How to Find the Right Agency For Your Business

James Lawrence: Welcome back to the Smart Marketer podcast. I'm here today with Drew McLellan. Drew, welcome to the pod.

Drew McLellan: Thanks for having me. 

James Lawrence: It is very exciting to have you on. In preparing for the pod, and in-house Australian marketers might not necessarily know of Drew, but he's very well known in agency land. So Drew owns and runs the Agency Management Institute, which is based in Denver, Colorado. The AMI and Drew work with hundreds of agencies around the world, helping them to run better, benchmark against each other, provide strategic guidance, on how to help agencies grow. Drew, I know you talk this down, but you're you're super well-known in the space. The Wall Street Journal said that you’re one of the top ten bloggers every entrepreneur should read. Your podcast, the Build a Better Agency pod, always ranks in the top 5% of pods around the world. I think the reason I wanted to get you onto the pod to talk about this topic, is I think you've seen it from both sides. You started your career working within agencies in agency land. I think it was a five-year stint, then built and grew out your own successful agency. Now you're kind of seeing it from the other side where you get to peek under the hood at hundreds of agencies around the world. So today we are going to be discussing how to find the right agency or how to find the best agency for your needs. So Drew, just to get started. We're recording back end of 2023. This will launch 2024. The trends you're seeing around the world, independent agencies, the bigger agencies, specialist agencies, what are you seeing? 

Drew McLellan: If we look at just the microcosm of 2023, it's been a tough year for agencies. And I think for in-house marketers too. Budgets have been tight. I think there's been a lot of fear around the economy. Whatever happens inside brands trickles down to agencies. A lot of agencies have struggled to help their clients be successful with smaller budgets. Clients are under incredible pressure to deliver results faster with less. And so agencies are scrambling to try and help their clients. One thing I know from my own agency experience, and I know it from working with, as you say, hundreds of agencies all over the globe, is it's very rare that I meet an agency owner or an agency leader who doesn't really want to help their clients. That is how they benchmark success; when their clients are successful, they feel very good about the work they do. And it's not just about making money. We love the work and we love to get results. 

Drew McLellan: And so when we can make our clients look like rockstars, that's a pretty good day for us. And so that's been a really hard thing this year for agencies, as they too have been trying to do more with less. And sometimes that works and sometimes that doesn't. So that's 2023. I think if you expand out and you sort of look at trends, I started talking about it probably 10 or 15 years ago, but really in the last 5 to 7 years, agencies that have a specialty, that have a niche, that have a depth of expertise in something, it could be they know the industry better than anybody else. For example, we're an agency that works with small, independent banks, and we know that we're all better than anyone else. Or if you want to reach moms between 35 and 50, we know how to reach that audience better than anyone else. Or they could be an agency that has a depth of expertise and a deliverable. We know Amazon Marketplace better than anybody else. Fill in the blank. But there's been more and more demand on the client side, for that kind of expertise, that people don't want to hire a generalist anymore. And clients don't have time to teach their agency how to how their business works. 

James Lawrence: Yeah, I think it's a really interesting perspective. And do you find the same because the American market is so much bigger than Australia? And the audience for this pod is very much Australian. When you work with agencies in markets like Canada or Australia with a slightly smaller audience, do you find that that specialisation still holds true? Or do you feel like you still need to be a bit broader? What are you seeing out there in that regard? 

Drew McLellan: I think it depends. It depends on the client. And back to the original question I know we're going to get to, which is, how do I find the right agency, I think it starts by understanding what kind of a client you are. So you can't find the right agency if you're not the right client. And how to be a good client is a whole different topic. But I think you have to understand what you're trying to accomplish. For some clients, their marketplace is geographically based. And so a more generalist agency that knows that geography and is good at the core skills that they need, may be the perfect fit for them. But if they are national in scope or international in scope, regardless of where their headquarters are, they in most cases want a quick start to the point where; we're a medical device company, we happen to be based in fill-in-the-blank Australia, but we sell all over this region. Therefore, we want somebody who speaks the language of medical devices and has the journalistic contacts of publications that write about medical devices. Fill in the blanks. So I would say that it's not really about the size of the market. It's really about the footprint of the client. 

