Leigh Chesley, Chief Customer Officer at Longbow Advantage: From VP to C-Suite

Every company aims for a good reputation and puts a lot of effort into creating it. The same is the case with marketing agencies. But, it's a matter of luck to find one agency that can close every gap. Therefore, asking for recommendations is the number one thing to do, especially if you are a first-time agency seeker. In this episode of YouShouldTalkTo, Leigh Chesley, the chief customer officer at Longbow Advantage, joins our host Daniel Weiner to share her experience with finding the right agency. They talk about where and how Leigh searches for agencies, the question she asks a potential partner, and why she considers this kind of collaboration a partnership. She also discusses leadership challenges and changes since transitioning to a C-suite role. Guest-at-a-Glance 💡 Name: Leigh Chesley, Chief Customer Officer at Longbow Advantage 💡 Noteworthy: Leigh is a LinkedIn legend and a YouShouldTalkTo Advisory Board member. Key Insights ⚡The success of a client-agency relationship is everyone's responsibility. We often hear stories of how a particular agency didn't meet clients' expectations and left them to clean up the mess the agency made, costing them more money and time than they had initially planned to invest. But, as Leigh explains, the path to a successful partnership is setting clear expectations from the beginning and, if necessary, over-communicating. ''It's easy on the brand side to point out what's going wrong and blame the agency. But I'm a big believer that a vendor relationship is a two-way relationship. It's a two-way conversation. And so I think we, as the internal owner of that relationship, have to take responsibility when something goes wrong. Are there agencies out there that you wouldn't recommend to a colleague? Of course. But I don't think it's as often as marketers might like to say.'' ⚡We turn to recommendations when looking for an agency. Although it is not tricky to google for an agency nearby, most companies still rely on word of mouth to find it. ''It is a community. I'm getting recommendations from previous colleagues, talking to people on my team, 'Hey, who have you worked with in the past that you liked and had good experiences with?' Nine times out of ten — I would say probably ten times out of ten — I'm gonna talk to those agencies before I find some random agency from Google. [...] I can't remember the last time I started a relationship with a vendor that wasn't recommended by somebody who had worked with them in the past,'' says Leigh. ⚡Agencies must know the market and the business to build long-term partnerships. As in any sphere, marketing undergoes changes and trends. Still, not all initiatives fit every industry and company. Therefore, agencies must familiarize themselves with the field a company operates in and its ideal customers and, from there, create a marketing strategy. ''Some brands, not only do they not want to, but they shouldn't be innovative. I'm in the supply chain. [...] Don't get me wrong, but supply chain's a pretty old-school market. The whole joke in the supply chain is that it's become sexy again. I'm like, 'It's become talked about, for sure.' But if an agency came to me and pitched something wildly out of line with where I think the market is and how the people in the market talk, that would be such a turnoff for me because it would tell me that they care way more about big, flashy, bold campaigns than they do about understanding the market and driving results, whether it looks and feels cool or not.''