Agency Partnerships Can Be A Huge Win For Clients

There is a book called, “All I Really Need to Know I Learned In Kindergarten” and it is all about how to get along with people and overall how to treat others. Our culture here at Pro Motion is exactly this way, especially when it comes to working with other agencies. When we get engaged by another agency who doesn’t have experiential marketing in-house and needs our expertise to meet their client’s needs, I always use the metaphor that “we play well in the sandbox”. I just think when two agencies work together and have the same goal in mind; creating great work that delivers great results, the client always wins. And, frankly, everyone wins because it usually leads to more work for everyone.

However, when the two agencies are not aligned with the goals of the program, it usually doesn’t work for anyone.

We had such a scenario recently. The agency who hired us to work on their client’s business was not about win/win/win; they were all about themselves winning and everything else was just the way it was going to be. Fortunately, we were able to still deliver to the client results that met with their expectations. But, it came with great pain for my team with short deadlines, short budgets and long expectations. They thought of themselves as the “lead” agency so we had to play to their rules even when it was to the detriment of the client. We have a core value that reads, “Make it Happen” so of course we did; but not without lots more work. This would not have been the case if the communication were better and the expectations of our field teams were more in line with a typical work day/week in our industry.

We made it through this program but I must say we were glad when it was over. The main client was so appreciative of our work and the results we provided. We also made the lead agency look good in the eye of their client because of our make it happen mentality. So, it is true…everything we learned about life we did learn in kindergarten. This agency was like Jimmy Johnson who was just a big bully and all he cared about was making sure everything went his way…wonder what happened to Jimmy? I’d bet his attitude on life has caught up with him over the years and maybe he’s a good person now. And, hopefully the agency we just worked with someday understands that too. Playing well in the sandbox or treating people the way you want to be treated is not only a great life lesson, it works in business too!