James Lawrence: Yeah, I think that is true. Which is the more specialised you are generally, the more geographically dispersed your client mix. It kind of feels that's a pretty natural connection. Moving it into how to find the right agency for your particular needs, the viewer around. What sort of client am I? Or what do I actually need and demand? What should be the agency mix? Or the way that a client-side marketer might go about looking for agency partners or a partner? 

Drew McLellan: I think it starts with sort of a self-assessment, which is; I don't care who the agency is, they are augmenting the internal staff of the client. In some cases, you're a marketing director of one and you have no support. Basically you need a marketing department in a box and you need an agency that comes with all of those skillsets and expertise because you don't have them in-house. Or it could be that you have a strong strategic presence inside the organisation, and you need an agency to just execute. Okay, great. Or you know what, you may have a bunch of really junior people that can execute and manage your social community and do things like that. But you need a thinking partner who helps you figure out the strategy and the go-to market for your brand. 

Drew McLellan: So it starts with looking at the tools you have internally and where you need to augment those tools. Then it's about, okay, if I'm not the owner of the business, if I'm a director of marketing or a CMO, then I probably have a directive from the CEO or a board that's saying, hey, here are the big goals for us for this year and probably three years out. And anybody who sets goals longer than three years is probably crazy because things change too fast. But, you know, here's our goal for this year and then here's what we're trying to do in the next 12-36 months. Well, those goals are also going to indicate what kind of a partner you need in an agency. The other thing you have to think about is; do I want one agency or do I want a bunch of specialist agencies that all do parts of the whole pie? So do I have the time, the bandwidth, the skill set, to manage all those different relationships, or what's happening more and more is a lot of clients are hiring sort of a lead agency who's really, in most cases owns the strategy. And then saying to that lead agency, we need SEO, we need PPC, we need a media, we need some PR. Whatever it is, you go find the partners, you manage the partners, and you all come to the table together and make recommendations to me as if you were an intact team. 

Drew McLellan: I get that you're a small agency, so you can't do all of that stuff yourself, right? That's one of the things our research shows all the time. Is when we're a 10-12 person agency and we call ourselves a full-service integrated marketing agency. Clients go, that's impossible today, right? Just impossible. What they are looking for is somebody who can help them manage their other agency relationships. So I think it starts with understanding what you bring to the party as the client and what you need. Then I think it's about; how do I want to work with that agency? Am I more of an arm's length? Like, I just want to place an order and have them fulfill the order? Do I want it to be more collaborative? Do I want to sit in a conference room and put paper up on the walls and think together? Some agencies are great at that collaboration. Other agencies just like to execute. So a lot of it starts with really understanding what you want to buy and what kind of a buyer you are. And once you do that, then I think it's about kicking the tires of several agencies and doing your due diligence to make sure they can actually do the work. But ultimately, in the end, it is about a combination of results and chemistry. 

James Lawrence: I think just going back to the lead agency point, I think that's a really good one. And I think that's where a lot of marketers struggle. Senior marketers, depending on their experience, will often have a preference there where they'll say no, I like to use one agency that is full service, that can solve all of my problems or not. I like to deal with specialists in each area. Often less experienced marketers think that you can just go to an agency and abdicate and give everything and solve all of my problems. And I think often probably, earlier on in my career, the temptation is to go, yeah, we can do it, we can do it. But I think it does feel that, generally speaking, and I think you kind of touched on it, agencies are moving more towards a specialised model, like we've got at Rocket. We've probably narrowed our focus over the last five years, even though we've grown, versus kind of broadening what we do. So it is a challenge. And yeah, our head count’s larger than 12, but we still can't be experts in absolutely everything in digital, even though we have 50-60 staff. 

