Much Hinges on Choosing the Best "Alpha Dog" Agency :: nelson schmidt

Much Hinges on Choosing the Best "Alpha Dog" Agency

In the opening minutes of the old "Mission: Impossible" television show, secret agent Jim Phelps would deal out a stack of photos. They were shots of colleagues he had chosen for that particular mission. Each selection was unique to the episode. Many marketing professionals do the same, eschewing a single agency of record, and instead casting from two or more specialized firms for a particular marketing program.

Jim Phelps didn't delegate the leadership of his ad hoc team. Similarly, many marketers who work with "best-of-breed" resources assume the project leadership role. Others delegate project lead responsibilities to someone else within the organization. There is a third way: Establishing an "alpha dog" agency.

Nelson Schmidt has experienced success in assuming an alpha role for clients. In essence, our agency has "owned the outcome" of a project using a virtual agency model: Work is distributed among several external resources.

Here are tips learned along the way that can help you choose the best agency for this important role:

Has the agency worked with you in crafting the strategy? Obviously the co-originator of the marketing strategy will do a better job of making course corrections along the way to ensure strategic success.
Does the agency have a strong working knowledge in all components of the program? Many best-of-breed providers are too lean to have a broad scope of experience. For example, PR shops will likely struggle in the alpha role of a project that has an interactive or online component.
How will the agency make the collaboration transparent to all team members? More and more project management is being done online. Does the agency vying for "alpha" status have an extranet that all team members can contribute to, in a dynamic and thoroughly documented fashion? Is this environment secure? Is it platform-independent? (In other words, can all types of web browsers log on and work in it, without special plug-ins or programs?)

The realities of marketing today require agencies to be open to collaboration. Be sure your alpha agency has a track record of "playing well with others" before handing over the critical program leadership role.

An example of our expertise serving this role is the teamwork that went into staging a successful global tradeshow event for Sun Chemical. Read the full case study, and contact us to learn what makes Nelson Schmidt uniquely capable of providing this specialized "alpha dog" leadership.

Nelson-Schmidt

Much Hinges on Choosing the Best "Alpha Dog" Agency