Of course, agencies have a responsibility to support and add value to all of these challenges. Disappointingly, 83% of marketers feel they’re not aligned with their agencies and are looking to gain new value from partners. Namely, agencies that can scale quickly, align with local business goals and source intelligence, skills and capabilities around the world.
Agencies can be similarly challenged by structure: too large and agility suffers, too small and reach is a problem. Working alongside larger holding-company agencies, we regularly encounter situations where it takes more than a month for an answer to a query to come back from the network — a query that’s likely been passed between many individuals. Basically, it’s slow Chinese whispers and completely undermines agility.
As a smaller agency, we pride ourselves on being agile. That said, we also need access to local insight, local implementation support and global best practice. Our solution is to work with a global network of more than 70 independent agencies, Worldwide Partners.
With over 1,000 B2B experts and $1 billion-plus in B2B billings, we get access to insight from practically every industry vertical globally. We get agility too: when we ask the network for an answer, we can expect to wait a week but we know we will receive rich local insight that greatly helps deliver locally relevant messages and campaigns.