Tip ∞ #19: Why Picking/Choosing Agency Services is Not A Good Idea in the Long Run

You can pick and choose agency services (if your agency lets you), but in the long-run, this is not the best strategy to improve your overall marketing communications, or reach your marketing goals, unless your company is extremely sophisticated about communications.

As an example, let's discuss printing. Most ad agencies are not printers. Most printers are not advertising agencies. To prepare a print piece (or publish an ad in a print magazine) you need to have BOTH at your service.

Here's a blog post about why working with a printer is a challenge.

In the olden days, ad agencies supplemented their income by printing for their clients, and usually marked up the printing. These days, clients are more likely to want to "Print it themselves" and save the money.

GWiz doesn't practice "print mark up" but we do like to pick and choose our own printers and work with them. We usually pass the costs on to the client without a mark up, but we charge for our time to manage a print project.

Our practice is that if a client wants to pick and choose their own printer, and refuses to pay for our time to manage a print project, then they are on their own: Good luck with that. But usually we would politely refuse to work with a printer unless we have experience with them and can control the vendor by managing the hiring, relationship and billing.

Here's what I've witnessed in the last year alone regarding this practice of having the client "manage their own printing" with our art files or other companies' art files.

• artwork goes missing on the final: logo trademark disappears and no one at the client noticed on the proof of several large signs and they were printed that way.

• color is off: yellow turns green, green turns yellow, but client OKs proof from printer, and doesn't bother to attend press check anyway.

• transparency needed adjustment: a transparent image intended for background was printed at 100%: client didn't notice on proof and approved it for printing.

• on a complex piece of artwork, some part of the artwork was changed during the printer's production process: client didn't notice, and it printed incorrectly.

• Printer changed paper half way through a printing job, during the printing. The printer swapped out the paper with a different kind of paper: The result is that the catalog has half one kind of paper and half another kind. It is noticeable on the final, but the client wasn't at the press check and didn't demand a reprint, or maybe didn't review the fine print on his printing contract. Or maybe doesn't realize the difference between the various kinds of paper.

The common thread with all these printing mistakes is that the creator of the artwork (your agency), usually knows the artwork best and would notice if something happened such as a trademark gone missing, pieces of artwork missing or changed, or color problems.

How these production problems happen is for another post, but the example is used to illustrate that when you select an ad agency, it's a good idea to let the agency manage the entire project from start to finish so at the end of the day, you have "one throat to choke," as my good client and friend, Matt Dell, likes to say.

Generally, in my experience, it's a good idea to let your agency manage their own vendors in order for you to get the best possible results.

Remember when you tried to be the general on your house addition? The plumber blamed the electrician, the electrician blamed the framer, the framer blamed the architect, the architect blamed the engineer, and you were left scratching your head, not knowing who to believe? Wouldn't it have been better to blame the builder/general contractor who is in charge of all these disciplines?

Working with an ad agency is kind of the same thing. Being penny-wise and pound-foolish is not a good idea when the reputation and brand of your company is at stake.