It’s no secret agencies have taken it on the chin in a number of painful ways and for a variety of bruising reasons. The latest heavyweight challenger to enter the ring? Global consultancies. They are formidable opponents to be sure, bringing deep pockets, significant resources and advanced technology to the fight.
I should know.
Friends and colleagues thought I was crazy when I went to work for Accenture. Yet it profoundly changed me for the better as a creative leader. Paired with my time at some of the top creative agencies in North America, it’s given me a unique perspective on this increasingly competitive and ever-evolving landscape.
So if I were a cornerman—and my fighter were a woozy agency in round 11—here’s what I’d say (in my best Burgess Meredith growl) to help them get off the stool and back into the fight:
Get Co-Creating.
Many consultancies don’t wasnt you in the office, raiding the fridge, drinking the fair-trade java and gabbing away about the latest Better Call Saul episode (guilty, guilty and especially guilty!). They’d prefer you work from home, or better yet, on site with a client. Why? Because there’s no better way to learn about an organization than from the inside. Working shoulder to shoulder with clients also completely transforms your relationship to them. You are now a co-collaborator. A trusted confidant. Maybe even a shortstop on the company softball team. You intimately understand organizational pain points and know precisely where to push and when to gently back off. By embedding multi-disciplinary teams, consultancies become virtually indistinguishable from their clients. This yields not only better, faster results, but longer, more durable relationships. Is it as fun as goofing off in the creative department? No, but shouldn’t we all be way past that, anyway? Oh, and when you’re literally standing right next to your client, you can…
Have more conversations. And fewer presentations.
Agencies are addicted to the big reveal. The dimming of the lights. The slick, multi-media presentations. The Don Draper Kodak manifesto moment. But that addiction is costly, in time, resources and employee burn-out. Back in the day, these reveals made sense when our collective problems were more one-dimensional. But today’s multi-disciplinary problems demand more agile ways of working. It’s why consultancies are fast-roping SEAL Team 6-like teams into companies and solving problems quicker and more collaboratively. As my friend Dave Nobles and his team at The Applied Physics Lab like to say, 'A prototype is worth a thousand meetings'. And who doesn’t want fewer meetings?
(Shout out to Blair Enns and his incredible book, The Win without Pitching Manifesto for helping me to crystalize this point.)
Float like a butterfly with fluid resources.
Mumbai? London? Stockholm? Consultancies don’t care where the best and brightest are. They just care that they’re great, and available on Skype at a moment’s notice. They hire experts, wherever they are, then entrust them to contribute. Consultancies can also nimbly scale up or down using contractor resources. Yes, agencies use freelance, but in my experience they don’t use part-time and remote resources nearly as effectively or as efficiently as consultancies. Agencies, particularly those in secondary markets, must embrace fluid workforces if they want access to the highly specialized, world-class talent that can help them sting like a bee.
Take back the strategic high-ground.
And not just brand strategy, upstream business strategy. There is no reason in the world why McKinssey should be more sought out for strategic insight than Ogilvy. Yet they are. And I bet they charge more for it, too. Investing in the best and brightest strategists, ethnographers and planners who understand not just brand building but business building will pay huge dividends for agencies and holding companies alike.
Change your relationship with Design.
Many (but certainly not all) agencies are caught up in an outdated definition of design. Design as aesthetics, rather than design as a way of thinking. Design as a discrete silo, vs design as everyone’s job. Design as the finishing touch on a shiny object vs design at the center of everything. Consultancies intimately understand the transformative power of design as a way to solve complex, human-centered challenges. It’s why they’ve invested heavily in companies like Fjord. Created design-centric spin offs like BCG Digital Ventures. And gobbled up firms like Insitum. Design can be an effective modern-day Trojan Horse for agencies looking to infiltrate organizations and expand their roles. But first, they must invest in new disciplines like Design Thinking, Service Design and Behavior Design, effectively integrate them into their offerings, and above all, change their relationship to Design with a capital ‘D’.
Get out of the fee fight.
Consultancies do not budge on fees. Ever. Like a champion prizefighter, they know their value, and price their offerings accordingly. If clients are hesitant, consultancies will put their own skin in the game and co-invest on projects—a sign of confidence if there ever was one. Yes, it’s risky, but it often opens the door to longer, more profitable engagements. All of this allows consultancies to stay well ahead of agencies in the talent war by investing in the people who can grow with the company over time. Could an agency today say to a young Stanford graduate, ‘Come join us. You’ll stay for 30 years and never be bored’?
We’re gonna need a bigger moat.
The cold, hard reality is that it is easier for consultancies to bolt-on what agencies do than it is for agencies to build the complex muscle memory that makes consultancies so innovative. But all is not lost. Like Dan Weiden once said, ‘This isn’t mathematics, it’s jazz’. And in jazz, like boxing, we can always pivot. With the above strategies, agencies both big and small can grab a gulp of air, some sage cut man advice and get back into the fight. Just watch out for that overhand right.
It’s a killer.