Drew McLellan: Right? Well, I mean, I've been doing this work for a while. And when I think about the work I used to do when I started in my career and how simple it was compared to today, the number of channels, the technology. Don't even talk about AI yet, but it's hard for somebody to have expertise in everything. And so I think it is important to understand that the work we do is very sophisticated and very technical. Today, even if it's not digital work, it's still technical and complicated. And so very few agencies, unless they've got several hundred people, can do it all with a great depth of expertise. They might be able to do it on the surface. But for me, if I were going out to hire an agency and an agency, even of 50 people or 100 people said to me, don't worry, we can do it all from soup to nuts, we can do the PR, PPC, the SEO, the digital media, buy the traditional media etc. We have great creatives and we can do a logo. That would make me very anxious because I'm thinking, you know what? You are a mile wide and an inch deep everywhere, and I want somebody who can go deep with me because I've got to deliver results, otherwise I'm going to lose my job. 

James Lawrence: Yeah. Music to my ears. I think it's good to hear that from someone that is literally looking under the hood of hundreds of potentially thousands of agencies. In terms of going out to some agencies, you described it before kicking the tires, chemistry sessions, RFPs, big tenders, huge briefs. We see it all right. Talk to me about, if you are engaging an agency, what your process would be to find the right one? 

Drew McLellan: I think it’s important for clients to understand just how much blood, sweat, tears, and time an agency puts into the effort of presenting themselves well to a prospect. And so, you know, we're talking hundreds of hours sometimes to prepare for a big pitch or to fill out the RFP. You have to be a decent human being and if you already know who you're going to hire, just hire them. Don't go through the dog and pony show of making other agencies chase after something that they have no chance of winning. This sets the tone for the relationship. This is not the time to hold your cards close to the vest. This is the time for you to be very transparent, very open about your goals, your budget, the internal conflicts, whatever's going to get in the way of you being successful, now is the time to say to them, look, we're going to be a great client this way and this way and this way. But you know what? We're going to be a tough client here. Or you know what? We have a very difficult board or, you know, we're coming off three years of losses. And so I know that our appetite is bigger than our budget. So I'm going to need you to be creative. 

Drew McLellan: Whatever your situation is. You just need to be as honest as possible about that. I think that the idea that we have to ask agencies to do a lot of free work right before we know them very well - as an agency, it's pretty hard to do something compelling when you've got the same brief 15 other agencies have gotten and you don't get to talk to the client at all before the pitch and you don't get to ask questions. So I think if you're going to really ask agencies to step up, you need to be willing to step up as well. You need to give them the time and attention that they need to actually show you how they think. And that should be the goal; it's not that the thinking is right, because there's no way until they know you better. They've spent time with your customers. The other influencers inside your organisation, they're not going to get it. But you can learn a lot about how they approach the problem, the smart questions they ask, the way that they present themselves and their ideas. 

Drew McLellan: At the end of the day, the question is, can I teach these people what they need to know about my business so they can use their skills to help me accomplish my goals? It's not that if they get it right or wrong during the procurement process, they're the right choice. It's; I like the way these guys think. I like the way they approach the problem. I like their passion around this. When you think about how much time we spend with our clients as agency people, if I'm a client, I want to be thinking, do I want to hang out with these people every week? Do I want to talk to them a couple hours a week, or even more than that? Or are they the ones I want to call on my way home because I've got a problem? If I get a phone call from my boss on a Saturday and I call them, will they answer their phone? Those are the kind of things I'd want to know before I hire an agency. Are they are they in it with me to really be my partner? 

James Lawrence: So much stuff resonates there. I think coming back to your point earlier around almost to a tee, every agency owner you speak to actually cares about doing great work for their clients. And I speak, you know, have a really good relationship with lots of agency owners that would in theory be competitors. And it's just so true. We want to be a great agency. I think people get into the space because they want to do great work with their clients. They want staff that like being there. All the themes you just went through, they all resonate and the filling out a web form with my concern, this is what we want, come back to us in writing with the quote or the big huge government or big corporate RFP with basically; fill out this spreadsheet with your hourly rates and you're insurances and whatever. We actually don't even respond to RFPs anymore as a matter of practice. That doesn't mean that we won't engage. But if we can't go through our normal process, which is to have just a conversation to make sure that we get meaningful dialogue, are you just throwing us into the mix here because you need your three quotes or your five quotes in order to rubber stamp the incumbent? I think legitimate agencies are all the same. We approach it from the same perspective, which is we're assessing you, because if it's going to be like through the procurement process, what's it going to be like to work together? 

