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Contact UsChris Woodward, CEO at CTI Digital
CTI Digital know a thing or two about managing relationships with clients. The digital transformation agency has worked with brands such as Travelodge, Chester Zoo, Mind, DrinkAware and Horlicks.
CEO Chris Woodward joined the company in October 2023, bringing with him a wealth of experience at some of the UK's biggest agencies (including Oliver Agency and Saatchi & Saatchi).
He shares some of the most valuable lessons he's learnt in working with such a diverse portfolio of clients...
What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learnt from working with a brand/client, what would you have changed, and why?
Most people in most agencies that I’ve worked at think their role is to respond to briefs and produce ads* (*websites, emails, content, strategy and so on) for their clients.
And yes, at a basic level of course this is why we are here. But that is also missing the point.
If you want to really add value to your client’s business, and stand out from your competitors, then you have to properly understand their world, their business, their consumers and think much more expansively in terms of how you can use the skills and creativity within (and outside) your agency to unlock growth and innovation for them.
How do you do it?
There are many ways, but the simplest one is always to read the foreword, and the rest if you have the stamina, of the client’s annual report. Knowing what is important to the Chair and the Board of your client will allow you to think much more broadly about how you could help them succeed. And I guarantee your agency rivals won’t have bothered to do this - they’ll be too busy moaning that ‘clients can’t write good briefs’.
If you are less of a reader and more of a practical person - then get practical.
I’ve picked fruit for Waitrose on their Leckford farm. I’ve stacked the shelves in the Marylebone branch. I’ve spent the day on the road with a Pfizer sales rep educating healthcare professionals on the full range of support a patient needs to get the best results from Viagra. I’ve worked in the Green Flag call centre and I’ve joined a breakdown patrol on the road. I’ve helped lawyers pitch to their clients and I’ve spent four hours of my life stuffing toothpaste tubes into those little cardboard boxes they come in (yes, that is a job).
Why do this? It’s where you find out those insights and that knowledge that helps you produce game-changing work for clients.
For example, with Green Flag (the third placed UK breakdown provider after the AA and RAC) we were struggling to help them grow market share. They simply did not have the brand awareness or the budgets to complete against the AA and RAC. We worked out that breakdown calls spike when the temperature drops below five degrees - which is logical in hindsight as that’s when batteries go flat. Econometric modelling corroborated this. So, we developed a national radio campaign, with appropriate contextual creative, that only played out when the temperature dropped below the magic five degrees. It was the most efficient way of making the Green Flag budget work hard and to snatch market share from the AA and RAC - which is the challenger brand smarts that comes from really understanding your client.
Another time we were pitching for the integrated British Airways account. All the other agencies were pitching big brand TV ads with huge media budgets. Why wouldn’t you? It’s an amazing brand - remember the iconic Saatchi & Saatchi ads from the 1980s or the more recent BBH 'To Fly, to Serve’ aviators ad? Both brilliant. Both decades apart.
And therein lies the answer.
BA is a super brand. It doesn’t need to do brand advertising very often (every 10 to 15 years on average). So, we didn’t pitch them an ad. We did our homework, we understood their business, we read their annual report.
Through doing that we understood that they nearly make more money from licensing their brand and access to their 44 million-strong customer database to the likes of Hilton, Avis, Chase, Amex and so on. In fact, when we pitched, this ‘partnership’ marketing equated to nearly £800m of incredibly profitable revenue for BA. So, in our pitch we showed we understood this, and we showed them how we would help them grow this valuable revenue stream. We demonstrated we understood business, their business…. And they rewarded us by consolidating the above-the-line and below-the-line accounts into our agency.
So, the lesson?
Think different, behave different.
Don’t be an agency person, be a business person who does their homework and who just happens to work in an agency that uses creativity to unlock growth for his clients.