Is your agency having an identity crisis?
As your agency grows, it inevitably hits a crisis of confidence at some stage. Back when you were a few people around a table, you all knew the big vision. Everyone worked from an agreed set of values scribbled on a napkin. Who you are and what you do was easy for everyone to understand. It all just evolved naturally and easily. But as more people got added to the mix, they each brought their own interpretations of who you are and what you’re all about. At first, you could pull this back in line through meetings and memos, but eventually that sense of clarity and cohesion got diluted and lost. And now, well, it’s blurry.
Most agency founders, owners or directors have an innate sense of their agency’s identity. Either because it’s closely linked to their own, or because they’ve helped shape it over time. But as they move further away from the front lines of delivery, this sense is often mismatched with their team’s. This leads to an ‘us and them’ identity, where different people in different roles across the business all tell different stories. And this ain’t great.
Internal cracks only grow
The reality is, these hairline cracks grow with your agency. If your new business person thinks you’re this kind of agency, and your marketing person thinks you’re something else, you risk miscommunication at best, a total shit show at worst. This is something we see a fair amount on our journeys through the agency world. Even just sending some simple stakeholder questionnaires highlights that nobody can even agree what type of agency this is anymore. This inevitably leads to silos of people who work at different agencies under the same roof. Culturally, this is pulling apart rather than together, and is often when the politics and protectionism creep in. Everyone believes they’re right and nobody wants to concede they’ve misinterpreted the agency’s DNA.
When this happens, realigning becomes even harder. People aren’t in a mindset to come together so the process gets easily derailed. This means someone with authority either has to do the work and tell everyone the agency’s new identity (not very unifying) or shout everyone down in the room until it’s done (not very unifying either). Similarly, in an effort to appease everyone and be the peacemaker, a democratic design-by-committee process will smooth over the frictions, but also lead to an agency identity that’s dull and diluted.
This all spirals downwards to agency’s having an internal crisis that inevitably spills over into the external. Comms and copy becomes varied, with the creds deck v8 you did for that client saying you were a strategic creative agency, and the pitch deck you made for that meeting saying you're a creative digital studio. On the surface not a huge problem, but a lack of cohesion that could potentially seep out into the market.
Realigning and reigniting your team
So at key points in your agency’s growth, it’s vital to pull up and realign everyone. There are various ways to describe this work; brand identity, essence, foundations etc. Basically, it’s the fundamental things that make your agency you. There’s no strict definition of what this contains, but it covers common areas such as vision, mission, goals, values, approach, ethos, beliefs, personality, voice and visuals.
Redefining your identity involves a lot of self reflection and introspection. It can also take up a lot of time and headspace. But ultimately, the end result is some kind of document that acts as your agency’s guiding light as you continue to grow. For many this is a brand book, handbook or playbook. It might be presented as a physical product, a PDF or a website. The content and format can flex to suit your needs, but the function is always the same; to align your team and excite them about the future.
So how do you even get started on something like this?
Well, every great project begins with discovery. The first step is to gather information from as many people, places and sources as you can. Be aware that asking people directly to tell you about the agency can lead to bias. To avoid this, use a mix of anonymous surveys and questionnaires as well as face-to-face and live observations.
Your team is the obvious starting point for collecting thoughts, feelings and suggestions about your agency’s identity. Tools like SurveyMonkey and Typeform are great for digital surveying. This gives people a chance to air their opinions without fear of consequence. It’s fascinating to see how people in your own team perceive the agency, and how they think it should evolve. The other option is to conduct short interviews or to hold real-time observations to gather information about how people think, work and behave.
Clients are another great source of information, although again be aware that if they’ve already chosen to work with you they will be biassed. Sending surveys, questionnaires or holding quick conversations is the best way to get some feedback. You’ll need to tailor and streamline your questions as clients will be less invested in spending time on answering. Make it easy and possibly incentivised, so you get enough data to make it worthwhile.
Don’t be tempted to research competitors or open up brand books from previous clients or agencies. This creates too much bias as you work through the process, and you'll end up with a homogenous identity that’s just a Frankenstein version of other people’s.
Once you have all this information and data from various sources, you’ll need to go through it and look for patterns and trends. At this stage, you’re looking for consistent lines of thought that reappear often, as well as major gaps or mismatches. If possible, write up your findings into a short document and share with the relevant people. This discovery information will become vital as you move into the next phase.
Identity workshops
Most internal strategy workshops fail because they lack structure. It becomes a sprawling conversation that opens up more cans of worms than an overenthusiastic fisherman. Everyone comes to discuss your agency’s identity, but inevitably ends up arguing about positioning, clients, messaging, marketing, job roles, the croissants, and why the account managers all smoke near the fire escape. So before booking the workshop into everyone’s calendars, get your expectations and exercises nailed down.
