, oh my god, your website really needs to be updated. It looks out of touch. It's not quite relevant. Yes. We know we've been saying that for two or three years. Like, yeah. You need you you need that's really, really important that you get onto this sort of stuff because that's not me saying that clients are fickle.

You might think that, actually, yes, a client should not care just about an agency's website, and they should go and meet that agency. And they should give them two or three chemistry sessions and get to know them, but that's not realistic. It's a really competitive environment.

And I think that so to to answer your point, Louise, I think they're really good at it. They just don't realize the importance of it and maybe don't have enough time.

I think it's probably the best answer there. I don't think they're bad at, you know, at doing their own marketing. I just think they either don't have the time to do it or don't realize the importance. Mhmm.

If you could wave a wand and and fix just one thing in an agency's business development approach, what would that be?

Probably go back to the waffle thing, get to the point.

There is so much in presentations that we see. There is so much in credentials that we see. There is so much in, submissions during pitch processes that we see that you could just cut. It's just not relevant.

And I and I find it really frustrating sometimes, and that's that's that's not the agency's fault. It's just because I've seen it so many times. So that's almost like it's almost wrong for me to get frustrated with it. And, obviously, you know, as you see something enough but, actually, I just wish that agencies would sit back and look at their forty slides and really think about how they can get that down into ten or four or five slides because the clients are just not going to read through that.

They're not going to look at that. They need to get straight into the point really clear into the nub of the the point you're trying to get across. I think it's that's the one thing I would change about about the new business process. I'd I'd always I I'd also think, like, the come come back to the people matching thing, Luis.

It's, like, really, really important that you don't always have the same crew that you think are right for every brand that you go and meet if it's a pitch or a new business meeting or a chemistry meeting.

You need to really think about, like, the people that they're bringing from their side, what your team can offer. You know, if there's someone really junior in your agency, that doesn't mean that they can't go to one of those meetings. That might look really good to that client.

You know, that might client might think, wow. They've, you know, they've brought someone junior here. We've got someone junior. It might be that they're bringing a I know this is this is really cliche about what I'm about to say, but, you know, the client might bring a social media manager or, you know, someone from their tech team along.

Like, make sure that you people match those people because if your senior team and, again, I'm being cliche. If your senior team, you know, can't answer some of the questions or don't fit on that person's wavelength, the chemistry will be bad, and you will not go through to the next stage. Like, that's it's just I see it all the time. So looking at the we guess you call it casting.

Casting's super important.

Mhmm. Yeah.

So should should agencies always do this casting based on on the client's needs, on on the brand's needs, or should an agency have a fixed business development team and then add people You can you can have a fixed business you can have a fixed business development team, but the people that go to the meetings and meet clients or are involved in face to face sessions, etcetera, that is where the the best agencies that we see succeed with us are the agencies that will and this is on the brand side of our business where we help brands find agencies.

It's where the business development team will give me a call and ask me everything about the people at the brand. What are they like? How do they speak?

Are they are they like this? Are they like that? Are they like like, really, like, high level of detail, the questions I get asked about the individuals so that the agency can then cast a team that are really well matched.

And that can be that can be sex. That can be, like, age. It can be it can be so many different things, but it's really, really important that that happens.

When speaking about matchmaking, it kinda revolves around bringing people together. Now with Ingenuity, you've built whole communities around the topic of, business development for agencies. Could you, talk Yeah.

Quickly a bit about that?

Yeah. Sure.

So I think, like, look, communities have always been have always been important. It's not, you know, the word community.

Your local community where you live is important, but I think when we talk about stuff is, I mean, this goes right back to your first question, Robin, around, like, clients and having less time to go and meet people. Right? So what we've started to do is this is for us, but agencies can do this as well.

Absolutely something that agencies can do.

If you're struggling to get traction from cold with brands so how do you how do you get to know brands? You need to bring them together. So brands love to meet other brands, point one. So there's a there's a networking element to it. I like to do that.

There's also a value exchange. So what we thought is how do we get closer to brands as ingenuity? So what we've done is create lots of different communities, and those those can be communities based on the discipline.

