Marketing in the Madness
Marketing in the Madness brings you expert insight and ideas for marketing success and gives you the tactics you need to grow your brand, your business and your career. You’ll hear from the heads of major brands to top influencers and female powerhouse leaders. Once a month, host Katie Street also shares top tips and strategies (as well as a few secrets) she’s learned from clients, networking and attending events.
Marketing in the Madness
Client-Agency Dynamics In The Age of Digital Disruption with Tony Spong
Client-agency relationships are at the heart of the marketing industry, yet they are undergoing a significant transformation. As business models shift and digital platforms evolve, the dynamics between clients and agencies are being redefined. In the midst of this chaos, those who adapt will thrive, while others risk getting left behind.
Welcome back to another thought-provoking episode of Marketing in the Madness! This week, we’re exploring the client-agency dynamic in a rapidly changing marketing landscape with the brilliant Tony Spong, a veteran of the AAR Group who has witnessed firsthand how the digital revolution is reshaping the industry. Together, we delve into the strategies businesses need to adopt to stay competitive and the crucial role that human connection still plays in a tech-driven world.
In this episode, we don’t just talk about the shifts in marketing—we dissect the evolving client-agency relationships and how agencies can stand out in an increasingly crowded marketplace. Tony’s extensive experience and keen insights make this conversation indispensable for anyone looking to navigate the complexities of modern marketing.
If you’re ready to understand the forces driving change in marketing today, here’s a glimpse of what we cover:
🚀 The Digital Marketing Revolution: Unpack how the shift in business models has transformed marketing strategies and why staying agile is more critical than ever.
🤝 Redefining Client-Agency Relationships: Discover why simplicity, trust, and empathy are now the pillars of successful client-agency relationships and learn how agencies can better position themselves in this new era.
💡 Brand Strategy in the Modern World: Tony shares how brands are pivoting to adapt to market changes and why a strong, consistent brand presence is more vital than ever.
👥 The Power of Human Connection: In an age dominated by digital tools, we explore why face-to-face interactions and maintaining company culture are still crucial to fostering innovation and creativity.
⚡ Standing Out in a Crowded Market: Learn actionable strategies for agencies to differentiate themselves, attract the right clients, and thrive amidst intense competition.
Tony’s deep understanding of the industry and his forward-thinking approach make this episode a must-listen for marketers, agency leaders, and business professionals alike. His passion for helping businesses navigate the complexities of today’s marketing landscape is both insightful and inspiring, offering a fresh perspective on what it takes to succeed in these turbulent times.
Whether you want to refine your marketing strategy, improve client-agency relationships, or stay ahead of the curve, this episode is packed with valuable insights and practical advice.
Tune in now to discover how to future-proof your marketing efforts and build stronger, more meaningful client-agency relationships.
📢 Don’t forget to LIKE & SUBSCRIBE to stay updated with future episodes. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a review and share it with your network. Your support helps us reach more people and continue to share the latest insights from the world of m
Katie Street
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Street Agency
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The digital revolution has sparked lots of new ideas. The model of business has changed, which means the model of marketing has changed.
Katie:Most people nowadays go and search for their next partner through their network, and where did their network live, usually on social media, I had to make quite a scary decision, we're not going to invest in email like we did, and thank God I did. My business will probably be dead.
Tony Spong:A relationship is fundamentally the same based on trust, initial connection. There is about am I talking to someone who can make this feel easy and therefore enjoyable? Because everyone's trying to juggle too many plates. What they want, though, is something subtly different. They want a lot of simplicity.
Katie:I think there's three pillars. One is that attraction content in a more human way. The second one is the prove it piece is, we've done this before, and the third one is make it easy for people to fucking buy you. We're
Tony Spong:an industry of good ideas, and we need an environment that helps facilitate good idea. There's no doubt about it that ideas are slower and it's very hard to understand body language when it's just this bit better
Katie:ideas come from us. Collaborator, you don't build those relationships and build those allies in the business and outside of the business, you can't build them on Zoom. I'm sorry you just can't. Hi guys, and welcome to another episode of marketing in the madness. And we always do what it says on the tin. Talk about the madness of the world of marketing. And today I have with me the fantastic Tony Spong. Now Tony, I'm trying to map back. How long have we actually known it? 10 years, maybe longer. It
Tony Spong:must be because I had bought a new car and I drove it down to Bournemouth when we first met. So that's about 10 years ago. Yeah, it would be so bought a new car, an old new car, as it were.
