How to choose an agency partner

Choosing a creative or PR agency should be exciting. You are looking for people who can make your brand sharper, more interesting, more famous, more talked about and hopefully less likely to say “we’re delighted to announce” in public.

Unfortunately, the process often becomes weirdly joyless. A 40-slide credentials deck. A proprietary framework. A slide with circles on it. Someone saying “TikTok-first” with the confidence of a man who has not downloaded the TikTok app.

Start with the real problem

Before you look for an agency, work out what you really need. Do you need media coverage? A campaign idea? A launch story? A sharper brand position? Do you need people to care about something that currently feels quite hard to care about?

Those are different problems. A traditional PR agency might help you get a story out. A creative agency might make the story look beautiful. An earned-first creative PR partner should help you find the story people might actually want to talk about.

Look for earned thinking, not just PR activity

A good creative PR agency should not start with “who can we pitch this to?” It should start with: why would anyone care, why now, what is the tension, what is the simplest version of the idea, what would make a journalist or customer pick this up, and why does it belong to this brand?

If the agency cannot explain the earned-media value of the idea in plain English, be suspicious.

Ask to see ideas, not just outputs

Case studies can be misleading. Some agencies are very good at making “we posted some content” sound like the moon landing. Look for the actual idea underneath the campaign. Was it distinctive? Was it timely? Could another brand have done it?

The best brand campaigns are usually easy to explain. If it takes seven minutes and a diagram, it might not be an idea. It might be admin.

Check who will actually do the work

This is the bit nobody likes to talk about. In many pitches, the most senior people are heavily involved at the start, lightly involved in the middle and spiritually involved by the end.

Ask who leads the thinking, who writes the work, who challenges the brief, who is in the room after the pitch and who will tell you if the idea is not good enough.

Beware trend-chasing

There is nothing wrong with TikTok. There is something wrong with deciding you need a TikTok campaign before you know what you are trying to say.

Channels are not ideas. Trends are not strategies. Content formats are not campaigns. A dance is not a brand platform, unless you are selling knees.