MediaPost recently published a story in which MasterCard’s media chief, Ben Jankowski, explains how he sees the agency mindset shifting from one of “control everything” to that of “orchestrator.” As the Manager of Display at 3Q Digital, an agency that serves clients including GoPro, Fitbit, and ModCloth, I couldn’t agree more with this analogy.
Like a Mozart or Stravinsky, we arrange all of the necessary people, along with the necessary tools (like TerminalOne), to conduct successful work on behalf of our clients.
Part of that means we are technology-agnostic; we build out the technology stack that will help our clients meet or exceed their goals. As a conductor, you’re concerned with the end result, and that means our technology partners better be too. That partnership also means that we’re honest about a particular technology’s capability set. If we think there’s a better solution, we’ll let the client know.
For us, the alignment and transparency between agency and technology partners ensures client success. When we do engage with a client, our day-to-day contacts tend to be the director of marketing or online marketing manager. Communication is focused on work like integrating first-party data into the technology we use to help our client better target their audiences. We provide strategic advice on how they can best use the technology – even if they’re primarily hands-off.
By managing the technology and giving strategic advice and optimization, our clients are able to focus on brand-related priorities, and the tech partners are able to supply us with the updates and best practices we need to be experts with the technology in question.
Ultimately, we find this manner of communicating with the client to be very effective. The relationship, alignment, and transparency between the agency, technology partner, and client are everything; particularly as data management (who “owns” and “touches” the data) is increasingly important to brand-side marketers. When synchronization between all players occurs, success will follow suit – and success is music to everyone’s ears.