Katie:Yeah, it would have been because we were working with you guys at an agency that I worked at the time on our value proposition, which is very strange, because now my agency helps other agencies and tech companies with their value proposition. So how the world turns, but essentially so Tony. For those of you that don't know who Tony Spong is, Tony is, well, Tony, I'm gonna let you introduce yourself. Tell us about Tony and the AAR, okay, well,
Tony Spong:start with me. Should I so I joined marketing client side and loved it so much, but was fascinated by the creative element and where that came from, and the alchemy involved in it. So I was very lucky that I got offered a job by one of the agencies that we were working with at the time, and I thought, if I don't do it now, I'll never get it. So I skipped on to the agency side for a number of years, and originally I was going to go back to client side, because I thought I'll see a spread of activities and different solutions, etc, and take that knowledge, but I've ended up in the middle now. So AAR is basically an intermediary that sits between clients and agencies. And the original business was based on simple matchmaking, if you like to say there is too much choice out there. How does a client choose an agency? Could someone help with that choice making? And that's basically where the business started, back in 1975 which, wow, gives you an indication of if it was busy, then what it's like today. There's even more agencies to choose from out there, and everyone trying to earn their pound and dollar, as it were, but we've evolved as well. So over the last few years, we some of our research was indicating that clients have been doing a lot of restructuring, and as a consequence of that restructuring, how they want to do marketing is changing, but they don't know what they don't know about what's out in the marketplace. So we found that we're being dragged upstream a lot more. So they don't even know if they need a new partner or what that partner might be yet, but they've got a straightened out business strategy, which is informing a new marketing strategy. But before they organise their marketing department, as it were they want to know, well, what's possible, and therefore, where should I focus? Sometimes the answers lying with the agencies. They've already got. They've just got to re scope the work with them, and sometimes they've got a clear gap. And again, we can help. So we're working upstream, much more consultative than we were in the in the past, and then that feeds other elements of what we can offer. So we're a much broader business now than we were 10 years ago when we first met, and downstream of that, the we're getting asked with upskilling and training and performance management, because, again, once you've got something new, you kind of go, is it working the way we hoping it's working, and if it's not working, how do I put it right going back to the beginning, which is, well, I don't know what. I don't know about how to put it right either, because the whole thing is new. So we're seeing a lot of work from that one end to the other now. So it's really exciting. So we're hiring more people. We've got different people, different skills, and that sparks fresh ideas. So there's a lot of vibrancy at AR at the moment. And a lot of change in a really exciting way.
Katie:I mean, it's great to have seen how you guys have evolved to what has been a very changing market. And in fact, just off camera or off sound, a minute ago, you were saying in so you've been at the AAR now for 17 years, helping agencies and clients, you know, come together to do brilliant work. But you said something to me that was super interesting, and I feel like this as well, is, you've never seen the world of marketing change so much in the whole 17 years you've been there. No, there's
Tony Spong:some really big questions being asked, partly because there's a lot of new people out there. So, you know, the digital revolution, as we know, has sparked lots of new ideas, some will succeed and others will fail. But all that rapid learning in terms of what works and what doesn't work and where people can fulfill needs, all the way back to Dyson and his digital this, that, and the others and what have you, all the way to how e commerce is changing. The way we buy. You can buy straight off Instagram nowadays, etc, etc, you know, as we know. So there's the business. The model of business has changed, which means the model of marketing has changed as well. And what's been interesting is the speed with which they have to get through the marketing textbook now. And it's really interesting, because everyone wants that unicorn that will have world domination. And you look at the battle between Uber Eats Deliveroo and just eat very quickly, they realised it wasn't just about performance media anymore. They had to build the brand, and now they're splurging huge amounts of money, not only nationally, but then rapidly globally, on on their brand, in order to attract and deliver the next cohort of customers, not just the ones that that were, if you like, the low hanging fruit. So you've got you've got that at one broad level. So you've got the new people learning how to do marketing, making the same mistakes the heritage brands did, but learning faster. Sometimes they're just simply hiring people from the Heritage brands to speed that process up. In the meantime, the heritage brands, the older businesses that have been there a long time, are realising that they have to change now in order to stay alive in some instances, and there's well documented the loss of retail in high streets, etc, and other brands that have disappeared from if you like, that were around in our childhoods and watching them fight back with marketing as well has been interesting. So how, how they adapt to this new world, and how quickly or slowly they adapt to that has a big impact on what they can do. So you've got some people in the digital sphere who are doing brand advertising, and the brand advertising yesterday's are trying to do the digital stuff that the digital so you've kind of got these planets moving around, a marketing ecosystem at the moment, which is absolutely fascinating. And it's, it's where, where I sit, I guess it's the best spectator sport in that regard. I'm very envious. And we get, it's a bit like being at the water cooler. People are coming up, filling up and having a chat. So you kind of get what the issues are from both ends, which is really fascinating.
