We’re here to help agencies prosper - Why we started Rethink Demand
James Taylor is delighted to start talking publicly about Rethink Demand, and our new digital demand generation offering for agencies. James (JT) leads Rethink Demand as Co-Founder and Chief Client Officer.
With a distinguished agency career, JT knows the challenges agencies have always faced, how the last couple of years have been even more difficult, what’s coming over the horizon, but also how agencies can continue to grow when the times get tough.
Perfect timing for a difficult time?
It’s certainly a different time to launch a business and bring a new offering to market. 2023 probably couldn’t offer a more complex set of market conditions. It feels like another of the stranger economic periods in recent memory, for so many different reasons, but it might be the right time for us, and more importantly, for our customers, as we’ll be serving B2B marketing agencies at a time when they need it.
The last few months since incorporating the business have been so busy, but in a really good way. Since forming Rethink Demand with Mark Mills, this is the first time I have had a chance to reflect a little on our new journey and why we began.
Market “adjustments”
There are so many pressures in the B2B marketing space now, and most of the news for 2023 has been negative. Economically speaking, inflation, interest rates, and ongoing market adjustments have changed the landscape a great deal, and there is no telling when these pressures will ease off.
B2B brands can no longer grow at all costs; profitability is key, investors are more discerning, and so many companies made some big decisions this year. According to TechCrunch, in the first eight months of 2023, there were nearly a quarter of a million layoffs in the tech sector. I saw long-term clients (I’m lucky enough to call many of them friends) lose their jobs at a moment’s notice. It’s been horrible to see. And that’s just in the software companies themselves. The impact of those layoffs stretches beyond into many other types of organisations that work with them, such as their channel partners and those that provide services to them, such as their marketing agencies. It has been a brutal year – on the back of a few other brutal years - that have been enormously pressured.
“As well as delivering for them now, agencies must always stay ahead of their clients’ game too.”
Somewhere in the middle
Given our backgrounds, we wanted to create something that supported an industry that we have been a part of for so long – the media agencies. Between Mark and I, we have spent close to 40 years working within that world, and at the forefront of some very successful agencies. It has shaped our careers, experiences, and knowledge. It has been a great journey for the pair of us, with many more ups than downs. But what is clear is the unique set of challenges agencies face. The balancing act they must perform every day, the agility they must show, and the impact the market has on them as individual businesses.
You don’t often read about the impact the economy, layoffs and uncertainty have on the agency world, so let’s address that balance a little if we can. I am not sure there is a lot of sympathy out there for media agencies. I might be wrong, but having worked in that world for so long, it is just a feeling I have. I guess I understand it somewhat. Agencies are often pigeonholed as playing the role of the entity in the middle. Between the golden goose of the client and the range of suppliers and providers out there that ultimately deliver much of the work, agencies, I am sure, will be seen as getting in the way. If you’re a publisher, a tech platform, an SEO specialist (the list goes on), I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve been frustrated that a client uses an agency from time to time.
I am not here to be the advocate of a media agency – that is for another blog - but I am very grateful for my agency background. I learned from some very talented people. I saw the benefits an agency brings. I am a big believer in their role in the mix (as otherwise I would not have been in one for so long) and would certainly recommend a client selects the right one. What I am here to do today is shine a light on how challenging it has been for them recently and how it continues to be so.
A perfect storm
The way I see it, they are facing an almost perfect storm of challenges. Clients are still going through endless restructures. Stakeholders within clients have had less clarity both on their roles and budgets. There has been uncertainty around spend as rounds of layoffs progressed. Although some more optimistic noises have been heard, as indicated in the excellent report published by LinkedIn, headcount cuts and freezes in clients mean agencies must give even more, often going the extra mile to assist the client in areas where they no longer have headcount.
Alternatively, some clients are bringing more services in-house and investing in more technology, which takes work away from their partners. And if that wasn’t enough, clients push agencies to think about the “Next Big Thing”, with questions as open-ended as “How can we incorporate AI into what we do?”
So, agencies have less clarity around budget, need to do more with what they have, and need to think about how much extra to offer in the future. Nice and easy, isn’t it? This is a tough way to live. But I don’t blame clients for this. They are responding to the demands put upon them from above. Downward pressure has only one way to go, and here it’s pushed onto their partners, which is where their agencies sit.
“We have developed a solution that will help address the challenges agencies are facing,
so they can continue to grow and invest during a difficult climate”
Agencies can’t afford to give up on growth
As well as delivering for them now, agencies must always stay ahead of their clients’ game too. They need to understand all the options that are out there. The audiences and their nuances, the tech platforms that could bring benefits, the compliance rules in all the different regions, the variety of relationships they must manage, and more. It is hard being an agency right now. Tougher than it has been for a long time.
But there is some hope. For much of B2B, marketing budgets remain strong. The tech sector might have slowed, but lead generation remains a priority and clients will need help with it, so there are still a lot of opportunities for agencies here.
Which brings me to Rethink Demand and what we have created. Now, we aren’t promising a silver bullet, but it will provide a helping hand to the agency world. We have developed a solution that will help address challenges agencies are facing – helping them do more with less – so they can continue to grow and invest during a difficult climate. We want agencies to prosper, and to do that, we want to empower them and help create new opportunities for them. It’s up to agencies what they do with those opportunities, but these could be anything, from retaining talent, hiring new talent, expanding into a new territory, or as simple as giving them more control and flexibility over their bottom line. It is a simple solution, and it is based on what we learned from programmes we implemented successfully during our agency careers.
If you’re an agency leader, we should have a chat and talk about what you want to achieve and what opportunities you’d like to create now and in 2024.
Make sure you Drop us a line.
