Advice from The Agency Side

I’ve gone back and forth between the client and agency sides my whole career — nearly two decades inside major brands, and now the past few years co-running an ad agency. That perspective makes one thing really clear: There’s huge opportunity in how clients and agencies work together when we actually understand how the other side operates.

Here are 3 things marketers should know (or re-learn). They make a bigger difference than most people realize. (Agency-side coming in a future post.)

1☝️ The best agencies care about your business, not just the work. If you want better thinking, share what’s actually going on — your goals, pressure from the CFO, what your president or Ops leader is worried about. The more context we have, the more effective we can be. We have your back, and we'll help you think it through.

2✌️The brief is not a formality. It’s the blueprint. A stream-of-consciousness email or text is not a brief. If the brief is fuzzy, the work will be too. The time you invest upfront saves so much time, money, and painful revisions later.

3✌️☝️The triangle rule still stands. Great. Fast. Cheap. Pick two. (All three still don’t exist — even with AI.)

Grace Creative is a leading advertising agency redefining marketing to consumers 50+.