Katie:Yeah, it's funny, actually, that you talk about, you referenced Uber there because yesterday I got a black cab used just at the Waterloo, got to the station and me and my daughter. I was telling Tony about this. So this is funny, guys. So yeah, my daughter, a week before we go on holiday, has lost her passport. So we got to Waterloo yesterday. She has her appointment at half 11. We missed the first train, and we had a very short period of time to get to the station. So I was like, you take because you can, you can send someone on your behalf to the appointment as well. So I was like, I'll get a black cab. You get the tube and DLR, and let's see who gets there first. She actually beat me. And, fun fact, anyway, the story isn't about that. The story is about the black cabbie. So I got in the black cab, and we were chatting away, and I was, we were talking about Uber and how, you know, that's changed for because he was talking about the knowledge. And I was like, what does it do? Do you have to still retrain on the knowledge? Because you've, you know, obviously, now got, you know, digital has hugely changed the, you know, the game for cavities, let's be honest. But he was like, Yes, you do, but actually, obviously, at get you we can see the speed, we can see traffic. There are things that the knowledge didn't give us. So that was interesting. But one thing that he really made me think was because I was talking about thinking about Uber, because Uber often is cheaper, and that's why you go for let's be honest. That's how they entered the market. But then, because of their approach to world domination and not looking after their cabbies and the drivers not getting paid enough, it's put a lot of people off. Because who ever thought? And I don't know if you know this brand, but literally, as I was talking to him, we drove past the bolt office, and I was like, isn't it funny? Because almost now Uber has become a heritage brand. It's not done in terms of its brand equity. It has lost some because it hasn't treated its people well. And values are important to all of us in terms of the businesses that we give our money to, that they're looking after their people and their staff. I don't shop at places like sheen because. I don't feel it's good, and I don't want to you, I'd rather spend a bit. I mean, I'm lucky that I can spend a bit more, but so I think there's so many moving parts, like Uber has done fantastic things with its brand equity. Like you say, even if you're getting a bolt, or you're ordering a black cab on get you will still say, I'm getting an Uber. It's like, they've, they are they've got the Hoover word, they've got their word. They've earned that. They've done really, really well. However, other brands that I never thought could come into the market, like bolt, who also offer other services, I think in Lisbon, they and, well, various other places, but I've seen that they do the scooters, they do the bikes. So they're taking a different approach, which I mean, I just love, because I've always worked in sales and marketing, I just love seeing how those things are evolving, and how they're able to build their brand equity through digital, through taking different approaches to their think how quickly
Tony Spong:that has happened. I know some some of it, you see brands or businesses that are trying to become brands. I like to look at it that way, and they're still in their teenage years, and yet they've got to almost dress themselves up in a three piece suit. They've, they're trying to be grown ups, but that they're, they're happening so far, yeah, that they're kind of out of, out of step with with that. So it's a fascinating one to watch, interestingly on the knowledge they're putting it to different use. So a friend of mine, uh, coaches and trains cab drivers to do tours around London, so their capacity to store knowledge, so they've now used that in a different way, which is not just how to get from A to B, but how to take tourists on proper tours around London with stacks and stacks of information about the various things, you get a personalised tour in a black cab. So that kills two birds with guns. So they've used, they found the thing that they're really strong at and turned it into something else, and added value beyond just the A to B bit, which I think is brilliant. So that's really, really exciting. So,
Katie:and I think that's what brands are doing, right? It's, it's being more innovative. It's enabling us to try new things. Be brave. I mean, I literally did a post about this this morning on LinkedIn, like, be brave. Just fucking do it. Just don't be scared. Think, fuck it. I'll just try it. And I think that's what's happening in those startups and those newer businesses, maybe a bit more sometimes in the bigger businesses, who have more red tape around what they're allowed to do, but you can see them, you know, NatWest and some of the huge, you know, banking groups have then, you know, got startup past parts of the business. One of my clients is now eon next, which is like the, you know, baby brother or sister of eon that are allowed to break the rules. But, I mean, I just think, Well, why don't you just let the main business break the rules? But it is super interesting, because they're almost starting these smaller, little ecosystems of businesses, or, you know, bearing fruit to a new business that is the rule breaker. And look at them fly, yeah.
Tony Spong:I mean, my my life in marketing started in a new product development department of 50 people at NatWest bank. Wow. Oh, there we go. I didn't even know that, and I landed on that. And here we are again. So and again. Once they built the products that they needed and marketed, they shut the department down because they go, Well, we've got enough products and services now. And of course, that lasted a generation before it happens again. So what you've seen over time is that the innovation or r, d departments of a lot of places, not in some of that, you know, the P and G's of this world. That's, you know, that's their bread and butter. So it's fairly constant, but for the vast majority, you don't need it always on in the past. But now it's really interesting to say, is that a permanent feature or a cyclical feature? So is it one of those where it just needs, we need a moment of refreshment, and then we'll run those products and services through the system, make our money, and then do it again, or in certain quarters. Does it need to be constant? And I think that's a real challenge. I don't know the answer yet, no, but I know this bit was predictable as part of the cycle of renewal, whether it ends up rolling out the same way as it has done in the past, or different, is the kind of bit I'm interested to see from a historical point of view, as it were to say, Well, we did that in the past. I in all this complexity, it's been interesting listening to Byron sharp and Ritson talk about, don't forget the basics. So there are things that are still valuable today that were valuable 2030, years ago, as the foundation stones of good marketing so, but