How to brief an agency without getting robbed
Five questions that separate an agency that will move your number from one that will bill you for workshops. Written by an agency.
Yes, we are an agency writing this. Consider it a confession with a checklist.
One: bring a number and a date, not a vibe
“More brand awareness” is how retainers live forever without consequence. A number with a month attached to it is a brief. If you cannot name the number, the first working session should exist to find it — and nothing else should be billed before that.
Two: ask who touches the work
Not who attends the calls — who opens the design file, and who writes the ads. If the answer contains the word “team” but no names, the names are people you will never meet.
Three: refuse discovery theatre
Six weeks of workshops that end in a deck about your own company is you paying to be interviewed. Real discovery happens inside week one of actual work.
Four: demand receipts, not case-study poetry
Any figure an agency shows you should name its client and survive a phone call to that client. Ours are on the work index, each one attached to the client it belongs to, and the ones we have not measured yet say so instead of guessing.
Five: weekly reporting against the agreed number
Not a monthly document full of impressions. The metric you hired for, reported against the target you agreed, every week, in writing.
If an agency squirms at any of these five, you have learned something worth more than the pitch deck. If we squirm, hold us to it — the number goes in our contract too.