Quick. In a sentence tell me what your agency is all about.
Come on, we don’t have all day.
Ad People Can’t Seem To Sum Themselves Up
Darren Woolley is the founder and global chief executive of TrintityP3, an independent global marketing management consulting company.
Q. A what?
A. He’s a consultant.
Over the past two decades, I have seen more than a thousand agency credentials presentations, either in reviewing an agency or as part of the pitch process. I am often asked to help agencies refine and sharpen their agency stories.
You would think that advising a company that is tasked with developing their client’s brand story would be redundant. But for some reason, very few advertising agencies appear to know how to tell their story.
Ad people often advise their clients that they’re much too close to the problem to see it the way the customer sees it. I make this argument every chance I get.
Ad agencies make bad clients of themselves for the same reason. The agency heads in the room want to tell everyone about all their achievements. In total unawareness, the same agency heads later in the day advice clients to drop their laundry lists of features and benefits, and focus on providing value to the customer.
Again, Woolley weighs in:
Unlike a list of facts and features, a great agency story captures the single-minded thought you want the audience to remember and associate with your agency. It is memorable, based on the truth of the agency and creates a desire in the audience to know more.
There have been some great one lines that capture the agency story, the promise of a benefit that makes the agency distinctive and memorable in the mind of the advertiser and the industry. I am sure you would be able to name these agencies just on the lines from their agency stories such as ‘Nothing is Impossible’, ‘Brutal Simplicity’, ‘The Disruption Company’, ‘Truth well told’ and more. But the agency story is not these lines, the story, like all great stories, is in the telling.
I don’t know about you, but I do not attach the taglines above to an agency, except for one. I do know McCann’s line because “Truth Well Told” is copywriting gold. The entire industry ought to adopt this line, or more precisely, the inherent promise in it.
Now, back to the beginning. Quick. In a sentence tell me what your agency is all about.
Come on, we don’t have all day.