Drew McLellan: I think too, from the client's perspective, if you want your agency to be a vendor and to be available from 9-5, then great. Treat them like a vendor right from the beginning. If you want them to be a strategic partner, then you need to enter into that relationship differently. You need to enter it, you know, if you want to be married for a few months, then great. Go on 90 Day Fiance and let the internet find somebody for you. But if you want it to last and you want it to be fruitful, then you need to be more thoughtful about it. That means everybody's showing up and participating in the process as opposed to filling out the form. And quite honestly, most agencies, I see the financials of hundreds of agencies. I see their proposals. They all cost about the same. So if somebody comes in and they're vastly different priced, what that means is they're the ones that come back to you later and go, oh, I know he said it was going to be a dollar, but you wanted it to be orange and you needed it taller. And guess what? Now it's $5. Same price that all the other guys from the beginning said, hey, it's going to be about $5. It's not really about the price. It's more about how the agency treats your money. Do they treat it like their money too? Are they good stewards of your money? Do they try and figure out ways for you to get the most bang for your buck? Those are not things you're going to find out in an Excel spreadsheet. Those are things you're going to find out in a conversation. 

James Lawrence: Yeah, 100%. The price thing is just such a miss. It's just such a useless exercise, like the idea of holding price back. It just doesn't work. And talking openly about your budgets and what you're thinking for agency and what you're thinking for media will help. Your potential agency partner will put together a much better proposal, and it's not like you have to choose them, right? You still have the opportunity to work with another agency if you don't like the proposal. 

Drew McLellan: And the other part of that too, is when you don't disclose all of that, you may hire an agency that can't possibly work with that budget. There are some agencies, and you and I both know them, that if they don't have a certain amount of dollars, they just can't be effective. It may be their size, it may be their process. And I'm not saying that's good or bad. It's just the reality most agencies. Our clients need to spend at least this much, and we're not great with anybody who spends more than this. Much like; this is our sort of lane right here. It's from X to Y. In terms of the budget, we can really do great work when a client has that kind of budget. And if you aren't forthcoming with that as a client, you could very easily hire an agency that just is not going to be effective for you. And by the time you figure that out, you're going to have spent thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars, all to find out that they were the wrong fit from the beginning. And you know what? Ultimately, they may get fired. But they they keep their job. You're actually going to get fired. So far better to do it really well on the front end. And then the back end sort of takes care of itself.

James Lawrence: That’s it. And I think I'd say that's true of every agency. Every agency I know would have a window of client type size/scale which they will do well. Rocket sits in a certain segment. And if there will be accounts that would be too big for us and there are lots of accounts that are too small. Similarly; smaller agency, bigger agency. It's not the best agency, right. It's the kind of the right fit. 

Drew McLellan: That's a great question to ask. If I'm a client shopping for an agency, I would say, okay, give me your range. What's the ideal client size for you budget wise? And if an agency says, oh, we work with everyone, that should be a huge red flag. You should have an agency that says, you know what, if you're not going to spend $10,000 a month with us, at least, I don't think we can be that effective. But we also find that we're not the right agency for someone who's going to spend $200,000 a month. We just don't have the bandwidth to serve them the way they need to be served. Any agency that can't answer that question for you, that's a problem. 

