Interviews

As the Account Director at TAG, I generate new business and oversee the delivery of both digital and analogue design projects.

TAG has been around for 25 years, so we’re possibly Cambridgeshire’s oldest design agency!

The guy who started in all those years ago is still in charge and still as passionate and creative as ever; I think that’s what really sets us apart. I’ve worked for agencies that are run by accountants; they just don’t have that same in-depth understanding of the design process.

TAG’s clients include some of the best known high-street brands, but also small start-up businesses and B2B, biotech and pharma companies.

Many of our customers have been with us for 20 plus years and the way we retain them is by getting to know them, understanding what they want and need and always delivering.

Maintaining existing clients is one of the most important, and often overlooked, elements of the sales cycle. Research shows us that it costs up to 7 times more to win a new client, than to retain an existing one. Yet how easy is it to overlook people that have been your customers in the past? That’s why part of my role is to manage existing relationships, as well as fostering new ones.

I like projects that involve a bit of everything – creative design, photography, packaging, a website, some social media, Facebook, Twitter, copywriting and print. It’s great for me, as a non-creative, to have an input into the design process and at TAG everyone rolls up their sleeves and gets involved.

Looking back at the end of a project, nothing beats walking around the supermarket and seeing a product on the shelf that you were responsible for.

Well TAG has grown steadily over the past quarter of a century (blimey that makes us sound old), and we continue to evolve and develop wherever the market takes us.

Flexibility is our watchword and ethos. Our motivation is to continue to work with some great brands, but remain at the cutting edge of what technology can deliver into the marketing mix.

It’s important to stay ahead of the game on this one. If a client rings up to talk to you about Augmented Reality, or QR codes for example, we need to be able to discuss them coherently. So market research, networking and tech news are all really important to our design team.

I tend to focus on the technology platforms, but the other guys will receive news bulletins all the time about the latest developments in the creative world. Then we can be proactive and make suggestions to our customers, before they’ve even thought about it.

Mostly from word of mouth recommendations and referrals. Marketing people are highly mobile and we find that when someone moves from one job to another, TAG benefits by gaining a new client!

More recently, we’ve been working hard on our SEO, and have seen a number of enquiries from completely new businesses as a result of Google searches.

For me, prioritising workload is a very simple process of setting and managing customer expectation.

If a client has a deadline, we will work towards it. If they don’t and are more flexible on delivery, we can afford to let other work take priority.

In 25 years, we’ve never had to say to a customer ‘we can’t do that’... and we don’t expect to start now!

Client relationships are, for me, the key to the whole world. If you can become a trusted, respected partner with your customers, someone they turn to when they need advice, full of integrity and passion – they will love you for it.

Without the smaller customers, we wouldn’t have a foundation of repeat business which allows us the freedom to experiment and speculate on new projects. Without the big high street brands, we wouldn’t have the commercial clout to be able to compete with the big agencies. So each is just as important as the other, and we never give priority to a customer, just because of their size or reputability.

The recession has had a massive impact on every aspect of the marketing mix, and as you follow that process down the line, from customer, to agency, to printer – you see the ultimate impact with printers going out of business all over the country.

Budgets are being cut. But that just means we have to work harder and smarter to ensure we are delivering ROI to our customers. We also see more and more work moving from traditional print to digital – which can deliver a more cost-effective solution.

Yes, definitely. Projects would be briefed in a far more detailed and ‘closed’ way years ago. Marketing managers knew exactly what they wanted and wouldn’t deviate from that course. Now, we notice that briefs are more and more ‘loose’ or fluid. They often know what the end result is, but are more open and flexible to consider different options for achieving that goal.

People are more open-minded now, but that may just be because their budgets are being squeezed and they need to find ways of doing more, for less.

I think TAG will continue to focus more and more of our efforts on digital, social media, 3D CGI, prototype modelling, and rich content like video – which will become the platform of choice for most information over the next 12-24 months.

We’ve never been great at shouting about ourselves. But we are getting better. We have joined a number of local networking groups where we publish regular press releases. We are on Facebook and Twitter and have a good following.

We generate interest through newsletters and competitions, but for us, traditional advertising has never worked. There’s just too much noise out there and the budgets you need to be able to create cut-through, are prohibitive to a small agency like us.

We’re already on Facebook and Twitter. We’ll be developing apps in the next few months which will allow us to speak more directly with our customers. In developing this further, we see the need to create interactive video content and this is our plan for the coming months.

I believe we’ll have grown probably by 50% in terms of staff, and our client base and turnover will continue to grow year on year to support this. We have no ambitions to become a massive agency, all we want is to continue delivering great design, to appreciative clients, in a fun team, within a peaceful environment. And to make a reasonable living at it!

Creativity, flexibility and honesty.

The pitching process. Every agency I speak to, including ours, has had experiences where they’ve been invited to pitch for a project, expected to deliver all of the creative work up front, for free – and then the customer just picks the cheapest option, or the one which they like best depending on what side of the bed they got out that morning.

In my view, it’s a lose/lose situation. But until every agency agrees not to do it anymore, we have no choice but to take part. We are being much more selective though, about which pitches we consider. Only last week I refused to take part in a web design pitch where we would have been one of nine agencies!

Our marketing director is CIM qualified and worked for many years as a brand manager with Premier Foods. So she is able to deliver marketing strategy to our customers – which goes far beyond what most ‘tactical’ agencies can offer. She’s our purple cow (Seth Godin).