Episode Six, Choosing an Agency Podcast

Published on July 27, 2021 by Climbing Trees

Listen to the Sixth instalment of the Choosing an Agency podcast.

Alex grills Matt Laybourn from digital agency TMW on his dream dinner party guests before going on to chat about his proudest career moments. Matt outlines why clients really need to speak to an agency’s current clients to understand what it will be like to work with them and the benefits of long-term agency relationships.

Episode six transcript 

Alex: Hello, and welcome to choosing an agency. My name’s Alex and I’m here to talk about how to select the right agency to grow your business, giving you the inside line on things to look out for the next time you need external support. I’ll be interviewing industry figures from all manner of backgrounds to get hints and tips on the things to consider when choosing an agency. Today, I’m joined by the awesome Matt Laybourn from TMW. Hi, Matt.

Matt: Hello, mate.

Alex: So, for people who are just meeting you for the first time, could you share a little bit about who you are and what you do.

Matt: So, I’m Matt as Alex has obviously pointed out. I’m the digital performance director at an agency called TMW, which is part of unlimited group. So, I oversee, lead teams in paid media, SEO, conversion rate optimization, and marketing automation. Our job is basically, when the campaigns defined – the look, the feel, the branding, the story, the messaging, whatever it may be, our job is to go find the customers online, deliver your message, convert them, and then nurture them and turn them into lifetime advocates hopefully. So, across our team that’s the capability we do, and we do that in automotive, B2B, FMCG, eCommerce, so a really broad mix. So, it’s a nice, unique ish position, I guess, to be in.

Alex: And then in terms of your background, can you tell us a little bit about that and your experience of the agency world? 

Matt: Yeah, I’ve only really been in the agency world five years now. So, I originally went into a B2B agency as a planner. I was confused when someone rang me up and said, do you want to be a planner? Or do you want to interview for a planning role? And I always assumed that was something to do with the layout of a town, so I was completely oblivious to a lot of this agency jargon. So yeah, I started as a planner in a B2B agency, then they looked after the digital team for a couple of years and then they got bought out by a bigger group. So, I’m now sort of a bit assimilated into a much larger organisation.

Alex: And then just to get a feel for who you are Matt, if you could invite four people, past or present, to a meal, who would you invite?

Matt: This is the best question, because everyone’s probably going to say this – but this is a really broad church and I think it might be a disaster as in terms of a dinner party. But I think all these people will be very interesting, perhaps not collectively though. So, Jim Morrison.

Alex: Wowzers.

Matt: Jim’s coming. He might be passed out by about seven, so he probably won’t make it to dessert –

Alex: In the bath drunk.

Matt: And other things probably. I’d want him to be there because he’s an enigma, he’s like the original rock and roller, first musician to be arrested on a stage and I’m just sort of obsessed with him so I’d want him to be there. So, I guess number two – this is a new thing I’ve kind of got into for the last five years, but I want Kobe Bryant as well –

Alex: Somebody else’s said Kobe Bryant, so absolutely – I get why.

Matt: So, I only really got into basketball five years ago and now I’m completely hooked. It’s basically the perfect sport because it’s just all numbers and percentages, and how can you get 1% over this other person or 2% over this other person and mismatches and play and tactics. It’s the best sport there is. It’s exhilarating to watch for the whole game and Coby was just a monster. His absolute unwavering dedication to winning and being the best, and you could say the same obviously about Jordan, LeBron – all very similar in that ilk, but there was something about that enigma. I just want to be in a room with someone who’s that focused and driven, because I don’t think I’ve ever been that focused and driven about anything in my life for more than about three minutes, before you know a light bulb turns on somewhere else and I’m off. I gravitate towards it.

Alex: A shiny penny. Okay, I get that. Jim, Kobe.

Matt: Yeah, so they’re the first two. I think it needs a little bit of – some sort of comedy depending on who’s available and I know they’re very busy. One of Chris Morris or Charlie Brooker. Probably Charlie Brooker if I was to be – if I had to pick between them, I’m really into sort of dark ish comedy and that sort of deep satire, and those two are basically the absolute legends for doing all that.

Alex: Perfect. Okay, so Charlie Brooker – 

Matt: Charlie Brooker and then finally, sadly, I think it’s reflective of age – becomes not politically involved, because that sounds like I’m about to commit some sort of local crime but –

Alex: Betty Hill or someone?

