Put marketing at the center of your enterprise. Synaxis is a marketing and branding consultancy dedicated to helping its clients increase brand awareness, improve sales tools, and increase qualified sales leads.

The Externally Focused Agency

In a recent blog entry, Seth Godin gave us a good example of a prevailing attitude among employees these days. To summarize, a bank manager continually vies for the best parking spot in her bank's limited parking area, neglecting her customers' overall parking satisfaction. Similarly, when a person works at a company for a while, it's easy to start thinking that his company is the universe. He begins optimizing the work to suit him, at the expense of his customers.

Is Your Agency Looking Out for You?

In the agency world, it works much the same way. The best example of this is when designers design for themselves, not their clients. Designers approach projects with preconceived notions of what would be a great design, ignoring their client’s needs and requirements.

The worst part is that the clients often don't realize it is happening. They look to the designer to be the expert, and they frequently acquiesce to the designer's judgment. So, unlike the bank example above, where customers immediately recognize if they are parking further away, clients often can’t tell when a design represents the designer and not them.

A better approach is for designers (and the agencies they work for) to give their client a detailed creative brief or strategy documentation that outlines the goals for the project. Every design presented should track back to the goals identified in those documents. In much the same way that a sailor needs a compass to guide him across the ocean waters, designers need this documentation to confirm that they are headed in the right direction.

Strategy Focus vs. Execution Focus

Clients first need to be educated on how to hire an agency and how to review design work. As mentioned in a previous Synaxis newsletter article (see Spring 2007), an agency is meant to be an extension of the company, not an entity unto itself. When hiring an agency, look for thoughtful dialog, informed questions, and solution-based ideas. Be cognizant of the tendency of agencies to lead with execution, not strategy. Each engagement between an agency and a client should begin with a strategy phase. This phase ensures that the agency and client are on the same page before any execution is ever begun. In the end, the execution becomes not just an award-winning design but also a collaboration of the client and the agency that 'moves the needle'.