Why one-size-fits-all advice doesn’t work for agencies

Agency Leadership Podcast

In this episode, Chip and Gini dismantle the myth that agency management can rely on a one-size-fits-all approach. They emphasize the importance of understanding the diversity and unique needs of different types of agencies, such as PR, ad, and digital agencies.

Chip and Gini discuss their experiences in various agency environments and highlight the influence of agency size and specialization on management strategies. They caution against blindly following advice from other agency owners or consultants without considering the specific context and needs of one’s own agency. They also stress the importance of tailoring roles and titles to actual needs rather than fixed hierarchies, revealing the potential pitfalls of title inflation and focusing too narrowly on prescribed roles like account or project managers.

Key takeaways

• Chip Griffin: “The irony is that in most agencies, an account manager doesn’t manage and an account executive is not an executive.”
• Gini Dietrich: “If you’re listening to advice, or you have the mindset that you have to fill roles like an account manager, a traffic manager, a project manager…that is the fastest way to zero profit.”
• Chip Griffin: “You need to personalize your approach based on what you’re trying to accomplish and what your specific needs are, not what you’ve heard some other peer or expert tell you.”
• Gini Dietrich: “In a PR firm, it’s typically the people who are doing the work that are also doing the account management, the client service, and the project management, management, making sure the work gets done.”

Related

• Be smart about titles at your agency
• How small agencies can improve employee retention
• Setting expectations for raises and promotions at your agency
• Beware of the experts

View Transcript

The following is a computer-generated transcript. Please listen to the audio to confirm accuracy.

Chip Griffin: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m Chip Griffin.

Gini Dietrich: And I’m Gini Dietrich.

Chip Griffin: And Gini, today is a one size fits all day. We’re going to talk about how every agency is exactly the same. And all you have to do is go through a simple checklist and you’ll know how to manage your business successfully.

Gini Dietrich: Man, that’s going to make life so much easier. Awesome. Yes,

Chip Griffin: it is. I mean, you know, it’s, it is nice that it’s just all about a simple formula. No real thought involved.

Gini Dietrich: Okay. I wish that were the case. Unfortunately, yeah.

Chip Griffin: Well, I think in all seriousness, I think one of the challenges that agency leaders have these days is there are a lot of resources out there.

There’s this podcast. There are plenty of other podcasts like it. There are lots of articles. There are YouTube channels. There are books and a lot of it is framed as we do here in terms of agencies, right? The Agency Leadership Podcast. We don’t specify what kind of agency. As we talk, it becomes more clear, you know, where our general knowledge is.

And so therefore where our general slant is, but on the surface, we’re just talking about agencies and there are a lot of other really smart people out there who are talking about agencies and giving you advice. The problem is that not every agency is the same. There are small agencies, there are large agencies, there are PR agencies, there are ad agencies, there are digital agencies.

There are all these different permutations of it and understanding and trying to figure out how that all fits and how to understand the advice you’re being given is different. And so you need to appreciate that those differences exist and understand the advice you’re getting where it’s coming from.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah, I, I mean, yes, and, and you’re right. That it’s not a one size fits all, unfortunately, and having worked both in a large global PR firm where it was all PR and having worked in an ad agency where we were building a PR department. They, they work completely different. They have different structures of teams.

They have a production department. They have an account management client service department. They have creative, they have copywriting, they have art and graphic design. And, you know, we have pR. So that simplifies it, but that’s, that’s generally how it works. So I think you’re right, depending on the agency and depending on the expertise that you provide is going to help you craft sort of the organizational model or chart around the types of people that you hire.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. And so when, when you’re out there and you’re consuming this advice, if you’re, if you’re listening to us, you know, that our background is primarily in PR, marketing communications, PESO model type agencies. Do we have other experience? Yes. I run a digital agency. I’ve got a lot of other experiences. We can talk about those things as well, but most of our advice is centered on those PR, marcoms, PESO agency types.

And so. There are others out there who you’ll go and they’ll say, well, you know, an account manager should do this or that, or you should have a project manager. Most PR agencies aren’t going to follow that same advice for what an account manager should do. Most PR agencies aren’t going to even have a project manager.

There are some smart people in the agency world who will talk about the, how important it is to have a traffic manager. Most PR agency owners don’t even know what a traffic manager is. So, so I will have them say, you know, I was listening to such and such a podcast and they were talking about how valuable a traffic manager is.

What’s a traffic manager? Do I need one? No, you don’t. No, because you’re running a different kind of business.

Gini Dietrich: Right.