Matt: More politically aware maybe, Alex – is what I should be saying. I basically adore Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. I literally had to Google that just now because I’m really scared of like saying it wrong.

Alex: She’s the American Senate representative that’s just quite wholesome.

Matt: Yeah, she’s like the New York representative. There was really good documentary on her on Netflix and I’ve been sort of following her the last couple of years on Twitter, not just around the town. She’s just a refreshing, different voice, which I think is more reflective of my age group and is someone I think could actually drive real change in the right way, in what is a very murky political climate that we have in the UK in the US. Obviously, I don’t think we’ve really got anyone like that over here at the moment. So, it’s kind of like a little positive light in what you could consider quite a murky environment at the moment with some other bits and pieces. So yeah, she’s, she’s pretty inspirational as well.

Alex: So, the authentic voice that’s standing up and saying what she believes in, which isn’t part of the existing sort of narrative.

Matt: Yeah, and it’s not just – you don’t – a lot of it’s like, I think this oil company’s great because they do so much great environmental work. And it’s like you’re just lying bare faced, just how do you do this? And then she’s just like, no, this is nonsense. So, she’s calling it very straight, and authentic is probably a very nice way of describing. So yeah, it’s a nice little positive voice.

Alex: What would be the starter?

Matt: Oh I’m gonna have to pick or something I like, and I hope everyone else enjoys it. Probably go with a nice mezze. There’s probably too many – Brooke’s probably vegan as is AOC. It’s probably not going to go well, is it? I’ll probably just be there on my own eating ham.

Alex: So, in the work arena Matt, what project or piece of work are you most proud of?

Matt: Can that be agency or not?

Alex: It could be anything.

Matt: The thing I’m probably most proud of is, I set up and ran an eCommerce business, which you know very well about. 

Alex: And that’s where we met.

Alex: Yeah, that’s where we met. And that was basically – I was not far out of university and I just saw there was an opportunity to basically -the company I worked for was B2B distribution company selling automotive stuff. And I was just like, you’ve got loads of stuff on the shelf that you could sell direct to consumer, you need to spin up an eCommerce site, and I think you’ve got a chance. And you know, three years later, we’ve had a sort of mini detailing empire. Detailing is another word for car cleaning. It’s very exciting. I’m super proud of that because all of the little cogs of that were just from, you know, writing things down on a bit of paper, like, oh, this could work, or I suppose I could use this. And I suppose a lot of it was reasonably instinctive. And there’s a lot of things that went wrong, but a lot of things that went right, and they’re still doing really well. So, turnover like nearly a couple million a year now. So, really cracking business. I genuinely miss it just because it was a lot of fun as well, we got some really cool content as well.

Alex: And I think with that kind of thing to be able to come up with an idea, then will it into existence, and then make it happen and for it still then to transcend your sort of tenure, your tour of duty, so to speak. It’s pretty amazing. And very often the best way that – I don’t learn through just getting it right. I don’t get out of bed in the morning and just get 100% of things right every day. And so very often, it’s you learn through mistakes and that kind of thing. So, you’ve got to think, well, that avenue of ideation is not working, so you go try find another approach until you actually work out something that solves the problem at hand.

Matt: Yeah, I know when I look back on it and the regrets, I’ve got are mainly around sort of dealing with people and people management. I was sort of basically asked to sort of semi manage other people in this business and I’m only, what, 24-25 and I just didn’t know how to talk to people properly, quite simply. So, I’d rub up people the wrong way because I thought that was how you’re supposed to do things. And I’d learned from people who aren’t good people to learn from, and you look back at that now and you’re like, this could have been so different if I’d have just – not been nicer -but just actually been a bit more thoughtful at times. I didn’t approach it the right way. I was too young and boisterous. So, there’s things like that, that come with time and age and we just have a little bit more maturity because everything’s quite dramatic.

Alex: Treating people as they deserve to be treated in a sort of kind way, something that I’ve definitely had to learn. It’s not always sort of natural. And sometimes if you’re feeling a certain amount of stress and pressure, then that can really affect sort of mindsets. So, that sort of emotional intelligence – that’s definitely something that I’ve had to learn through mistakes.

Matt: It sounds like there’s a huge backstory; we need to hear about all the things that went wrong.

Alex: Okay, so moving on then. So, the reason we’re doing this podcast is not to explore my backstory, but how clients can select an agency and to navigate some of the pitfalls that might be there. And so, in your opinion, what can be done to improve the quality of work that a client gets?

