The first agency I ever worked at was the one I ended up running. In 2018 I walked into User Conversion as its MD. Before that I’d been at Missguided on the other side of the table, the client who hired the agencies, briefed them and argued about their invoices, so I assumed I knew what an agency was for. Within a few months I’d learnt something I hadn’t expected. Most of our work had been decided before we started it, by the brief that arrived with the client, and that brief had rarely been written by anyone whose job it was to question it. By the time the agency sold to Brainlabs we had Boots, BrewDog and Frasers Group on the list, and it was true of all of them.
Boards still ask me whether they should hire a consultant or an agency, most months. My first question back is what they think the two things are for. The answers tend to be some way apart, and the money goes missing in that gap. One isn’t better than the other. They’re different purchases.
What each one is selling
An agency sells you hands and a scope. You bring a brief, they bring a team, and the retainer buys the hours it takes to deliver what the brief says. On a well-written brief, a good agency is worth every penny. I’d say that having run one and having hired plenty since.
A consultant sells you a judgement with no scope attached to it. Replatform, spend more on paid social, commission a redesign: whichever of those I tell you to do, I’m not also quoting for it. An agency can’t be independent of its own scope however good its people are, because the scope is the business. That’s a description of what you’re buying rather than a criticism.
The question to ask first
Before anyone picks, somebody should try to write down what needs doing in a paragraph. Not the objective, which is usually growth or margin and which everybody agrees with, but the actual work. Which channel, which part of the journey, which system, in what order and why. It’s harder than it sounds.
When the paragraph comes easily and the board agrees with it, you don’t need me. Hire the agency and spend your energy on the brief, because the brief is what you’re paying for. Most of what goes wrong between brands and agencies goes wrong in that document, not in the delivery. The quality of what comes back is capped by the quality of what went in, and nobody on the agency side can fix that for you.
When the paragraph won’t come, or three agencies have each told you the answer is their thing, that’s the moment for someone independent. A few weeks rather than a year, and alongside the agency rather than instead of it. The point is to decide what the work is, so that the brief you eventually write is worth paying somebody to deliver.
What the money looks like
Here are the ranges, so you can compare like with like. Agency retainers for a brand between £20M and £150M start at about £5,000 a month and run into the tens of thousands, which over a year means anywhere from £60,000 to well past £300,000. A permanent eCommerce director costs £150,000 to £200,000 a year plus employers’ costs. Independent consultants mostly quote a day rate, somewhere between £250 and £2,000 depending on who they are. I’ve written separately about why that number tells you so little.
Mine are fixed and on the site. A Board Session is £3,500 for a day on the one decision that’s been pending too long. The Clarity Diagnostic is £15,000 for four to six weeks, ending with the moves ranked and costed. Advisory starts at £8,000 a month. Set against a mid-sized retainer, a Diagnostic costs about 2 or 3 months of agency fee, and what it buys is the decision about what the other 9 or 10 months should be for. That’s the comparison I’d want a board to make. Not consultant against agency, but the cost of deciding against the cost of a year spent delivering the wrong thing well.
The version to be careful of
Most agencies now offer a strategy phase at the front of the engagement, usually called discovery, and some of them do it well. The trouble is structural rather than personal. A discovery phase run by the people who will deliver the work tends to discover work they can deliver. The brands I’ve watched spend six figures on one mostly ended up with a confident document that told them what their trading team already knew, followed by a recommendation that happened to fit the agency’s capabilities. There’s a learning tax that comes with it, and I’ve written about that too.
There’s a simple test. Could the strategy phase ever conclude that you don’t need the agency? A yes means it’s strategy. Anything else is a sales process with a longer run-up, and should be priced as one.
Having both
For a brand at this size the usual answer is both, in the right order. Someone independent decides what the work is and writes it down. The agency delivers it. Then somebody inside the business, or someone working as if they were, reads the invoices against the brief every month and asks whether the work is still pointed at the right problem. That last part gets skipped more than any other, because everyone is busy and the work looks fine, and it’s the gap I end up filling most often in Advisory.
The good agencies want this arrangement more than you’d expect. A client who knows what they want is a better client, the work is better and the relationship lasts longer. An agency that resists having an independent voice at the table is telling you something worth hearing.
How a board decides
Write the paragraph. If it comes, brief the agency, and brief them carefully. Otherwise buy the few weeks of judgement first and brief the agency after. Either way, give somebody the job of reading the invoices against the brief, because the brief will drift and nobody at the agency is paid to notice.
Questions people ask
Can we have a consultant and an agency at the same time?
Yes, and for most brands between £20M and £150M that’s the right shape. The consultant decides and oversees while the agency delivers. The two aren’t in competition, and the better agencies will say so.
Should the consultant manage the agency?
Oversee rather than manage. Day to day account management belongs inside your business. What an independent person adds is the monthly read on whether the work still matches the brief, plus the awkward conversation when it doesn’t.
Our agency offers strategy. Why not use that?
Sometimes you should, when the question is narrow and inside their specialism. For the bigger question of where the business should put its money next year, ask whether their strategy work could ever conclude that you need less of them. An answer of no means it isn’t independent.
How do I know a consultant is independent?
Ask what happens to their income if you follow the advice. Nothing means they’re independent. Advice that tends to end in a project they’d deliver, or a referral fee from a platform, means you’ve hired an agency with a smaller office.