Chip Griffin: And so it’s the same thing. You have a lot of the folks who run the high volume agencies, the SEO PPC type agencies, they’ll be out there talking about how, oh, you need a VA, you need a salesperson.

And for those kinds of agencies, those kinds of things can work. For most PR and Marcoms agencies, not so much.

Gini Dietrich: Yep. Yeah, I totally agree. I think there are some exceptions to the rule for sure. You know, because we have, I’ve crafted my agency around the PESO model, we have core expertise in paid or in shared and owned media.

And because of that, we do have a project manager, but I think we got Gosh, 15 or maybe 18 employees before, before we hired him. So even still, you know, you still had everybody managing the client. There was one, there is one point of contact before we hired the project manager. There was one point of contact for each client account.

And then all the earned media or all the media types fell into that. But usually the point of contact was doing something like content owned media or earned media. Whatever was most important to the client, and then they were sort of the ones running it. So the point is, is that in a PR firm, it’s typically the people who are doing the work that are also doing the account management, the client service, and the project management, management, making sure the work gets done.

Chip Griffin: And the roles, even within, as you point out, the, a PR or Marcoms agency. Based on your size, things are going to change. So it’s, it’s not even just about the kind of agency you are. It’s the size, right? That at five or 10 people, a PR agency is going to be almost exclusively generalists. You’ll have people who have a little bit of extra ability on the writing side, maybe a little bit extra on the media relations side, but you’re not going to have the, the well defined structures.

I mean, when I worked in, in large agencies, we had an entire writing department, we had an entire creative department, right? And those, that made sense. At five or 10 employees, that doesn’t make sense for most of you out there. You don’t want to have two people who are nothing but writers. And, you know, cause they’re probably not going to have enough work to fill 40 hours a week each.

And so you need to be thoughtful about those. And as you, as you hear some of these things, and as you talk to other agency owners about how they’re set up, you need to appreciate how, how is what they’re doing the same or different from what you’re doing so that you can draw the right conclusions for the structure that you want to put in place with your team.

Gini Dietrich: The other mistake I see, especially PR firm agency owner, PR firm owners making is that there’s sort of a hierarchy traditionally, especially at the large firm. So you start as an account coordinator, you go to assistant AE, then to executive, account executive, senior AE. Account supervisor, managing supervisor, VP, SVP and on.

Like that’s typically the, the organizational chart. And what I see agency owners, the mistake I see them making is they say, okay, well I have to hire an account coordinator and I have to hire an AAE and I have to hire an AE and they, they, they sort of fit people into that and they try to fit people into that process or that organizational structure without looks, taking a step back and looking at what they really need.

Maybe you need somebody with like five to seven years of experience and they might need an account supervisor or management supervisor title, but you, because they only have five to seven years of experience, you want them in that AE or SAE level. And that’s just not the case. So I think you have to really step back and go, Okay, hang on a second.

What kind of work needs to be done? How many years of experience do I need for the person to have? And what kind of titles are they looking for? You know, for us, as I was building my agency, I looked for people who had the experience I need and I sort of let them dictate the title. And in some cases it bit them in the butt a little bit because I, I remember a couple of times people were like, Oh, I really want to be chief content officer.

I really want to be vice president. And they didn’t have enough experience, but titles didn’t matter to me. So I was like, okay, you can be chief content officer. I don’t care. And then they went to get another job. And from an ego perspective, got quote unquote demoted like two or three titles. They didn’t get demoted in terms of pay or anything like, core responsibilities, but from their perspective, they were demoted in terms of titles.

So I also think you have to think about those kinds of things and have those honest conversations. Like I’m totally cool making you a chief content officer. If that’s what you, if that’s the title you want, but know that when, if, and when you leave us, you’re probably not going to get that same title. So should we think about what that might look like for your career path in general, not just at this agency.

And some people are agreeable and some people are not, and that’s up to you. But I think the important thing is like figuring out what skillset you need and the years of experience that you need, and then work them into a title that way versus trying to follow that pattern.

Chip Griffin: Yeah. And I think, I mean, certainly thinking about, you know, we’ve talked about career progressions and title paths and, you know, and all that kind of thing in the past, but you know, one of the things to think about, it’s not just how it impacts their career going forward.

If you have title inflation, it’s also what, what your flexibility is in restructuring your own business because you want to be careful about giving someone a title that’s, that’s so large that it’s hard to layer them down the road, if you need to.

Gini Dietrich: That’s a great point. That’s a really great point.

Chip Griffin: So if you’ve got some of the chief content officer, I mean, about the only thing you can layer them with is a chief operating officer or CEO or president or something like that. There’s not much else that you have that you can logically at least, you know, make them subservient to in a way that doesn’t, you know, feel weird.