there are different layers to it today, and I think that's finding that's where the excitement is in trying to find out what they are. But how do you integrate them with with established thinking? And I think that's what's hard for some of the bigger organisations where you know it will use the silo word, no doubt, more than once. But you inevitably, you create a silo to optimise something. You know, you go, right? You guys focus on that and optimise the shit out of it. Basically, it gets to a point when you go, but I need to create a new a new one, yeah, let's say more horizontal than vertical, or whatever we it needs to be. You. That transition is hard, and that's why we're in going through this period of consultants from Accenture to McKinsey's all the way down to smaller ones, because change is hard, and often you need someone from the outside to help with that. So you've got that structural thing going on as well, as well as the actual new techniques and things that we're learning to cope with. So as I said earlier, there's so many changes going on at the same time, and watching brands and agencies try and work together on those things is it's fascinating. I mean, it pretty much has to be CEO LED. Yeah, at the moment, someone has to have a plan. Someone has to build the team to deliver the plan. And going where you need that kind of leadership, it's very different, difficult to do it from the bottom. From the bottom up. Yeah, I
Katie:think change is, it's the bravery to make the change. Like, I mean, look, my small little business, and we saw we really started to notice a couple of years ago, because email regulations are changing, we used to run a lot of our, you know, outreach campaigns for our clients. You know, where we're doing lead generation for them via email, and we just started to see the results were getting worse and worse and worse. And it's a huge sign of the times. This is probably happening to lots of people. We've made a huge shift now. So probably 80% of the fantastic results we now deliver for our clients comes through social media. Because, I mean, this is going to lead on to my next question to you, because most people nowadays go and search for their next partner, the tech company they need through their network. And where does their network live? Usually on social media. For us, because we're in B to B marketing, that tends to be LinkedIn. They're not waiting for an email to land in their inbox to find their next partner, tech company, whatever it is to work with, they're going to their network on LinkedIn to ask their network, or to search out or to be served some content. So that's where they live and breathe, and it's the same in our personal lives. So I find everything that I want to buy from a fashion point of view, beauty point of view, things design things for my house paint on so on Instagram, my daughter does it on Tiktok. The world has changed. How we operate has changed. So I had to make quite a scary decision a couple of years ago to go we're not going to invest in email like we did, and thank God I did, because if I'd kept banging that bloody email drum, my business would probably be dead now, like we vastly. I mean, we take a very human led approach to what we do on LinkedIn, which I see lots of videos like this on there, and that's basically what we do for our clients. But it's, you know, it's, it was a kind of scary decision to make, but we had to, we had to just do it. And I'm so glad that we did. And that's, I think you're at larger scales. What's happening, you know, across the world and in many, many businesses, the problem is sometimes the bigger businesses, there's so much to change in terms of staff, you know, the teams that they have, the setup of the business, to make those changes. It's easy when you're, you're me, and you've got 10 staff. Not so easy when you're a huge business, and that changes the whole structure of how you work, yes,
Tony Spong:and you can't it. You know, it's that classic analogy of trying to change your wheel in the fast lane, and that's what you can't stop. And that's and that's why we're, we're locked into short termism and things like that. Everyone's just trying to fight to, well, yeah, we'll get to that in a minute. We'll get to that in a minute. And until it becomes the ultimate car crash, when you go right, we have to stop everything, yeah, because it's got that serious so it's trying to anticipate some of that. So I think management and leadership are learning new skills about how to do this. I don't think it's out the other end yet. Yes, there will be some who are slightly ahead of others, almost a bit like Formula One, where the telemetry gets sent back to some place in Banbury to tell them that by the next time the car comes around, they need to tweak this or that, and they can do that remotely. I mean, it would be brilliant if we could run businesses like that, but that's kind of almost where we've got to get to. That the the nodes that tell us what's going on can be actioned literally immediately. Yeah, rather than it'll take a year for you to sort that out, which it seems to be a lot of the time at the moment. So yeah, it's absolutely fascinating, yeah,
Katie:especially when it comes to technology, which is, you know, the world that we all now play in. Now we've talked a fair bit about how marketing has evolved, and I probably could spend this whole podcast talking to you about that, but of course, you have a lot more knowledge about the client agency relationship. So of course, the world of marketing has changed, therefore, how agencies and clients work together, I also am assuming needs to change. So what, what have you seen in terms of what clients need from agencies, and, I guess, how agencies need to respond to that? I
Tony Spong:mean, it has and hasn't. In a way, some things about a relationship is fundamentally the same based on trust, and clients are after that where what they want, though, is something subtly different. They want a lot of simplicity. They want you to debunk and demystify things. I'm not sure they want you. You to tell them they need to be brave at that moment, I think they want the reassurance that you don't have to be brave, so that they've you've got that you're meeting someone who's done it before. Calm down. Take it easy. Here's this is it's going to be simpler than you think, that sort of language, so that the initial connection there is about, am I talking to someone who can make this feel easy and therefore enjoyable, because everyone is stressed at the moment, everyone's trying to juggle too many plates. So to add to that, you go, I can't cope. So part of this initial engagement, especially if it's going to be a new one, is, how do you fit into an already complicated ecosystem of 17 plus partners, or whatever it is. So some empathy about I'm easy to plug in, or I'm easy to get out, you know, could be just as important. But also how, what are the consequences for the agencies, left and right, above and below, where I come in, and I think those, there's a lot of that not being done and being