Matt: You could go in so many directions with this. the important thing for clients to establish, and it’s possibly the most boring question to ask of an agency, you’ve really got to understand the process an agency goes through to deliver the work that’s coming through to them. The reason I say that is because we now got a situation where there’s so many agencies in London, Southeast and all over the country, are things that are potentially legacy agencies that have been around for 20-30 years that are trying to evolve into something new and different. And increasingly, the big pain point is the digital transformation of agencies, where everyone’s all of a sudden, a digital agency. There’s a very fine line between who will say they’re a digital agency in terms of the work they deliver and those that aren’t. And some of them are just creative agencies with a slightly different label on it and they make things that happen to go on the internet. Whereas actually, to improve the quality of work, you want an agency that is genuinely integrated, as in the copy team understand SEO and they understand keywords. And they understand keyword stuffing and meta titles and descriptions, and they write and deliver things in a digitally savvy way, as opposed to what they think is the best possible outcome. And the creative team are really understanding the formats and the way things are being delivered online and how it’s going to improve performance. And another thing is, an agency that’s really performance driven, in terms of everything they create, as opposed to just a designer’s dream or the best way they think the website needs to look. They need to use so much analytics data, third party data to inform the planning, the strategy of what that website or what that deliverable might look like before it goes near a creative team, and sometimes you just simply don’t get that. And I’ve seen so many examples where there isn’t a process – I suppose that’s the point I’m trying to get to – there isn’t a clear process some agencies go through to get to that end result. And a client will it pick up and run with it. And then another agency will come in a month later and go, geez, no one ever did this on your website, or no one ever did this for your strategy, or your plan or your digital activation. They never thought of these basic components. And it’s because so many agencies don’t have that process. it might just be because they just don’t know enough sometimes, especially some of the smaller ones, but certainly they just don’t know enough about how to join all the dots together.  And that’s a real challenge for clients is, how can you have confidence in an agency that they can join the dots together? Or if you’re working with multiple agencies, managing a media agency, a creative agency, a brand agency, a PR agency- how do you join the dots to like the pure DNA of the data that needs to join and bring everything together? How do you do that? It’s a huge challenge. So, process is the answer and understanding how everything goes from A to Z.

Alex: So, understanding the process and how different channels are integrated

Matt: Yeah, and how digital flows through creative through to mark-tech, through to performance, through to – how does that all work? Or is it just separate things that will all make a noise, but don’t work as a collective – that’s the challenge.

Alex: With clients, what advice would you give them about asking for pitches? You’ve got things like the no pitch Manifesto, where some agencies just won’t respond to pitches or request for tenders and that kind of thing. And on the agency side, the whole pitch process has can get quite a sort of negative rap sometimes because clients’ motives always or can be a little bit unclear about whether it’s just a process to go through to retain the incumbent or whether the actual piece of work is up for review.

Matt: I think you’re hitting the nail on the head. There’s this sort of card game that agencies and clients play, talking about a potential piece of business where everyone’s just sort of stood there, just like, I’m not going to tell you quite everything, but I’ve got something here on this card that might be the answer. And I think the thing that frustrates agencies is transparency, because every agency has gone through a pitch process where it’s perhaps a procurement led process once or twice every couple of years, just to make sure they’ve done their due diligence. You know, have a bit of transparency around that, where it’s okay, the incumbents actually won it three years in a row, and we do this every two years. So, here’s the opportunity, here’s the budget, if you want to go for it, go for it, because there will be people who think they can crack it, but you want to go into a fight where it’s a fair fight, you know, you’re not trying to punch two waves above the level. So, it is really hard, and we’ve gone through that. And it’s time and it’s resource, and it’s wages that agencies can’t afford to be spending at this point. So, transparency is massive. But then the other thing I’d say is to actually have a really good, for the client, a really good process is – work super hard to find the problem you’ve got. And sometimes you’ll get a brief through, which is a list of tactics like, we want to do search and social and blah, blah, blah. And it’s like, that’s really cool. But what problem are we trying to solve as an agency? Why are we here? You could do search and social, it doesn’t mean it’s right for your business?

Alex: That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s aligned to the business, sort of upstream business objectives and needs.