Right. I mean, you don’t have a chief content officer report to a vice president or something like that typically. And so you want to be thoughtful about those. But as we’re thinking about titles, you know, that’s another area. Even if you compare PR agencies and you look at their title structures, the most junior title for all of them is likely going to be different.

Yeah. Right. Some, I’m a junior person as an account coordinator. A lot, it’s account executive. A lot, it’s account manager. Yep. The irony is that in most agencies, an account manager doesn’t manage and an account executive is not an executive. Right?

Gini Dietrich: Yes.

Chip Griffin: Those are the common titles. Uh huh. But I’ve, I’ve been involved with agencies where an account executive was senior to an account manager.

And I’ve been ones where an account manager is senior to an account executive. So, you know, it’s one of the reasons why salary surveys are so problematic in this field, because if I’ve got an account manager, and particularly when you’re looking across different kinds of agencies, right, because in an ad agency, an account manager is actually a fairly senior experienced person who’s managing the relationship.

In most PR agencies, an account manager isn’t that senior, isn’t running the, the, the actual relationship. They may manage the day to day of the project, but it’s, it’s typically going to be someone senior to them who’s actually quote unquote, owns the relationship with the client and that, and that’s the person who’s responsible for growing the account and retaining the account.

It’s not the account manager themselves. Now that, but that can be different, right? Cause it depends on how you structure your own agency. And so you need to be careful as you’re hearing, even us talk, because we’ll use it based on our own experience and how we’ve structured things, but it may not be the same as what you’re doing.

And so you want to look at the big picture lessons you can take as opposed to, oh, well, I was told that I, you know, I should have an account manager who’s out, you know, and it’s their job to, to grow accounts. If it’s someone two years out of college, I’m not going to say it’s their responsibility to grow the account.

Gini Dietrich: No.

Chip Griffin: That doesn’t make any sense at all. It’s not their job to come up with big picture strategy. I mean, should they be able to manage day to day stuff? Yes, absolutely. Bigger stuff? I mean, you can’t just hand that off to someone junior most of the time.

Gini Dietrich: Right. Totally agree with that. You know, it’s kind of like, I’ll say to a client, they’ll say, Oh yeah, I think that my 15 year old kid can handle social media.

And I’m like, do you want your 15 year old kid to go golfing with your number one client without you? No, no, you don’t. So why would you let them talk externally to your customers and prospects? Like same thing, right? You don’t, you’re, you’re not going to expect your junior level employee to do that. Those kinds of things.

Can they be in the meetings? For sure. Can they observe and listen? Absolutely. Should they be the one in charge of it? No freaking way. So the other thing I would advise is really you know, pay attention to what every, you know, all everybody advises, of course, but talk to other agency owners and understand like this is the world in which we live.

And the, this is the type of person I’m looking for. And these are the types of titles they may or may not have. So you can talk to other agency owners and say, Hey, listen, what do you call your, your person who handles media relations at like five to seven years of experience or three to five or eight to 10 or whatever happens to be.

And you’ll probably get, if you talk to five different agency owners, you’ll probably get five different answers, but it’ll at least give you an idea of, okay, If we’re thinking about this and I want to flip myself into that process, then where, where does it make me most comfortable? And so you start to look at it and really understand. You know, SAGA is a great place for that.

You have a Slack community. The Spin Sucks community is probably about half agency owners. You can do that. PRSA has Counselor’s Academy, which is all agency owners. You can, you know, join that. So there are lots of places where you can just ask that question, and understand what titles are being used for different levels and different types of experience so that you can start to figure out, okay.

And like I said, you may have get five different answers from five different agency owners, but it gives you enough basis and foundation to understand this is how I’m going to structure it and give you enough to be able to do that.

Chip Griffin: Absolutely. I mean, you can learn so much from those things. And, you know, I would also say try to avoid fixating too much on titles.

Focus on what the actual role is, what they’re doing. So as you’re, as you’re asking people, about, you know, how they’re structured, what they have, you know, for things, understand what those people actually do. Because before, you know, if you hear someone say you should have a project manager, cool, sit down and actually ask them, what does that person do?

And then think about your own agency and put together a job description for what that person would do on a day to day basis. And then figure out, will it actually help to have this person? Can you get this in one individual? Or have you actually described a unicorn that’s actually three different specialist positions rolled into one and your odds of finding it are going to be tiny?

Is it something that you need, but you only need 10 hours a week. And so it’s going to have to be rolled into something else because you can’t, or you’re going to find someone to do it part time because you don’t have 40 hours a week to fill it.