said initially, and I think that's something to under to say the relationship we're going to have is this, but also I'm going to prove to you about the word collaboration. We'll come back to that in a minute, because I'm going to demonstrate through case study and stuff, how we've collaborated not just with you, but with other agencies and the one. So then the client sat there going, this is going to be easy to buy, and that, that's where it starts. After that, it's the same thing. Everyone is always rushing around. So all the briefs are always rubbish. Both sides admit it. And so some basics of that, we've always had that argument, right? The brief is we've never had time to write a decent so again, we're in a we're in a new world. We're using new tools, new things. Do we expect people to write the perfect brief? Is it likely to have decayed over time and got worse? Well, probably. So again, I think the other aspect of the empathy is about education without being patronising. How do you help them be better marketeers? So I always think the nice situation when you watch two groups come together, the client fundamentally believes if they choose that agency, they will be better at their job. They want to be better at their job. They don't want to give the job to the agency. They want to learn on the job with the agency. And I think that's the heart of the relationship, the mechanics of it, hybrid working always is going to fundamentally change. And again, we're still trying to work out the best ways of all of those, they'll come but at its heart, I if I'm a marketeer on the client side, I I want to learn from you so I can be better. I have to acknowledge that the reason I've hired you is you know something I don't know otherwise, I'll have done it myself. So show me what you know and make it accessible to me in the way that you deliver that. If you make it too complicated, it sounds too and I'm going to go, you're not helping the situation. This feels like it's going to be hard work. And you know, that's the same in all our lives, from a tin opener to a vacuum cleaner to whatever. If it's hard work. You bin it and buy something that's just a little bit easier to use so that, I think, is at its heart. And then, you know, then it's about not making the mistakes that any relationship wants to avoid. Basically, yeah,
Katie:it's funny though, isn't it? Because I think people forget that you're having a relationship. You know, this is, I guess the premise of my entire business, like people buy people gone are the days of your extent. I'm not saying marketing content isn't like needed, but the type of marketing content that you put out needs to change now. It's got to be human LED. People want to buy people. People are buying into having a relationship with you and your team. So therefore, if you're not showing you and your team in your marketing is going to make it harder for people to buy you. So I think there's a there's been a bit of a shift in terms of how I see agencies need to market themselves. I'm not saying the long form reports, etc, are not needed, because there's Inc, I mean, I love your the report that you guys do, for instance. Yeah, you do. You want that layer of detail, but you also need to market it in a more human way. So things that we're doing for our clients at the moment, where we've either helped them develop a report or they've got a report that they've written internally, is we go we interview the contributors and the clients who featured in that report in short, little video snippets to bring it to life. So I think how agencies attract is changing. It's not it's less polished marketing content. It because people are buying people. It's got to, you've got to show up as a person. I think there's three pillars. I hope that I stand by that kind of sit with I think what you're saying here, and I want to dig into all of them, but particularly the third one, because I think it's something that is changing a lot for agencies, and they need to get on it. So one is that attraction content in a more human way, like, how do you show that you're a safe pair of safe pair of hands, you're trusted, you're nice people that you know. You can post that content out on LinkedIn or wherever it is that you are that will attract the right you know prospects for you. So there's that thought leadership. Yeah, content, yeah. That ticks the box. We know what we're talking about. We can help you we understand the problems that you solve. The client is hopefully problem aware, and we can solve that. We're here. We're also problem aware, and we've solved that for other people, which is actually the second one, because the second one is exactly what you say. Is the prove it piece is, we've done this before. Don't worry. We've been on that journey, that problem that you're having. We've solved for XYZ clients. We know how to do it. We're a safe pair of hands. You can trust us. So thought leadership prove that we can do it. And then the third one, which I think's really interesting, and we make sure we have all of these types of content in our go to market strategies for our clients, is make it easy for people to fucking buy you, because if you can't productise your offering, or there's not an easy way to get a foot in the door, and it's this overly complex, you know, bespoke, quoted thing that people don't understand. What to buy you're you're going to get lost, because more often now, certainly what we're seeing, and we actually today, work with more tech companies than we do agencies. They're pitching up against the tech companies. A lot of the tech tech companies have got teams in now that can actually start delivering the tech for them. The tech companies are getting smarter. They're bringing in smaller teams, not agency side, but that can do the implementation. So if agencies don't start to productise their offering and make it easier for clients to buy them, the tech companies, I think, could really start to overtake and there are lots of them, and my brothers just started working at one where they do, you know, they're a tech company, but they can do the implementation. And