Matt: Yeah, it’s absolutely spot on – it’s got to be aligned to business objectives and needs. Otherwise, why are we doing it? And some agencies will challenge it, and some won’t, some will just go headfirst and go, look let’s go for it. But you’d like to think that a good agency will do their due diligence and go, oh actually, we don’t see why you’re doing this. And when we understand why we can go about solving the problem. So, for a client it’s a really clear brief, which is our problem. And even if it’s – I kind of love those briefs where they give a problem and it’s almost just a statement, like we are struggling with brand awareness. There’s the brief, go. And that means you get an incredible pool of responses where you can really test the agency’s creative mettle, their flexibility and where their thought process is. Something like that, rather than being super detailed and undefined, or just confusing things with lists of tactics or things that you think you might want. Let a really good agency solve that – with all their power that they might have across different departments.

Alex: Absolutely. So, rather than be prescriptive about the solution, laying the problem at the agency’s feet so they can actually demonstrate the power of their thinking, and the sort of creative ingenuity.

Matt: Yeah, definitely. I mean, do you see that as well? So, as another agency we get all sorts of briefs like that. But what sort of brief you like to see? What’s the thing that gets you and the team excited?

Alex: I think we are a downstream sort of service provider. So, what usually happens is that the clients that we work with have an overarching marketing strategy, and what they know is that as part of that plan, what they need to do is raise their visibility in search. And so, at that point that’s when we sort of slot in, and so our briefs are usually quite defined based on, it could be technical issues with visibility, organically, or underperformance in paid search, or poor return on ad spend. And we then have to sort of get our head under the bonnet of what’s going on with the website, with the Google Ads account, with Bing Ads account and then start looking at how things are structured and set up. So, that more sort of granular process on our side. So, for a client, what sort of signs are there that an agency’s a good fit?

Matt: I think chemistry and it’s chemistry within the team’s pitching. If you’ve got – I suppose there’s the difference between zoom times and pre-zoom times that I’m afraid we thought never existed. But you’ve got to really believe that the agency like each other as well, and sometimes you’ll go through pitches where you can see, you know, there’s people that are bouncing off each other, where the creative guy’s like bouncing off the digital guy, and they’re sort of riffing and they’re being natural, and they’re being real people. And it’s not just a serious slide server, and are our approaches integrated and we love working with clients like you and you’re like, man, I want to throw myself in the sea. This is boring. But an agency who you can tell have worked with each other for a long period of time, their aligned – their alignment as an agency is massive because you can spot it if it’s like you speak to an agency and they just don’t seem to work together or it’s a bit fake. And everyone’s got this kind of cheesy grin on and you’re like, these people don’t look like they’re real. They’re just some sort of robots.

Alex: Yeah, absolutely.

Matt: So, a strong example of that is there’s a guy I work with called Mark. Worked with him for the last four years, and pitching with him is just the easiest process, because we know exactly how each of us work. And I know what he’s thinking, he knows what I’m thinking, it just means the decks that we do together just flow really nicely, where he’s the creative one, he’s the story. And I’m like, and now I’m going to work out how I take his story and deliver it and make all your problems go away. And it’s just really fun pitching with him. And I think clients buy into that, because they’re like, okay, these guys have been there a while, they get each other, they produce good work. Whereas sometimes, you just don’t get that fit. So, it’s not an easy one, sometimes to find it.

Alex: So, team synergy and then the effect of that is, sometimes what we talk about can be quite dry, and sober, and numbers lead. And so, to be able to sort of bring that to life in a way that makes it sort of sing or actually add some layer of interest is important.

Matt: Even with some of the most boring briefs, I say boring briefs because all briefs are exciting – you do get the ones where you’ve got to be a little more detailed. There’s still got to be a way of telling a story that gets people excited about what you’re trying to do, because as much as there’s heavy details about how we solve your problems, we’ve got to present – here’s the problem you’ve got, here’s the story of how we go through it. Maybe it might be process, or it might be the strategy and delivery of it. Here’s the big reveal, here’s the end result of how we land it. And then it’s going into the details of how to do a pitch, isn’t it? But you’ve still got to be able to deliver that story and believe in the people that are delivering it.

Alex: Yeah, absolutely. So, does it help to speak to an agency’s existing clients? 

