I just joined a brand as a marketing director and I’m coming in at the beginnings of a rebrand. The agency never provided a creative recommendation based on discovery for us to approve, they just started putting together messaging after holding a handful of interviews with our former leadership team. Having been on agency side this seems crazy to me, but I’m unsure how to approach feedback to the agency since I was on the media side, not creative. Any advice?

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If the process is your responsibility... Take ownership. Sounds like it's a good opportunity for a reset. If you've been on the agency side, you know how to run that without causing too much disruption.

You definitely don't want them pushing ahead too far with an old plan and letting it get past the "we can't turn back now" cliff

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Thank you so much for the response. I whole-heartedly agree. My team is onboard with the reset I recommended, so I'll be giving the agency feedback and working with them and my team on a timeline and roadmap.

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Yeah, ask your leadership team what power you have to improve the rebrand, or if you're just expected to ride along. Go from there, at the end of the day the agency is a vendor that should do as you ask. They likely got approval from someone.

likehelpful

Thank you for the advice! Luckily, after giving the CEO my recommendation to pause until we get really clear on direction, he was on board. I'm planning to give the agency feedback and reset expectations on what we need to make this as smooth a process as possible!

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Check whether the agency strongly recommended the research. Chances are, they were told “we don’t have $ to do that, just give us great work”. 🤔

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Agree with the above points — and gotta say, that’s a tough spot to be in (coming in new to a rebrand). If your company supports you in owning or driving the rebrand, I’d say you could outline how you’d expect the process to go, compare it to the current scope to see where it aligns and where it has gaps, consider if it will add cost and if your company will approve, and then ask the agency to align. If you can’t raise the budget you could at least chat with the agency and see how to make up for the differences… they should work with you on it!

But to specifically answer your question, I have been on the creative teams at agencies doing rebrands and have seen it done different ways depending on the client need and budget. But I do agree that jumping from LT interviews to creating messaging is a drastic and strange leap… there absolutely should have been reviews and approvals before getting into messaging.

Questions for you (to support you in coming in new to a rebrand)… did the team share with you what led to the rebrand and what they expect to get out of it (both LT expectations and your team’s expectations)? And did you get an intro to the agency, their scope, and their process so that you understand what they are doing and what your role in it is? My worry for you is that you’ve landed in a nebulous spot during a transition. Without clarity, you could be set up for a stressful work life…

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Thank you so much, this response is so helpful and I also really appreciate the sanity check! It’s definitely been a lot to come into as a new person…

To answer your questions, what led to the rebrand and expectations are pretty unclear, honestly. We also recently went through a new leadership transition, so the perspectives provided at the start of the rebrand are now out of date.

I set up a call with the agency this week to go through a formal intro. I plan during this time to provide the update that we need to pause work until we're really clear on direction. I’ll be providing feedback and resetting expectations, primarily that creative work should not be done without first sharing a creative recommendation for us to give approval or feedback on.

From there, my gut instinct is to set up time with the new leadership team to get clear on the why behind the rebrand and their expectations.

Let me know if you have any feedback on that approach - truly any guidance around this is so very helpful for me!

I would add that you might want to do a 1:1 with the agency project lead to get an honest account of the journey to date. If the direction is unclear to you, they’re likely to have been in the same boat. Might be useful to get those insights and compare them to what your leadership tells you too.

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