Tony Spong:I think at the heart of that is someone you need, someone who's knowledgeable. And the issue we have now is that because of all the silos and specialisms within agencies, especially in in London, because it's, it's, it's such a big center of them, it's, it drives specialisms. And, you know, that's a it's almost like a Darwinian thing, where there's enough mutations in London that it and any big city, creative city, you know, Silicon Valley, etc, etc. On the kind of client side, what we've got a shortage of is someone who knows three things. We've got plenty of people who know one thing. The client wants. One person who knows three things, four things, five thing. So the whole that the person who understands the breadth of it. Obviously you can't just magic them out of the air. The race is on to fight, because that then becomes the linchpin for that relationship. And the trust that then is built is that you are going to get the right answer, rather than the only answer I can give you, which is kind of where we've we've had so there's definitely a point at the moment where clients are looking to to go look. We know the individual things. We've tested them over the last 10 years. We know how to do that, how to do this, how to do that. There now must be a moment when you can put certain things together because they operate in the same part of the ecosystem, or whatever, and that's what's been happening. So we're seeing PR agencies and social agencies coming together. We're seeing this and that performance and traditional media come together. So media coming together, etc, etc, and then brand, social and advertising, so the brand side, so they're coming together and new ways of working. So the knowledge base is is being built up. But the client, again, just wants that, that easy access point, someone who knows lots of things to help pull all of that together. And it's not, it's not there yet. What drives that though is better questions. So in order to demonstrate that you know what the client needs, if you ask a sensible question, that's often more powerful than telling them something, because if they don't know what they don't know. You can show as many case studies you like, and they go, I don't know how you got there, because I've never done it before. So part of it is understanding where the client's knowledge is and making sure you go and meet them and then bring them forward. Yes, of course, some clients will go, Yeah, I know what you're talking about. That's fine, but you have to work that out and sometimes in the room and live. And that's the art of a good salesperson on the one hand. But a good, you know, client lead on another is to what are the key questions I need to ask this client so I know how to steer them towards the simple answer, the right product, etc, etc. So that is not there yet. There's a lot of I can show you the end product and and you've got to work out how I got there, and you're going to go, Well, you help them. As a result of that, there's a lot of work that we do with agencies in just how to tell their story and how many options they might need now in telling their story, because they might be meeting different clients at different stages of of knowledge and stuff. So that narrative arc becomes a bit more important, but that's where the emotion comes in and where the empathy comes in and the differentiation comes in. Yeah, because, you know, I was at an agency the other day and I said, Look. I said, the case studies are great, wonderful, but if I put my hand over your logo, they're constructed exactly the same way as everyone else. And I wouldn't. It was you. So where's your brand in your case study? I mean that that for agencies is vitally important. Don't, don't leave it in the front few slides. Drive it all the way through, all the way through to the case study, so that they really, really know that you're going to be a useful partner, but different than than the other ones ever been watching. Yeah. Well,
Katie:have a tone of voice, right? It's so important. Like, you know, I bang on about for us, it's, you know, all about being really human. And whenever we're writing any content, I always push back to the team, like, write like you're writing to your best friend. If it doesn't sound like something that you if it's too for some reason, everyone wants to go corporate with their language, telephone,
Tony Spong:voice. We call it, yeah, yeah, exactly
Katie:like, are you chatting to your mate on the phone? That's how, honestly, that's that's how we write everything. Like, that's the street tonality. And I'm, and I'm really, really strict with that, and we try to push our clients to get more like that, certainly in the outreach and the campaigns we're doing for them, because we know it works. Of course, you know CTOs and some of the people that we're marketing to, we need marketing to, we need to evolve that language slightly. But I think having a strong tone of voice massively that really helps identify who you are is, and you see it. I mean, especially now we've got, I mean, look chat, GPT, everyone's using chat to create their content or trying to cheat chat their own tone of voice. It's not clever enough yet. It's there are some great platforms out there that do help you get there. But even then they go a bit wavy, like I got them to write a job. I got Jasper to write a job description for me the other day. And it was it I've taught it. Our tone of voice at street. We've got quite a fun, you know, very human, jovial in some ways, you know, quite risky, you know, tone of voice. But it wrote, oh gosh, it was like, trying to say, like, set for the stars and Stella. And we did use some of it because it was quite inspiring and showing that we're different. And, you know, when everyone else zig zag and all this kind of stuff. But it went, it just goes too fast. So I think you've got to be really, you've got to be really clear about your tone of voice, and yeah, show up daring to be a bit different, which
Tony Spong:is why, I mean, you know, and again, as a consequence of all the other changes, we've seen an uptick in in what I would call traditional brand strategy briefs. So you, as I mentioned, we've got business strategy being changed, marketing strategies being changed. A lot of foundational stuff. So a lot of clients are going back to brand and going, well, we've, we've just knocked the business out, you know, out of shape a bit. Our employees are feeling a bit bruised as well. And we've got this new, new approach to the market. We might have new offerings, etc. How do we show up? And the strategy needs to help both the organisational design as well as the operational design. So some really smart clients are realising that they need to put that's where they're putting the foot on the ball for a little bit of time to say, We've got to get that right, and then that will be the filter when we're running really fast, we can make the right decisions on social media. When you've got to respond to something, you go, why? Did that sell off brand, etc, etc. And we've seen car crashes, you know, well documented ones. But that would suggest to me, the brand isn't strong enough in itself to know that it shouldn't have done that, or it should have done, yeah, and that sort of thing. So we've seen an uptick in that. That will you know that that will be a period, and then that'll run. You don't need to do them every five minutes. So what's interesting for me is, will that last as long as the last time they did it? I think it will probably burn through a bit quicker. So they might be back in five years time to have a new a new one, a new update, etc, but we'll see. So that's something I'm watching at the moment as well, which is, you know, interesting, but again, it's symptomatic of exactly what and so as a consequence that agencies are doing the same, because they're, they're a business a B to B business largely, and if their brand is not aligned to what the market leads, they've got to change it as well. So yeah, it's, it's fun time.
