Better agency feedback delivers a more successful agency review

By Steve Boehler

A few simple steps can help you make your next agency review a better experience for the agencies and more successful for your business.

One of those critical steps is the timely delivery of clear and consistent feedback. The benefits are immense: the agencies have a better chance to show their best and you have a better chance of choosing the right agency.

Unfortunately, few executives are ever taught how to evaluate an agency presentation and fewer yet are trained in how to deliver that feedback.

There is a process to delivering better feedback to agencies during an agency review:

• During the meeting: The agency team has worked hard and they really want to know how you feel about their work. Tell them! But use the following approach.
• The first job in your evaluation process is to make sure you listen actively and understand the agency’s presentation and recommendations. Take notes. Ask questions. Ask as many questions as you need to be able to assess the process, thinking and recommendations.
• Once you are sure you understand the strategy, make sure you understand the creative (or media, PR, etc.) recommendations. Ask more questions!
• Once you understand the recommendations, take a minute to evaluate how you think and feel about the work. A disciplined and thoughtful evaluation is important in order to respect the hard work the agency put into your account and in order to be able to deliver effective feedback. We’ve been evaluating creative work for decades and have developed a quick, easy and highly effective framework of five questions that the evaluator should have in mind as they review creative work:

Is it on strategy and on brief?

• What is your overall gut reaction?
• Is there clear and compelling selling language?
• Is the selling proposition dramatically visualized?
• Does the work address important executional mandatories?

This graphic may help you remember the approach:

The above questions will help prepare you to better help the agency.

In giving feedback during the presentation, avoid being prescriptive in your feedback and solving any concerns you may have. Instead, frame your feedback as questions. Tell them about your concern and ask questions like “I wonder if there is a way…” and “Is it possible to…”

And, of course, before you wrap the meeting, thank the agency team genuinely for their efforts. They deserve it!

• After the Meeting, Consolidate Feedback: You’ve given some high-level feedback during the work session. Now it is time to refine that feedback and to deliver it in one voice with clarity. It is essential that the client team consolidates all feedback into a simple, consistent series of messages.
• Conflicting and inconsistent feedback makes it virtually impossible for an agency to succeed.
• Deliver Consolidated Feedback within 24 Hours: With the consolidated feedback in hand, arrange a call to review your feedback directly with the agency, and follow that call up with written feedback.

At Mercer Island Group, we try to get agencies consolidated feedback the same day if possible and definitely within 24 hours. The agency is on the clock, and the ability to deliver clear feedback within 24 hours both respects the agency’s enthusiasm and investment in your business as well as helps the agency help you make better decisions.

Steve Boehler, founder, and partner at Mercer Island Group has led consulting teams on behalf of clients as diverse as Ulta Beauty, Microsoft, UScellular, Nintendo, Kaiser Permanente, Holland America Line, Stop & Shop, Qualcomm, Brooks Running, and numerous others. He founded MIG after serving as a division president in a Fortune 100 when he was only 32. Earlier in his career, Steve Boehler cut his teeth with a decade in Brand Management at Procter & Gamble, leading brands like Tide, Pringles, and Jif.