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What makes an agency great?

Not good. Not new and innovative. Not hip. But actually great. Think The Beatles, Hemingway, or Muhammad Ali great.

And once an agency is great, how does it sustain that greatness?

These aren’t easy questions to answer. Even more daunting, there are more than 20,000 agencies trying to answer this same exact question. Sure, there are legends in advertising who have a really good grasp on how they became great. But like most things, it’s easy to define what made you or your agency successful in retrospect.

In the sister post to this, The Ever Elusive Pursuit of Greatness, we discussed why we are creating the Intelligence team. In this post, we want to explore what that really means.

I know I’m biased, but I’m in awe of our Creative and UX teams’ ability to understand users and create experiences that change behavior and delight clients. Their ability to combine qualitative research, client knowledge, and their core design and user experience skills to create amazing digital experiences is something I, frankly, can’t relate to. I can barely draw a circle or even write my name legibly.

I’m also equally impressed with the other Nebo teams. Our copywriters are brilliant and have a gift to communicate that I’ll never be able to replicate. As for Paid Media — I’m not even allowed to sign in to AdWords anymore. SEO — mad scientists doing mad scientist stuff. Developers — well, enough said. I used to be a developer and now I don’t even know how to FTP into our dev server. PR and Social — let’s just say I don’t have the temperament to have a live feed of things I might say or tweet, much less understand their craft.

Trying to figure out how to market to millennials is the new "is it the year of mobile?" conundrum marketers are fretting about. How can brands get these seemingly uninterested, disloyal hordes of potential customers to fall in love with their brand? How can brands create messaging and ads that move them from awareness to consideration to intent to become mindless brand loyalists willing to buy whatever breakfast cereal the global conglomerate releases this year?

Business is simple. Buy low, sell high. Find a market opportunity and serve a need. Create the right processes, hire the right people, and utilize the best technology. Boom. You’re off and running. Work hard to keep your competitive advantages. Stay ahead of the competition. Hire the right agency. Retain the best employees. Listen to the right consultants. Stay true to your mission statement. Perform a SWOT. Listen to more consultants. Revise your business plan. Evolve your brand and mission. Continue to stay ahead of the competition. Try to not get swallowed up by the next disruption. Read business books. Hire your competitor’s employees. Buy a smaller, but more agile competitor. Think about selling. Layoffs? Restructure. Hold the fort. Listen to your attorneys. Listen to your finance people. Strategize.

It’s not simple.

Our story begins with me at an industry event. I’m shaking hands, I’m smiling, I’m swapping business cards with people. I’m trying to represent the brand. I’m trying to meet potential new hires. I’m trying to learn from my industry peers.

Networking is networking, some like it, some don’t. I don’t particularly like it, but it’s good for the company and I can handle it.

Sadly, tragedy strikes my inbox within days of the event. It explodes with dozens of emails from all too eager salesmen offering to buy me a cup of coffee. And of course they’ll also introduce me to their yadda yadda service or their whatever-the-hell product. It’s not a sales pitch, it’s coffee among friends. They want to bend my ear, run something by, have a chat, pick my brain, they want to take me out.