Katie:Yeah, we're all moving quicker than we've ever had to. Um Tony, to end. I want you to give me. I don't know whether to ask to give tips for the clients or for the agency, so I'm actually going to ask for one or two from each like, what do what do clients need to do to find better agency partners? And what do agencies need to do to get found
Tony Spong:the one thing that always shocked me when I and it continues to do, and this summer period is no different than any other summer period is I always meant most clients don't give themselves enough time. Sometimes it's because it's more of a distress purchase, and therefore they didn't know they were going to do it anyway. So which is fair enough. But I think in today's world, with all the moving parts, reviewing what you've got, staying on top of the performance, will avoid some of those disasters. So I think they need to think about how they performance manage their increasing number of agencies. So that's one thing. The second is, if you are going to have to go to market, just give. Yourselves time, because they all think it's going to be easier than it is. But what they don't realise is how good all the agencies are and how close they are and similar they are, therefore trying to separate them. Just needs a bit of time. So that would be my my advice to them, and for agencies, it's you. They talk about being brave. They want brave and ambitious clients. They they need to be prepared to stand out in the cold a little bit more around their point of view, which sets up their brand and their tone of voice, and in order to separate some clear create some clear water between them and their competitors, because it's an over it's still an oversupplied market, and therefore the client, in that sense, senses that and behaves accordingly. But for agencies, they've really, really got to look at their point of view and the start of their their brand narrative in order to stand out. And they've just got to be braver at that themselves. Never mind looking for a brave client, and when they are then, you know, they have their purple patch, you know, and they do well, until the next group come along. And it's, I think it's a team sport, you know. It's a group of people backed by an agency or whatever. And you watch a team that's well connected, and they they have a different level of energy, and that's what that's what the clients love. They just when they sense that energy, that's when you see the connection in a room happen. We'll touch on, can we touch on a hybrid quickly? Yeah, please. Yes. I'm, I'm concerned about cut the culture both from the client side and the agency side.
Katie:So you talking about just so I'm super clear here. Teddy hybrid working? Yeah, yes, we kind of talked about that right at the beginning, off off camera. I
Tony Spong:don't know how fast culture will decay and where it will bottom out, but without a doubt, it's a concern. The number of clients we work with who aren't in the office is far more than agencies. Agencies are in the office a lot more. Okay, interesting. And have worked out when they need to be in the office. And sometimes they do it as a totality, but other times they do it, if you like, department by department. So they give them permission to say, the creatives need to be in the office. However they want to be in the office, they can be if the plan is brought up. So the different functioning departments, we may well end up somewhere where there's tools and things that we that help in in in the hybrid world. But there's no doubt about it that ideas are slower. If you're apart and already pitch teams, the rule is you come together pretty much because ideas move around much faster. Yeah, and it's very hard to understand body language when it's just this bit. We might get better at it, but you're trying to scan, it's far easier to see. I mean, I had a client who's once her knees started going like this. I knew she was desperate to ask a question, so I was trying to get because she was there was a body language signal, and sometimes her team didn't spot it. And I'm trying to attract attention to say, Denise going, so let, let her speak, because you know she's going to say something important at this point, you couldn't see that on the on Zoom or or team. So those little things for me are important. So I'm, I am concerned about that bonding element at one level. The other one, of course, which again, is well documented, is about, how do people learn without osmosis and hearing and seeing and feeling, how things work? So I, you know, I don't want to be a laggard and say, you know, or Luddite and say, you know, it was better back in the day it I'm the, you know, the cat's out the bag, so to speak. So it'll end up somewhere, but I have a short term concern that, that we'll have a dip before we climb out of it again, where we end up as an answer, I don't know, tools may emerge that help us, but, um, yeah, we're an industry of good ideas, and we need an environment that helps facilitate good ideas. And there are certain things that kind of work, and it's yeah, that in that happy accident. I mean, there's someone, even in the office the other day, someone said, I'm trying to find a word for, you know, just a piece of writing, and within two minutes, we explored, you know, 17 words, and we'd settled on one that was the one she wanted. I mean, could you she wouldn't even bother doing that if it was
Katie:I honestly, I'm happy to be a Luddite, because I honestly so believe in, you know exactly what you're saying. I think people need, yeah, I've been talking a lot today about the importance of humans buying other humans, and especially in the world of agency. You, I think it's really hard if everyone's working from home like you say, how do you have those great ideas? Even talking to my leadership team this week, like a leadership team of two plus me, and we've been super busy recently, and I've probably been lone Wolfing most of our. Proposals and pitches, which isn't great, because if I had them involved, we're going to have better ideas, because they're, you know, more involved with the client work that we're doing than I am. They're, you know, at the forefront of everything that's going on. So they'd go, actually, well, how about we do this? You know, it's not great for me to do that on my own, and it's but it's just been a case of, we've been, I mean, which is bad, right? We've been really busy. We have actually won pretty much. Our win rate has been like 100 for the last month or two have been like 100% win rate, which is, which is amazing. So obviously, it's not doing that bad, but better ideas come from us collaborating. Like, I loved going into the office when I was younger. I also, you know, I was very lucky to work at, you know, cool, you know, drinks, brands and stuff. I used to love the days where I worked from home and I went to go and see clients, but a lot of the time I would be an artist for panorachi I was in houndstood. It definitely wasn't particularly exciting to go there, but I loved going there because I learned I got to meet our brand managers, our brand directors, and people that I could learn from and listen to and be in meetings like you don't get that in the same way you don't build those relationships and you build those allies in the business and outside of the business that aren't here, the people that I met there, I'm still friends with now that, you know, and that's because we went for drinks after work. I made the effort to go. I didn't even have to go into the office in my job back then, but I think that those relationships, you can't build them on Zoom. I'm sorry you just can't. So
Tony Spong:most of our pictures are face to face. Good, pretty much. Yeah, yeah. We get everyone accepts at face to face, and we encourage that. Now, if it's a global one, it's harder, you kind of understand that maybe we don't need to fly everyone around the world and all this sort of stuff. So there are ways around around that. And, you know, the technology is at least reliable these days. I remember pitching on on a video. Thing was a four second delay many, many years ago, and it was, you know, it was pretty clunky today. It it works during covid. We were able to run chemistry meetings through, zoom and teams and stuff and agencies adapted, as they always do, very rapidly, as did the client, and it works. So, if you like, the good news was, business could continue. But now, now we're out of, out of that it's, it's an interesting phase from, you know, in 100 years time, when someone looks back and it's in, it's taught in schools. It'll just be interesting to see where we net out. But yeah, it's, it's concerning, I think long, long term, because it's still, you watch people buy people and yeah, how do you give of your best and how do you demonstrate you are a cohesive team if you haven't seen each other for Yeah,
Katie:it's hard, however long. Yeah, the robots are coming, but we're still staying the
Tony Spong:generation that's let's live through is fine, because they, they know how to do both the next generation, is the concern for me, which is, like, they this is their new normal, yeah? And they don't know.
