t: So a little nudge to push them into the funnel? Retail marketer: More a swift kick in the arse. Grease up the inside of the funnel while you’re at it. One week later… Creative agency suit: Can I brief you on this email program? Agency creative: Just email it to me. Creative agency suit: Ironic. You’re funny. Let’s chat when you’ve read it. Two weeks later… Creative agency suit: Looked at that email brief yet? Agency creative: I’ll look now. 30 minutes later… Agency creative: See attached. Haven’t spell checked it. Creative agency suit: We can’t present this. Agency creative: Why the f@$k not?? Okay, I’m going to cut here before things get out of hand. Now this scenario is exaggerated for effect. I’m an ad agency creative who has been guilty of this once or twice earlier in my career. And I have witnessed it three or four times along the way. Creatives prioritising sexy jobs, and, in turn, deprioritising BAU, is a feature of many an agency creative department. As a retail marketer, or one who at least has to wrangle a retail arm, it’s a scenario you’ll be familiar with. Retailers are incredibly valued clients in agency land; companies with retail arms are often more so. And today, agencies are expertly geared to deliver creative, media, strategy, design, CRM/loyalty, activation, data management and whatever else you need. There are some exceptional people giving you all sorts of love at the management, account management and strategic level. You’ll feel it at the creative level, too, for your launches, TV ads, videos, campaigns and significant digital jobs that require deft thinking. But the BAU that keeps you humming can be a different matter. A top agency will deliver BAU in lock-step with the creative department. But not all do. To be fair to my creative mates, none of them want to produce fodder. It’s not why we’re here, and I figure it’s not why you are either, so it should be relatively simple to get on the same page. One way to inspire your team to deliver comes down to framing. An email lead-nurture program sounds dry as hell. Category-leading (because that’s what you’re after, right?), direct-to-prospect copywriting genius with crazy irresistible subject lines is the real game here. It might seem shallow, but this kind of hyperbolic BS gets people excited. Another way is to pop a competitor’s work that you admire up on the wall. Asking your agency’s design team to smash your foe’s collateral out of the park is like a red rag to a bull. None of us want to have our competitors’ work on the wall with a mandate to beat it. We’re the ones who want to BE ON THE WALL, DAMMIT. A third way is to keep bringing them into the tent. Your agency might have done a site tour during the pitch stage but how immersed are they in the business now? Asking your key team members to walk regularly in your shoes is a brilliant motivator. Further to this is developing relationships. The people who deliver your messages to your customers shouldn’t be at arm’s length, particularly the senior ones who are responsible for the calibre of the output. Make them feel like partners, respect their craft and treat them as colleagues and they’ll give you the world. And then we can’t forget that tall, dark and inexpensive bot sitting in the corner of the room. So if you might be someone who believes AI in the form of ChatGPT, Midjourney, or whatever can deliver good enough creative for your brand, give your agency a chance to prove they’re better. If you really want your people at their peak, that’s the tastiest challenge there is right now.