Why Your Agency Pushes Back

If you’re like us, you strive to surround yourself with people you can learn from. Successful people know what they’re doing and, crucially, they believe in themselves when no one else in their lives understand what they’re doing. This attribute is great for building a thriving business, but it’s not always ideal when working with a creative company.

The kind of things that are rewarded in the boardroom – plain, unadorned language that focuses explicitly on value adds and product differentiators – aren’t as useful in the world of marketing. You may have the best product on the market, but if the way you choose to sell it has all the sophistication of kid presenting a last-minute science fair project, you’re setting yourself up for failure.

Luckily, you have an ally in the fight not to be laughed out of the proverbial elementary school auditorium – your marketing agency. When you tell your advertising team, “There are too many words” or “People won’t get this” and they push back at you, you shouldn’t be frustrated. Instead, you should thank them! This is what you’re paying them for – to say things a way you can’t already say yourself.

At Rock Candy Media, we’re lucky in that we’ve branded ourselves as the anti-template and we make our intentions to clients explicitly clear – we’re going to push you in whatever way will sell your product. I tell clients up-front that they’re the boss, but they’ll always know my opinion.

Even with that disclaimer, we still sometimes get clients who want to rein in the creative horses at every turn. However, once we explain our thinking, clients generally come over to our side. There’s a strategy to the madness, and if your agency is only able to give you madness without strategy, then you need to get out now, because you’re about to be the kid who gets kicked out of school for a dangerous and idiotic science fair project.

Your marketing team is a partner in your success, and like any good partnership, you two should be able to mask each other’s weaknesses and highlight each other’s strengths.