Those can be communities based on a job role. So for example, our marketing procurement club, that is a an underserved community. You know, there are people that probably don't have a lot to do or a lot to go to or certainly didn't. They've become now really, really popular.

But a few years ago, they didn't. We started a community, and we put on really interesting events for them. So we get really good speakers. We do good panels.

And, obviously, those people so if I was to send an email to a marketing procurement person saying, hi. Can I come and meet you? I want to talk to you about what I do.

They're probably gonna say no. They won't reply to my email.

Why? Why should they trust me? Right? Even if my proposition's really, really strong, that's quite difficult. You might get lucky now and then. Whereas if we can put a community event on or we can build a community around a bunch of people and give them really good value, ask them to come along to things where they're learning, and there is no better place to get to know people than in an environment where they're learning because they're open.

That, we have done brilliantly, and we've got three, four hundred people in each of our communities. And it's worked really well well for us. You know? That's that's people come along.

They wanna meet other brands. They wanna learn. And if you are the one that provides that environment, then you've already built their trust. And I think that's that's a really, really good learning for for agencies because I think agencies can build their own communities as well.

Very, very clear. Thank you for very much for that, Duncan.

I just have a I just have a final question for you, Duncan. Maybe you can have you can add an anecdote.

I was wondering what the boldest business development move is that you've ever seen from an agency.

Oh my god.

They range. They range from, like, to top of the funnel stuff all the way through to to pitches, to pitch behaviors.

Oh my god. I've seen some some funny things over the years. Like, we have this is when so we would send so from from an agency perspective, when we used to work with agencies, we would one thing we did was, like, we'd send out a little package. This was for an agency we used to work for, helping them from a business development point of view. We used to send out a little box with a mobile phone in it, and it just had one number on it. And it was the number of the MD of the agency.

And this was back when, like, mobiles were kind of not quite what they used to be.

That was quite cool. We did what else did we do? We used to send out, like, the unbinnable letter.

So it was like a sheet of metal, but the letter was on the metal so you can never throw it away. So it just stays on the desk the whole time.

That was quite amusing.

Yeah. All the way through to pitches. We've seen some some crazy stuff in in pitches from agencies.

You know?

No. Or even, like, some agencies who have pulled out knowing that the client loved them at the beginning of a process.

They've tried to pull out of the process to get the agent, to get the client, to appoint them so they don't have to go through the pitch.

That never worked. It never worked.

But, yeah, we've seen some bold stuff over the years for sure. Mhmm.

Yeah.

Bold is good.

Bold is good indeed. Bold gets you noticed.

Correct.

Hopefully, in the right manner. Yeah. How about a little closer, Luise?

Yes. Let's do that.

Zooming out, we heard today that patience is virtue in business development for agencies.

Brands are always looking for agencies who can help them look ahead two to three years. And the most important thing that I remember is the difference between a broken pitch model and just wrong behavior, in pitches. But also, if you think pitches are going away, you're naive because they're always gonna be you.

Yep.

I think a really, really important thing that I have seen in the last few years from a business development point of view is that the CMO and the marketing director are not always the most important person at a brand. Agencies always fall for this. They always think those are the people they wanna speak to. And given the way that brand organizations are set up now, everyone at every level can be a really important influence for your agency to get buy in a brand.

Really, really key.

Yep. We heard that, coincidentally, also recently that you indeed you have to get, on the big work table, not just with the CMO, that will get you farther as an agency. Yeah. Where can people find out more about your work or connect with Ingenuity?

Yeah. Great. Thanks for that.

So if you go to ingenuity london dot com, you'll find, a lot of our services and products.

But, yeah, have a have a look at that. Also, have a look at, the ingenuity group dot com, which is our group website, and you'll find all the businesses that we own there, including the likes of Madfest, which is obviously the UK's biggest marketing festival. And you'll see all the work that we do for brands, agencies, our communities, etcetera. But I I would love talking to you guys today. So thanks so much for your time.

Same here. Thank you, Duncan.

For joining us. Duncan, next time, let's do this in a London pub. Right?

Yes. For sure.

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