Before you replace your marketing agency, fix what the next one will inherit

“The agency is not delivering” sounds decisive, but it is not yet a diagnosis.

What specifically failed?

Was agreed work late or technically wrong? Did the campaign reach the wrong audience, or the right audience with an uncompetitive offer? Did qualified enquiries sit unanswered? Did reported conversions fail to reconcile with orders, revenue or margin? Did the agency keep recommending investment after the evidence weakened? Did an internal team block a necessary change?

These are different failures. They do not have the same owner or remedy.

Pick one commercially important outcome that fell short. Follow it backwards through the journey:

1. What result was expected?
2. How was that result defined?
3. What work was commissioned?
4. What was actually delivered?
5. Which decisions affected what happened next?
6. What did the customer experience?
7. What appeared in revenue, margin or pipeline?
8. Where did the evidence first stop supporting the story?

Place the brief, approvals, delivery records, customer behaviour and commercial result beside one another. Look for the point where a commitment failed, a dependency remained blocked or an assumption stopped being defensible.

Until you can identify that point, a replacement pitch is likely to become a more polished version of the same uncertainty.

This is not an argument for keeping a weak agency.

There are clear reasons to replace one:

• it repeatedly misses explicit commitments
• it conceals mistakes
• its reporting is misleading
• it lacks the skills required for the agreed work
• it keeps spending after the evidence challenges its recommendation
• senior expertise disappears after the pitch
• it protects the relationship instead of confronting the problem

But accountability should follow evidence.

A contractor who installs the wrong boiler is responsible for poor work. Replacing that contractor still will not fix the fact that the pipework behind the wall was never inspected.

The useful question is not, “Whose fault is everything?”

It is, “Which failure belongs to the agency, which condition belongs to us, and what must change before another supplier can produce a different result?”

That distinction protects you from two expensive mistakes.

The first is retaining an agency that should be replaced because the internal system is also imperfect. The second is replacing it whilst leaving the next team trapped inside the same constraints.

A brief can look complete while hiding unresolved disagreements.

Marketing may want more qualified demand. Sales may want more leads from a narrower account list. Finance may expect incremental revenue. The agency may be measured against form submissions.

All four groups can attend the same meeting and leave believing they agreed. They agreed to a collection of words that meant something different in each room.

ISBA's Briefing for Effectiveness guidance, developed with Ebiquity, describes insight and effectiveness teams being introduced too late, sometimes after the brief had already been finalised. Its response was to bring measurement and effectiveness into the briefing process earlier.

That does not prove every agency problem begins with the client. It highlights a practical risk: decide how work will be judged after commissioning it, and disagreement is built into the engagement.

Before the next agency receives a brief, settle:

• the commercial result you are trying to influence
• the customer behaviour that must change
• the evidence that will indicate progress
• the decisions the agency can make
• the decisions it can influence but not make
• the dependencies controlled by your teams
• the person who will resolve blocked decisions
• the conditions under which you will continue, change or stop the work

Without this, you are asking the new agency to navigate with several maps drawn at different scales.

An agency should challenge an unworkable brief, identify important dependencies and explain what a blocked decision puts at risk.

But “we mentioned it in a meeting” is weak evidence.

If the agency identified a material risk, what exactly did it raise, when and with whom? What evidence supported it? Which result was at risk? What action or alternative did it recommend, and when did a decision become necessary?

Your organisation should face the same examination.

Who received the warning? Did that person have the authority to act? Was a decision made? If not, who allowed the risk to remain open?

An unread recommendation does not prove the agency was right. A warning you ignored does not become its failure simply because the predicted result later appeared. Both parties need to stand behind what they knew, decided and did.

Otherwise, the handover becomes an archaeological dig through emails, meeting notes and competing memories.

Before you issue the brief, answer these questions in writing.

1. Which specific failure are you paying the new agency to correct? Name the commercial or customer outcome, not a broad ambition such as performance or growth.
2. What evidence places that failure within the agency's responsibility? Identify what it controlled, accepted and failed to deliver.
3. Which client-controlled conditions must change? Include access, data, technology, pricing, approvals, sales response and ownership.
4. Who owns each change, and when will it be ready? A dependency without an owner is a future excuse.
5. What early evidence would show that the replacement is addressing the real problem? Do not wait for the final revenue number before checking the underlying conditions.

Use those answers when evaluating prospective agencies.

Ask each agency where your diagnosis might be wrong, what access it needs and which promise it would refuse to make under the current conditions.

A supplier's willingness to challenge your brief may tell you more than another page of credentials.

If you can isolate the failure to work the agency controlled, use that evidence to correct the scope or replace the supplier.

If the explanation crosses marketing, sales, ecommerce, finance, technology and customer operations, another pitch may be premature. You first need to establish where the constraint sits, who controls it and what the next team must inherit differently.

The Marketing MRI is built for that cross-functional question. It examines the gap between the performance story and the commercial result, then gives leadership a prioritised decision route. It is not a supplier-selection exercise and it does not assume your agency is the problem.

See what the Marketing MRI examines, or send us the one question you need to resolve before the next appointment. No pitch deck is required.

You deserve more than a new logo on the same monthly invoice.

Before you hand over the keys, establish who will release the brake.

• ISBA and Ebiquity, Briefing for Effectiveness: A Simple Best Practice Guide. Used for its account of insight and effectiveness teams entering the briefing process too late and the recommendation to place measurement and effectiveness earlier in that process.