The Responsibility of Agency Work

"Agency work is great. It can be stressful, frantic, and bloody hard work - but I don’t think I’d ever go back the other way and be an in-house marketer."

When I partnered up with Rob Swan and joined him at Sonder, it was just the two of us with a handful of clients and a truckload of nerves as to whether we could make things work. We’re now a team of 10 with over 150 clients across the UK - safe to say it’s been a pretty sharp learning curve about agency work, but I think we’ve done a pretty decent job and the ride has been epic. 

There’s an expectation from clients that stems from being the standalone experts in our field - how can they get more sales, what’s going to drive more traffic, what should they be doing differently? We’re employed uniquely to solve those dilemmas, no other reason.

It’s like a bomb timer ticking down and we’re the only ones who know which wires to cut. The annoyance is those wires change colour and length every day under the guise of an algorithm update… (that’s an SEO gripe, don’t worry if I’ve lost you there). I digress.

That pressure is the kind of thing that leaves you wanting to send yourself an email note at 1am... if client X just changed their button colour to a slightly deeper green on this page - I bet they’ll get more sales. 

Creating Trust

Trust, authenticity and passion. So, a pretty sad part of the online world and what we do is that there’s an element of suspicion. Bank fraud, phishing sites, those spammy emails that promise to rank your site at the top of Google for $10, it all builds to an inherent suspicion that the web is a place where you’re going to get ripped off. So people proceed with caution.

People like Working with People

People like working with other people. When people are buying something from Amazon, you’re buying the product and you know what it’s going to do. When you work with us, you’re buying into the people. 

Wherever possible we want to showcase that passion and authenticity - I find face-to-face meetings are brilliant for that - or in the current climate the next best thing, Zoom meetings (definitely reached a point of Zoom fatigue though - bring on face-to-face any day. Anyone else?!). 

I think a large percentage of companies underestimate how important online is to them. Take a high street store selling homeware products… their culture and brand is so clearly set within the confines of that store. A lovely storefront, the music that plays, the mannerisms in which the staff interact - all coordinated perfectly for those that visit the store. All of that needs to somehow get relayed online, on a screen, to a potentially national audience. Thousands more people will see the website and their online advertising - so just how that process takes place is so important. 

That’s the responsibility that we thrive on… it’s what creates the buzz.

"Pressure can burst a pipe, or pressure can make a diamond"

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