James Lawrence: It's a really good point. A step in the process, which I'm seeing and I think good buyers do more of, which I really like as an agency owner, is a very informal chemistry session. Coming in… let's just have a chat about what we're doing, what we're trying to achieve. Can we talk of these types of questions? I can think of two recently we've actually missed out on even moving. I think when we move through to the next stage and when we didn't, I thought to myself, that's exactly how I would approach the process. They kind of find five, six, seven agencies that they think might be a good fit, maybe ones that have won good awards or ones that have been recommended or whatever it might be. And they kind of say, we don't want to take up your time. We don't want you to respond to anything formal. Are you seeing that happening more?

Drew McLellan: Depends on the size of client and the corporate structure. As you mentioned, there are certain entities, governments, universities, nonprofits that are dictated either by a board or something else that they have to go through a more formal process. But I think for many privately held companies, yeah, I think we're seeing more of that because they recognise that. I think they recognise two things. Number one, marketing has gotten very sophisticated, and I don't care how smart or good they are, they need an agency that's going to explain things to them, help them learn while they go, because they, as a department of one or a director of a department, they don't know it all anymore either. And so they need a partner that they feel comfortable saying, I don't know what that means, or how would we use that in conjunction with this other thing we're doing, and that the partner is willing to sit down and say, well, let's talk about that. Here's how this works, or let me show you some data on this or whatever it may be. 

Drew McLellan: So I think part of it is that, but I also think the world has gotten a lot more sophisticated and complicated, which also makes it much simpler, which is I want to work with people that I like and trust, and I need these people to have my back, and I need these people to make sure that I don't get too far out over my skis or look silly in front of my boss or my board. So I really want to know that these are people I can have confidence in. And honestly, we're not saving lives, right? Marketing is supposed to be fun. It's supposed to be interesting. It's supposed to be challenging. So I also want to be with smart, funny people who are creative and passionate about the work they do, because I know they're going to bring that to the work we do together. And, you know, it's hard to figure that out in an RFP, but it's pretty easy to figure out over a beer. 

James Lawrence: It's really yeah, really fascinating. What if you're actually procuring an agency? What would be some of those question around, what's that range of clients where you work? Well, and you said if they answer everything, it's a red flag, I guess. What are the green flags and the red flags. And what would be your approach like? Obviously the chemistry, the human to human thing makes a lot of sense. But other things that you'd be looking at to kind of go, yeah, that doesn't make sense. So that fails the smell test or yeah, I'd be looking at this every time. 

Drew McLellan: I would want them to have some experience. They don't have to be a specialist to the point that they only do work in my category, but I would certainly not want to be their first. I'd want them to have relevant experience. I would want them to be able to tell me stories or show me case studies where they've solved problems like mine. I would be asking them questions like, okay, let's assume you present a marketing plan and we start to execute that marketing plan. How are you going to decide if it's working or not? How quickly will you know if it's working or not? And what does that conversation look like between us? And then how do you always have a plan B in the back of your pocket? So if plan A isn't working, we can quickly pivot to a plan B. I think one thing clients need to understand is that marketing today is all iterative. We know any agency that tells you they know for a fact something's going to work. That's a huge red flag. I want an agency that says, you know what? We've been doing this for ten years, 20 years, 30 years. And what worked 30 years ago doesn't work anymore. And what worked two years ago, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. So we take a very iterative approach to our work. We try lots of little beta tests and micro experiments. We start putting more weight and more budget against the things that are working. We're constantly testing and asking questions because we know that we can just keep making marginal improvement over and over, and those marginal improvements add up to big improvement pretty quickly. 

Drew McLellan: Another thing that would be a big green flag for me is the questions the agency asks. An agency that doesn't ask me a lot of really good questions; if I don't say at least once or twice in a meeting, huh? Nobody's ever asked me that question before, then that, to me is worrisome. I don't want to be the smartest one in the room. I don't want to be the most curious one in the room. I don't want to be the one who's the most powerful. I want the people I'm hiring to be smarter than me, to be more curious than me, that have have bigger, better questions that every time I'm like, well, this is the way it's always been done. They're like, well, does it have to be that way? What would happen if we did it this way? What would happen if we did that instead of this? I want someone who's pushing boundaries respectfully, of course, but pushing boundaries and pushing the assumptions that I am because I'm inside the bottle. So I cannot accurately read the outside label. I need that outside perspective. And that comes best with great questions. 

