Our agency was shit. Can we not pay them 50%?

I have an interesting scenario for you. Last March, we picked a new creative agency to help us generate some pipeline for our IT Security unit. Hands up, I wanted to 'level up' and go for a bigger agency than we had previously used.

We did what most are guilty of and picked three agencies to pitch from 'industry rankings' and 'awards'. Looking back, it was very lazy but we are where we are.

Since we picked the agency we did, it has been very frustrating. It would be somewhat more understandable if we got the 'bait and switch' but I don't feel we did. The team that pitched us, were largely the team that worked on our project. The problem is, they just haven't been very good.

They insisted on 'immersion' despite my protestations. I can't debate the logic of them ideally understanding the business to the nth degree but it took so long for them to conduct interviews with our stakeholders and I see no material benefit to the output they delivered. They still don't understand our proposition properly despite their instance during pitches that they have a lot of experience in the sector. The personas were uselessly high level. I ended up writing the key campaign messages myself. We rejected their campaign creatives as uninspired to the point we literally ended up showing them an example from a different sector that we had seen and just had to ask them to copy it. The sales enablement pieces were essentially reskinned versions of what we had already. My existing team saved the day and made the output passable.

I can't admit all this internally of course but my direct reports share my frustration.

They are due to invoice us for the final 50% and even though it’s all in budget, to say I resent it is an understatement.

If they ask to submit this for future awards I will scream.

So, what would you do in this situation? Is there any point in pushing back on the final invoice? Technically they did deliver, but it was shit.

'Aggrieved', London

Dear 'Aggrieved',

I can not only sense your frustration but relate to it.

The issue with agency awards is that the majority are simply cash cows for the publishers that organise them. They are a means for agencies to gain some easy PR, create some social posts, wine and dine existing clients, and have a team night out.

They can create new leads for them too, because if a marketer doesn't have the network for them to hear the truth about the agencies doing great work, or being fantastic to work with, they have to google and put some leg work in. And if they can't be bothered to do that, or if procurement can't either, then awards programs are a very quick way to getting a shortlist.

Sometimes, us marketers, are a lazy bunch.

The very nature of entries is glass half full. Everything is window dressed and apparently had such an amazing effect on leads, or brand awareness (that is left completely unscrutinised). Somehow publishers have cultivated a culture where marketers then judge them, for free. They event get the unpaid judges to do the awards promotion on LinkedIn for them as if judging is prestigious. It isn’t its free labour. It's madness when you think about it.

It’s the same for any agency rankings. Why on earth do we care about how large an agency's revenue is when searching for new inspiration? We don't of course. But it's the same game that make shortlist selection quicker and lazier.

It's all a fame game trap that the majority have fallen into at least once. Myself included.

So learning number one? We must all find a way of selecting agencies that doesn't involve awards or revenue rankings. They are a nonsense.

In regards to 'immersion', I think all senior marketers have experienced the frustration of this step, especially if you're doing it on a regular basis across other categories (such as PR). But to be fair to agencies, they need as much context as possible. We cannot expect them to learn what they need from your website and a couple of AI prompts. They need to understand what you are trying to sell, who you are trying to sell it to, and why they would even consider buying it from you. I've seen some agencies do it well, and I've seen agencies which present personas that are essentially 'This is Mike the CIO, he likes Mars bars, has two kids, and goes skiing' which is of absolutely no use to anyone.

That said, even the best immersion in the world doesn't excuse creative that came back generic and wrong, which is really the heart of what you're describing. But before you go further, critically assess your own side of this too. The quality, speed and clarity of the feedback you gave them. How you managed the relationship and the cadence you put in place. Whether stakeholders were clear and concise or confusing and all singing from different pages. Were they fighting an uphill battle to get answers your team couldn't give them? A true assessment of an agency's performance always goes both ways.

Request a 1-2-1 with the agency lead you were dealing with. Allow the agency to feed back in that conversation. There may have been issues with your team that you weren't aware of. They could have been plugging holes that you didn't realise were holes.

You are quite brutal in your description of what happened. They 'technically' delivered. Your team had to write campaign messages. You rejected their creative inputs. And having to save the day by finding an example for them to copy. That's quite damning for any agency leader to hear, and worth raising directly, calmly, as a factual account of what happened and when. You don't need to be aggressive, it's best to be precise.

Once you've had that conversation, if you still resent the 50% balance payment, that's where the contracts come in. As with most disputes, the starting point is what was actually signed. And if procurement was involved, it should be clear. You could get procurement to lead this, as they are also responsible for the agency choice, but I would personally recommend that you have this dialogue yourself.

If you still resent the balance after all that, ask your legal team to raise it directly with them and in writing, CC’ing you. If you can get your legal team to focus on it, that is, is it probably won’t be at the top of their to do list.

Agencies are under immense pressure at the moment due to a competitive market and, rightly or wrongly, marketing teams experimenting with AI. Unless you have dramatically overpaid, any concession will certainly hurt their cashflow.

But you are a senior leader in your business. And you must put any embarrassment aside, treat the money like it’s your own. If you feel like you didn't get what you paid for, go protest your point.

But if you feel there are mitigating circumstances after your conversation, or that they did deliver everything in the scope of work but you and your team just didn't rate it, learn from it, help the agency learn from it, and move on. Sometimes you learn just as much from the bad agencies as you do the good. And sometimes an agency and a client just aren’t meant for each other. 

And if they ask to submit any of this work for an award, tell them to go swivel. Unless that is, you decide that your team needs the positive PR. At which point, the game becomes the circle of life.

Rich