Katie:Well, they get anxious. I think I've spoken about this before. Like, I say to my daughter, like, we're going to pick up one of her friends that to go training together for, you know, she's an athlete, so and I'll be like, phone Sienna and let her know we're outside. No, no, no, no. I've, I've messaged her on Snapchat. I'm like, Just freaking phone her. But they don't you. They're almost scared, like picking up the phone. I mean, she's not scared to pick up the phone. To me 10 missed calls a row. But there you that is a worrying thing like you, and she's 16, and my daughter is far from shy, but the world that she's grown up in that when I was younger, I spent hours on the phone to my friend every night. That doesn't happen anymore. They're snapping each other. It's all done digitally, and
Tony Spong:that comes through in back into client agency relationships. So again, we we've had a lot of conversations with senior management about something was going wrong with client services. So a number of years ago, we started developing a number of seminars on that subject and breaking the thing down. And one of the issues was, is they won't bring the client up. They will just text or email and things like so they they've lost the art of conversation, and I've lost the confidence of it, which is the other thing you know, that that side of it is, yes, some are naturally good at it, obviously. But for those who are more anxious, and it's it become, it's more of a learned skill for them, then where's the, where's the framework to help them? Yeah, through, through that. And that's a that's definitely another issue that we've come across back probably 2016 I mean, that's almost 10 years now, we've been chipping away at it. Yeah, about, you know what's, what's, what's gone wrong with account management, as it were? So that's, that's, again, at the heart of the relationship. And there's, there's other mitigating circumstances with pressure on costs and stuff. Agencies were protecting strategy and output, be that creative or media plans or whatever it was the output. And they sacrificed that was the bit they said, Well, we can get rid of them, but you they forget that they were the glue. You know, a stool needs a minimum of three legs for it to stand up. Yeah, yeah. Chop one off. It'll fall over. Yeah,
Katie:exactly three. It's pretty struggling. Yeah. Tony, if people want to find out more about the AAR, where can they. A go. Well,
Tony Spong:we have a we have a website, and we're on, we're all over LinkedIn, like, like you said, we definitely switched our marketing onto LinkedIn. So there's articles. We're much better at producing our own content and stuff like that, individually as well as collectively. But yeah, there's a website, AAR group.co.uk, so brilliant. Or find me on LinkedIn and, yeah,
Katie:well, that's the rougher way to do it is, yeah, I will make sure in the show notes that we've got a link to Tony's LinkedIn profile, to the AR and to the website you still do the annual report. Yeah,
Tony Spong:there's, there's also, I mean, the whole research thing has changed, you know? So again, driven by what clients are telling us, and agencies are telling us we're our research program is much more robust now, so there's always big reports to download and all the way back. We try and keep them all on there. So
Katie:can I ask a selfish question? Because I want to know, what's the average opportunity or pitch to win ratio nowadays for agencies,
Tony Spong:it's it's pretty much the same, about 35% usually,
Katie:one in three is the kind, is the traditional average that I've always worked
Tony Spong:Yeah, if, if everything's going, well, that's, that's what you'd expect. And then versions, obviously, if you're in your prime, that goes that gets better. If you're it goes down. And, you know, like all these things, it's as a business. How do you adapt when competition in the market is increasing or new players, right, etc, so they've got, they've got exactly the same problems as clients that have in that regard. But yeah, that would be a target that everyone goes for. Yeah,
Katie:Tony, I want to ask you so much more, but we are going to get kicked out of the studio. So thank you so much for joining me. Honestly, I feel like we should have, like, some kind of annual download or something. So, yeah, big thank you for coming on and thank you for sharing so much. No worries. Hey guys, me again. I hope you enjoyed the episode that you've just listened to, and if you did, I'm going to do the, you know, The annoying thing that all podcasters do, which is go and ask you to subscribe, because it really does make a difference to our rankings, and please do go subscribe, leave a comment, give us a five star review. If you did love it. If you want to get in touch, do check out the email address in the show notes. Most importantly, again, if you're on YouTube, please subscribe by clicking the button somewhere that is on this screen, and it'll mean you get notified when new episodes go live. Yeah.