Gini Dietrich: Yep.

Chip Griffin: And, and I think when you start doing those things and you start actually sitting down and asking yourself those tough questions about what is this person actually going to do?

How do they fit in with the rest of the mix? That’s where you start to figure out whether it fits or not. And, and I, I hate to harp on VAs, but VAs are one of those things that a lot of agency coaches out there will tell you, Oh, it’s a lifesaver to have a VA. For most of you, it isn’t. Because for most of you, you’re not doing that much actual admin stuff.

And so if you’re, if you’re not spending hours and hours a day doing admin stuff, then first of all, what you’re looking for is not truly a VA. You’re just looking for a contractor to do something else. And even then you need to figure out what can they actually take off of your plate. Because so often when I’ve talked with folks who are looking at hiring a VA, they tell me, here’s what they can do.

And it’s, it may, you know, it’s, it’s maybe two or three hours a day, but the amount of time it will take them is half of that to manage it. So if you’re spending an hour and a half to manage getting three hours off your plate, what’s the point?

Gini Dietrich: Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Chip Griffin: So there is a time and place for all of these different roles.

It may not be at five people. It may not be at 10 people. It may not even be a 20 or 25. It may be further down the road. It may be if you add a different kind of services to your point, if you start doing the full PESO model, yes, you’re going to start to need some specialists because it’s hard to have someone who has all of the different specialties in the PESO model, you know, in their, under their own hat.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah,

Chip Griffin: they exist, but they are unicorns.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah, I found that out pretty quickly as we were building the agency around that, you know, 10 years ago, almost no one can do all four. So you, you do have to find specialists. And I will tell you that as we were doing it, you know, we didn’t have full time people that were focused on each.

We had contractors and, you know, we brought them in as needed. And eventually we got to the point where we needed full time people under each media type, but it took us, Gosh, six or seven years to get there. So you, the same goes for you. You know, if you’re looking for a specialist, doesn’t have to be a full time employee either.

Chip Griffin: Right, because you, it all comes back to understanding what your objectives are, what you need from a resource perspective, and then figuring out how you get there.

If you, if you approach it from the, well, I’m told that I need to have account managers doing this and I need to have project managers to do that. And I need a traffic manager and all these different things. You don’t, you shouldn’t be starting with those titles. You shouldn’t be starting with thinking the roles of the big picture.

You should start looking at the individual tasks that need to be accomplished and figure out who can do that on your current team, who has the bandwidth, who has the capability. If they don’t have either of those or one of those, then do you need to hire someone who has that ability? Do you need to find a contractor?

Do you need to find a partner agency to work with? Whatever it may, there’s a lot of different ways to solve it, but you need to understand what your actual need is, as opposed to latching onto the notion of, a project manager or an account manager or a sales rep or whatever.

Gini Dietrich: Yeah. I would say that if, if you’re listening to, or you have the mindset that you have to fit, find roles like that, we have to find an account manager.

We have to do this. We have to do that. That is the fastest way to zero profit. And I speak from experience. So don’t do that. Take, take Chip’s advice and really look at what it is. What is it that we need? Who is it that can fill that role? And if we have any gaps, can we fill in with contractors for five or 10 hours a week to, to do that?

Chip Griffin: Right. And, and understand the perspectives are going to be entirely different based on the experiences of the person sharing that, whether that’s a fellow agency owner or a coach or consultant like us or something else. We all have our own experiences. We’re all speaking about a specific kind of agency, which is a subset of all agencies.

And if you understand that those things are different and you understand that your agency, even if you’re a five person PR agency, you’re not the same as every other five person PR agency. And so you really need to personalize your approach based on what you’re trying to accomplish and what your specific needs are, not what you’ve heard some other peer or expert tell you.

Gini Dietrich: This is for sure. Yes, because your PR firm may be completely, you focus completely on media relations. So that’s completely different than my PR firm that doesn’t. So you also just have to, it’s a great point. You have to think about what the perspective of is of the person that’s giving you the advice.

Chip Griffin: Absolutely. And it’s not one size fits all, you know, we’ll, we’ll share our perspective, take our perspective, keep listening to us, digest it, figure out what’s useful to you and where we’re just full of hot air and feel free to stop listening at that point. But you’ve been listening all the way through to the way through,

Gini Dietrich: that’s right.

Chip Griffin: And we appreciate that. So that brings us to the end of this episode of the Agency Leadership Podcast. I’m Chip Griffin.

Gini Dietrich: I’m Gini Dietrich.

Chip Griffin: And it depends.