With multiple stakeholders, it makes sense to create a set of strategy exercises that force consensus - not endless conversation. Work backwards from the outcome or item you want to define, for example; what kind of agency you call yourself or your vision statement. Then create simple tasks to help people think widely at first but then make choices about what doesn’t work as they go. You might have set ideas about what you want covered as part of your identity workshop, and into your brand book. If not, here’s a few suggestions:
Business basics
Although you’d assume everyone knows what type of business you are and what you do, you’d be surprised at the amount of variation you’ll see. So consider an exercise to set it out in simple black and white; We’re X type of agency, doing Y services for Z kind of clients. Sure, it seems condescending but some of the biggest agencies struggle to align around such a seemingly simple sentence.
Backstory
Yes, people like to know a bit about how the agency started. But, don’t see that as free reign to recount your whole life story and assume people care about what year you moved from one building to another. They don’t. Give them the bare bones details that set the scene. Maybe the founders met at a party and got drunk. Maybe the agency started in one industry and grew into another. Maybe it all began in a bedsit somewhere. Look, it doesn't need to be some Hollywood rags to riches tale, but don’t make it some boring chronological tour everyone wants to avoid.
Vision
This is where you see the agency heading in the medium to long term. Where that is depends on you, but your vision statement can be lofty and aspirational. It should feel like a line that makes people think; yeah that sounds good. A useful jumping off point is to finish the line “We want to help create a future where…” The outcome of this might be a positive change for your agency, your clients, your industry, society or the planet.
Purpose
Now, if you really want to split the room, mention the P word. Off the back of Simon Sinek’s infamous ‘Start With Why’ theory, there was a point where every agency owner was desperately navel-gazing and asking their team to find their purpose. For some agencies, it came easily because it’d always been the driving force behind their work. For others it felt like a forced retrofit because clients wanted to work with someone who could make them feel less guilty about prioritising profits. Either way, if you want to define your purpose then work through something like Sinek’s golden circle exercise (or something similar).
Approach
This is all about how you work. It’s the ethos, process, methodology or philosophy that underpins your unique way of doing things. Because this is so closely linked to your day-to-day delivery, you’ll hopefully have some solid starting points. Jot down a load of initial ideas and look for trends and commonalities. Again, reference the discovery work you did upfront to see if it leads you to any obvious areas to explore. Often you’ll end up with a lot of positive adjectives to describe your way of thinking and doing, like ‘collaborative’ or ‘creative’ or ‘strategic’ etc. These are all perfectly valid, but to add substance to them try adding at least three proof points for each.
Culture
Every agency does things differently, so capturing your unique culture gives you a way to attract talent, create rapport with the right clients, and differentiate yourself in a crowded market. It’s worth considering whether your aim here is to capture the culture that currently exists, or to influence the culture you want to create. If capturing, then the discovery phase is vital. If influencing, the workshop is the space to set the direction.
Values
You might love and live your values every day naturally, or talking about them might make your skin crawl. Either way, it’s a valuable process to work through, whatever your stance. Rather than just pick a handful of nice adjectives that sound about right, think about a time when something went really well. It could be internal or client work, about recruitment or results. Write down what happened in detail. The next step is to think about the positive learning you can take from this anecdote; the breakthrough moment that you’d love to happen again and again. And finally, you’ll need to extract one core value from this story and lesson. It can be one word, a short phrase, or a full sentence. It should feel authentic and energising, like something you’d all actually think or say.
Personality
As your team grows and multiple people take responsibility for representing your agency’s brand, you’ll need to realign about how you expect the agency to come across. This is your agency’s personality and it’s important for everyone to be on the same page. While there’ll always be some flexibility and interpretation, you can set the general direction. For example, work through some quick personality spectrums to see where you lie. For example, you might set a spectrum with a trait like Serious on one end and Silly on the other. The exercise is then to map where you feel you fit. Other common personality spectrum pairs include Scientific and Artistic, Traditional and Rebellious, Professional and Personal. There are millions more and many are easily found online.
Voice
Your agency’s voice is the way it speaks internally and externally. In essence, it’s a set of core adjectives that describe this voice with some explanation of what this means in practice and how to write with this style. Rather than just throw around random adjectives to start, maybe explore inspirational brands that speak in a way you’d like to replicate. Aim for influence, not plagiarism. Speaking like a brand you like doesn't mean you become them. For example, motivational statements of success like Nike might feel a bit forced for some agencies.
Creating your brand book / handbook / playbook
Once you’ve worked through some strategic exercises and found some consensus, you’ll need to distil your answers into a document for everyone to access. You might call this your agency’s brand book, handbook or playbook. Whatever you call it, it’s the final encapsulation of your agency’s identity. And whatever format you choose to present it in, make it look and feel like it’s had love poured into it. Because this represents you. So if you want buy-in then people need to believe it’s important.
Screw a crisis, this is all crystal clear now
Easy, right? Look we’re totally biassed but thinking about bringing in someone external for an identity project. Because you can’t read the label from inside the jar, and these kinds of projects can end up an endless existential nightmare. Find someone, anyone, who has a structured strategy process for this work and get them to handle the heavy lifting for you. Of course you have the actual answers, but having a facilitator will get you there faster and with less fighting. And isn’t your culture inclusive and collaborative? Well now's the time to put that to the test.