I’ve got an earworm. If you don’t know, an earworm is a part of a song – a melody, a key lyric etc. – that you can’t get out of your head.
Mine is a part of the Dandy Warhols’ hit from a lifetime ago (2000, to be specific) ‘Bohemian Like You’ (link is the NSFW video).
The song’s lyrics are one half of a conversation between a guy and woman he’s attracted to. And at one point lead singer Courtney Taylor-Taylor (assuming that’s his real name – it’s not like I’m a big fan) says “Oh yeah I wait tables too”.
But in my version, I hear the lyrics “Oh yeah, we do content too”, sung to the same seven notes.
I know this is insane.
But it’s with reason.
Agency – or content agency?
Maybe more than any other discipline, content is a bolt-on for most agencies.
At least 100 times I’ve been speaking to an agency with one of countless areas of specialisation and when I mention Collective Content’s thing is content, I hear something like “Oh yeah we do content too”.
What do they really mean? Usually that means picking up a phone to freelancers, outsourcing to another agency (like us), or throwing that part of a project to Ben in the corner (poor Ben!).
And another thing
And there’s a further twist. I’m regularly approached by good contacts who suggest another agency for us to partner with. I do the decent thing and at least check out these agencies on their website, LinkedIn etc.
And invariably I notice they proclaim that, yes, they do content too.
So it’s taken me years not to put any stock in that claim. They often don’t – or at least don’t have the skills in house to do so.
And for some that do it themselves, it’s often a case of ‘I write emails every day, how hard can it be?’
Or they have spent 18 months convinced that GenAI might be the answer.
I have no words. Which is a funny thing for me to write.
Then I wonder what else they offer isn’t really done by them. And which clients do and don’t care about that.
See through
You can’t always see through what an agency is saying they can do. But transparency has got to be one of the biggest things to seek in any services business.
We’d always advise prospects to ask questions like ‘Who is going to do the actual work?’ and ‘Give me examples of how you partner with other companies and why?’.
Fudging those answers is a sign of a sub-optimal relationship to come… if you do choose that agency.
At CC, we’re not about to say we do a dozen things that we don’t, even though it’s easy to revise a website and call up freelancers.
We think, in general, that marketing is best served by specialists, rather than generalists or ‘full-service agencies’. Although that might be a post for another time.
And… oh yeah we do content too.
[The hero image is a screenshot taken from The Dandy Warhols’ original music video for Bohemian Like You.]