James Lawrence: And that's one of the core reasons why you're engaging an agency, right? Is that you're right. You can't read the label from inside the jar, and agencies will have seen that problem 20 times or 10 times or 15, or that they've seen that angle or they've tried it.

Drew McLellan: And they're not in the politics and the sacred cows and all the other stuff. They just come in fresh and they're like, well, why are you doing it that way? Or why is that purple? Or, whatever the questions are, boy, it seemed like that product sold like hotcakes for two years. Then all of a sudden it died off. Why? What happened? Those are the kind of questions that you want to hear from an agency. 

James Lawrence: Then what about more on the kind of, I don't know, thermal graphics is the right label, but more from a; the people and who'll I be dealing with and how long have your staff been with you? Because I think for me, it's the people. It's it's rarely the magic tech or systems or processes. You need to have them. But it's the people. And I'm going to be sold in by the people that ask the good questions and present the great case studies. But then what does it actually look like working with your organisation? 

Drew McLellan: Again, that's another great green and red flag. If I'm sitting around with four people from the agency, I'm going to say, are you for my team? And if the answer is no or only one of them is my team and the rest are all senior people I'm never going to see, that's a problem. I want to meet the people I'm actually going to be working with every day. And if you, as the agency owner, don't have the confidence to put those people in a room with me, then I don't want to work with them. If you feel like you have to put in a pitch team of gray hairs who are very articulate and have all kinds of pedigrees and all that, but aren't going to touch my business, then I'm not the right client for you. 

James Lawrence: Yeah, it's an interesting one. I think for me who I'm meeting in that presale process, how seriously I'm being taken, how many clients will they also have? How many clients do you have as an agency? I think so often a gives you a bit of a feel as to the type of work that you're likely to to kind of have coming through. 

Drew McLellan: To understand sort of where you are in the hierarchy. I don't want to be your smallest client, but I also probably don’t want to be your biggest. I probably want to be right in the middle. And if you have a client that's 75% of your business, how much attention am I going to really get? Because that client's going to lead you around by the nose. It's not so much about how many clients you have, but I do want you to have a balanced portfolio of clients. And I want to nestle myself right in the middle of that. 

James Lawrence: As an agency owner, we have worked really hard over the years to never have a client that made up over, I think it was like over 10%, even less, as a percentage of revenue, just strategic. And I've always thought of that. More from a; we don't want them to kind of bully us, and I don't want to be awake at night worrying about what happens if they leave. A lot of agency owners are like that, but I've never thought about it from the impact that it therefore has on other clients within the agency mix, and the idea that if all of your clients are as important as each other, they all get the attention they need. And obviously a client’s needs will change or an emergency or an issue will pop up. And you want to have the capacity to deal with that. But I've never thought of that one while kind of eating away at the rest of the client's experience.

Drew McLellan: When you think about it, that client is going to command the best performers inside the agency, the most attention, the most time, which leaves kind of the dredges for everybody else.

James Lawrence: Which often, without trying to make this too much about Rocket, but often we will pick up accounts from Canadian mid-market businesses that have dealt with the big kind of global agencies. And what to us is a really attractive client, to a global just isn't. And they're kind of getting the most junior staff and they get the B team. It’s an interesting dynamic.

Drew McLellan: Or the agency took that client as a training field for their younger people. I don't want to train your people. I don't have the luxury of being your training ground. I need you to help me get the results I need to get. I don't need a bunch of kids just out of university. Or your old and tired ones who don't have much gas in the tank anymore. I want people who are super excited about the work and have a lot of passion around it, and are still open to learning new things and are good teachers, so I can learn new things. That's what I want. 

James Lawrence: That's good. Not the grizzled vet, the disenfranchised, grizzled vet. You've touched on a few things, but things that a buyer or a prospective client just shouldn't do. What are the things you would say to just steer clear of? If you go down that path, you're not going to be actually assessing a good fit partner. 

