You probably feel ambivalent about agencies. Based on nothing, we’re going to continue thinking you hate them, or this article won’t work.
Agencies can be cynical places – monoliths to the empty promise. Each one a bottomless pit where your marketing budget goes to die, you stand in its wake wondering what the hell just happened.
Selling has a bad name – it has a dishonest reputation. In reality, it’s bad advertising we hate.
Sometimes your marketing strategy might be a little off, and that can be for many reasons. But when a bad idea grows legs, it’s crazy to think it got beyond the mind-mapping stage. Terrible marketing is a contradiction. It’s the antithesis of positively promoting your business. Why would anyone consistently try to kill their brand?
Trust issues
If you got burned once, you might need years of therapy before you hire an agency again.
We use a lot of hyperbole in our content, if you take things literally then it might be confusing.
Lost trust kills any relationship, and when you get it wrong in business, it’s no different.
This is some counter-intuitive marketing angle – we say how awful our industry is, you agree, then contact us for some marketing. We’d love you to do that but first we’ve not finished saying how bad our industry is.
There are a few advertising practices we don’t feel comfortable with.
An agency’s willingness to bend the truth – sorry, lie – will always damage your brand. Faking empathy and concern for your customer is just like telling lies, it’s deceitful and will come back to bite you – not the agency. You value things like integrity and transparency, and lots of other things that are difficult to quantify but are a necessity in today’s business landscape. So hiring a company that doesn’t have those qualities is always going to be a bad thing.
The way you work has changed
You’re working from your kitchen table or a corner of the living room. You’re adapting to remote business. You’re using technology to connect with your team and it’s working pretty well, and who knows, maybe you won’t be spending so much time in the real office when this Kafkaesque nightmare is over. Those changes have forced innovation. You’ve realised that you don’t need all those tangible assets you thought you did.
Budgets have flatlined so now you’re super choosy about where you spend your money. It makes us sad but marketing budgets are the first thing to get cut, which is ironic because you need to promote your business now more than ever.
We are change
TIN ROBOT was an easy birth. The idea of an agency with the sole intention of being all about the service was a no brainer. We’re figuring out what businesses now want, and as those businesses evolve, so do we.
We have to acknowledge the perceptions of our industry and use that information to make us better.
We’re sitting around in our casual clothes asking ourselves, what are the new priorities for our clients? It seems obvious that you want an honest transaction, right? You want a relationship based on respect and equality – bring on a collaborative working experience. You might like to have all that from your kitchen table, or in a real-life, in-person setting. Most of all, you want all the talent without funding some lavish agency’s existence.
You want the same for your clients, to be seen as decent, working hard for their investment. Your clients have a social conscience, the way you present your brand matters in this age of data-driven communication.
We’re really enjoying the juxtaposition of ‘data-driven communication’ alongside us doing no research for this article.
Selling alone isn’t enough. Consumers care. A great concept isn’t the only thing they want. Scribbling an arbitrary tick in the inclusivity and diversity box won’t wash either – if you don’t mean what you say, people will know. Just like you, your customers aren’t stupid.
Some of them might be stupid but pinning your hopes on your audience not being clever enough to notice, is a shitty marketing strategy.
Born to be different
We give you big agency bang with small agency buck.
That’s a pretty cool USP but what does that mean? You get all the talent and experience that comes with a large established agency, without the mammoth price tag. That fits really well with your new way of working – every penny counts but you still need your marketing to do a proper job.
We’ve married the enthusiasm and drive of a startup with veteran industry knowledge.
We have 60 multi-skilled individuals from all disciplines, with varied big-brand experience.
There’s a growing number of expert creatives and strategists wanting to maintain their independence. They’re investing in their own skillset to remain at the top of their field. They know the market is competitive and they know times have never been so tough for business. They’re getting all fluid with this new way of working and we’re lucky enough to have some of those people at TIN ROBOT.
Think of us like a hybrid of all that’s good about a big agency with the innovation, agility, and future-thinking of a small set up.
Where do you go from here?
If you’re really happy with what you’ve got, if your agency works hard at getting your message right, and if they don’t spend your cash on custom glass desks and office art you probably don’t need to do anything different.
But if that isn’t the place you’re currently at, we could take your marketing strategy from ‘meh’ to ‘yeah!’.
It took us hours to come up with that line. We know, it’s pretty bad. At the time we were psyched about it.
You have a lot of digital choices right now. It’s like when you go to a restaurant and get given a pleather-bound book for a menu. TIN ROBOT has added to that menu so we understand that might not be helpful.
Do you remember restaurants? Miss those places.
Take some time to read the menu, but don’t be fooled by fancy words on the specials board. Figure out who feels the same way you do about what matters in business.
If you think we might be a good fit, get in touch!
#tinrobot
