The 10 biggest agency bullshits, by Cynical Sam

We say these. All of them. The difference is we believe them and act on them. Remember, these aren’t our opinions. They’re things to watch out for and interrogate when your agency says them.

We love our clients

A classic. But what is it they love about you? The fact that you’re happy not to be challenged? The margin on the billings—are you not working them hard enough?! The fact you’re the perfect size project to pick up the spare capacity kicking around for the next 3 months?

The work is more complex than we originally thought

Another old favourite. I reckon they’ve screwed up somewhere internally or they’ve got another deadline to meet for a client and are pushing you back. Oh, and look how good they are—not only is it more complex, but they’re not going to charge you for the additional work.

You are one of our most important clients

When wouldn’t you be? Every client is important, right? All businesses need a mix of big exciting brands (the ones they’re either losing money on, or certainly not making much margin) and a load of smaller contracts like yours (who have nice margin, and are good at keeping the business afloat while they’re working on the fun stuff). How could you not be important?

It has to be 30 day terms. That’s what we’ve forecasted against and we’ve had a heavy upfront investment.

I’ve seen this too many times. “Please pay us within 30 days” can also be translated as “We don’t manage our business very well, haven’t built up a cash reserve and our cashflow will be wrecked if you don’t pay us soon. Please.”

The work we’re doing is truly integrated.

Really? I’d love to see one digital agency that integrates properly. The worst culprits are the big groups who have the mix under one roof. They don’t talk. They don’t work together. For most groups, they don’t even like each other and view their relationships as competitive. Why wouldn’t they? After all, there’s only one pot of money.

We are a full service digital agency

That’s a little scary isn’t it? An agency that does everything from paid search, media planning and buying, digital strategy, user experience, design and build, campaign delivery, email marketing, mobile, eCRM, blah, blah, blah… What, and they’ve only got 25 staff? Less? What about those agencies that focus on just one of these that employ 50 staff? Maybe you should find a digital agency that knows what they’re good at and sticks to it.

We are sector experts

Of course you are. Really? Why, because you’ve a client in our space already? Do you really understand charity? How the internal teams operate? How you differ from others? What you mean by social marketing? Actually I reckon you might find half of them don’t even know what NfP means. What about NGO?

This is your account team

The team that came in to pitch? Maybe. But only if you are very special (by which I mean your project has a decent margin, coupled with good long-term account growth potential). And then they’ll check in. That’s nice of them isn’t it?

We’re passionate about digital

Is that always good? Don’t you want to work with people who are passionate about marketing? Or who are actually not passionate about their work at all? People who have a life outside of the day-to-day rather than one dimensional robots.

We’re honest, open and transparent about everything we do

Bollocks. There’s a dark, secretive world of lies out there. Imagine what would happen if you knew the truth. Amazingly, I reckon it’d be fine. We’re all grown-ups. Wouldn’t it be nice if we sorted stuff out together. I think so.