Drew McLellan: There's the basics, right? Don't hold stuff back and all of that. But a couple of things. Don't assume that a referral is a good fit for you. Just because they are the perfect agency for your buddy who owns a business or does something similar to you, doesn't mean they're the right agency for you. It's a great place to start, right? It's a great if you get referrals. Those are good agencies to talk to you. They're obviously making someone happy and they're getting results. But don't assume that it's a one size fits all thing because it's not. It's a very custom thing. Another thing is, do not expect that your agency is going to have all the answers on day one. They're going to need some time to get to know you, to get to know the marketplace, to think about your business. They haven't been thinking about you the way you've been thinking about you for as long as you've had the seat in the role that you're in. Results don't happen instantaneously, so you have to give them enough time to sort of do the legwork. 

Drew McLellan: Just know that there's going to be a ramp up period and it's sort of like planting a bulb underground and then digging it up the next day because it didn't grow. It didn't break ground overnight. So right as it's starting to take root and it's starting to work, and then you dig it up and you move it somewhere else. I see a lot of clients do that with agencies. They don't really give agencies enough time for their work to take hold and to start making impact. So I think it's about patience. I think it's about collaboration. I think it's about making time. I can't tell you how many agencies say we would love to spend more time with our clients. We'd love to be on the factory floor. We would love to be able to follow them around for sales calls. We would love to be able to sit in a corporate marketing meeting, but the client won't make time for us. We have all this information we want to give them. We want to walk them through the analytics. We want to block whatever it is. We cannot get them on the phone. We cannot get them on zoom. We sure as heck can't get FaceTime with them. So you have to make room. This is a relationship. You have to make room in your schedule, in your life, for your agency partner. You need to cultivate that relationship and give them part of what they need from you so that they can be successful. 

James Lawrence: I think it's one of the big disconnects. It's people working on the agency side under estimate just how busy in-house marketers are in their day to day. And I feel that a lot of in-house marketers, because they are inside the jar, don't realise how little their agency partners, particularly in that infancy of a relationship, know about their business. Just sharing whatever; internal sales documents or planning for next year or a customer server, all those things which you pick up and read and think might be peripheral to your agency's needs. Oversharing. I very rarely see that kind of having a detrimental impact. I've never thought of the analogy or the metaphor of moving the plant. It feels true. And I also think then the onus is on the agency during that kind of pre-sales phase to actually set expectation around; how long will it take for us to be at this point or this deliverable or these types of results? Because I think often, particularly agencies that might be a little bit younger or need the work, might often, that is where you can kind of make those; we can get it done in two months or-

Drew McLellan: We can get those grandiose promises. 

James Lawrence: Yeah. Creating a rod for your own back. Drew, it's been awesome having you on the pod. I think any prospective agency procurer of from the in-house side listening to this, I think you definitely get a good perspective on what it's like to be on the other side of the fence. We always finish up the pod with one simple question; what's the best piece of career advice that you'd give to an in-house marketer? 

Drew McLellan: I think the best piece of advice I would give is; if you are not hungry to keep learning, you have got to find a different job. Our world, marketing technology or not, it's constantly changing. And if you're not curious, think about all the things that impact marketing; psychology, culture, society, technology, you know, the economy. So if you're not curious about all those things and you're not a student of all those things, there's no way long term you can continue to be successful in your job. So far better to assess yourself and say, you know what? I'm an old dog. I do not want to learn any new tricks. Great. Then go do something else. You know, be a professor or do something else that allows you to sort of stay in place. But marketers have to constantly be pushing and growing themselves, otherwise they're irrelevant pretty quickly. So that would be the best piece of advice is you have to be a lifelong learner. You have to have a hunger for it. And when you do, then there's always a new idea. There's always a new opportunity. And that's what makes somebody a rock star in their job. 

James Lawrence: It is an excellent response. I couldn't agree more. Drew, thanks so much for coming on to the Smarter Marketer pod. 

Drew McLellan: You bet. Thanks for having me.