Matt: Yeah. I spoke to one of my colleagues about this yesterday. And I’m of the opinion that you absolutely have to speak to an agency’s existing clients, because I’ve been client side. And I’ve seen proposals come through, and it’s got the case studies at the end of like, oh, we made this company over a million pounds, and they love us, and you’re like, okay, I mean, we can all buy into that, it’s a nice story. You need real proof, like, okay, I want to speak to that company who you just made a million pounds for, I want to find out how you did it, and what it’s like to work with you. So, I think clients to do the right due diligence, because you’re putting out tenders to maybe 10 companies at a time and then to wheel it down to the ones who are the strongest – they need to tick so many different boxes. And the biggest box for me is, I want to speak to people who worked with you for the last five years, who you won awards with, who you improved their business. And if they can’t give you that, they’re not the right fit. It’s really easy because there will be agencies who can do that. And the other ones are – I know there’s going to be lots of upstarts and people who are really good, and you take that for what it’s worth. But if you’re looking for a reliable partner who’s got proof of delivering results, and you’re under pressure, you need to have that conversation with an end user of that agency.

Alex: So, there is an argument that if I go to the agency, they are only ever going to give me the best-case scenario clients where things have worked out meticulously. In the agency world, there are always projects that don’t quite pan out as well, there might be problems on the client side, it could be that the plan that we’ve actually conceived just didn’t actually work and deliver results to a test phase or something like that. Those clients, as an agency owner, I would never introduce new clients to any of those. So, it’s almost like, what do you say to the fact that if any client that an agency gives you to speak to, is only going to sing their praises, because in that array of clients is that top tier of client satisfaction that agencies will utilise. 

Matt: It’s super interesting, because every agency’s got failures and things that have gone wrong for one reason or another; a bad plan, a team that didn’t quite deliver ends. I don’t know – maybe look at it like relationships, like you kind of want to walk away on good terms, regardless of what’s happened, and it’s got to be a good conversation. I don’t know, why did I think of relationships as an example? But I’m here now. You know, you kind of want to clear the airwaves a little bit and have a discussion about why things didn’t work. And you’ve got to be honest and transparent. And there’s so many reasons why the agency and client relationship might break down, but if you can leave things in the right way and accept, sometimes accepting your faults is not a bad thing.

Alex: And I think some of the best client relationships that I have to this day, have been born out of issues. So, when the client’s gone – my website’s gone down, and I’ve got all of these resulting problems, as a result of it – can your team jump on it? We then demonstrate our worth and support in terms of looking after clients at that sort of stage. But then on the other hand, is when there has been an error internally in our processes and we have made a mistake that’s resulted in a poorly performing campaign or something like that, when we take ownership of that and surface that with the client, and actually go and say to a client, we’ve made the mistake, this is the problem. This is how much it cost. This is what we’re going to do to fix it. And we own that, and rather than the client having discovered it and then start researching it, we’ve taken ownership of it. And so, mistakes are very often the best possible thing that can happen from an agency client perspective, because you then get to demonstrate how you deal with that. And that’s when clients can then get confident that an agency, when they’re on their money, performs well. But then when things go away from them, how they actually handle those situations.

Matt: Yeah, you can’t go around leaving enemies but leave everything on a right note where you can agree to disagree. But it leaves it in the right way, and you accept something didn’t work for one reason or another. And you’ll have a pool of people who have a lot more respect for you than the ones who go well, it’s actually your fault, Mr. client, and we don’t like you, we don’t want to work with you again. Because there’s going to be examples where things get a bit nasty- someone hasn’t paid a bill or someone doesn’t talk to you for a bit, but just leave it in the right way. Because you never know when it’s going to come back and bite you. So, again from a client perspective, if you’re trying to hire a new agency, you’ve got to know the good and the bad, the warts and all. So, this is an interesting – I don’t know how you solve that problem, like tell me about your worst ever client.

Alex: Tell me about the one who’s most unhappy with you please. 

Matt: Yeah, that would scare the life out of everyone as a question, wouldn’t it?

Alex: But I think it’s almost like getting references from people for stuff. You can have an exploratory conversation where you can pick up on the tone and the feel and the sentiment. And then it’s the questions that you ask, I guess, that will really bring that conversation to life.

Matt: Yeah. I mean, there’s a really nice interview question, which is, if we were to ask your last boss, what they would say about you, what would they say? And you know, every interview person’s like, they say I’m amazing and I’m hardworking, blah, blah, blah. And then you’re like, cool. can I contact them? And they’re like, what? Like, yeah, I want to speak to them and just get their side of the story.

Alex: So, in terms of then when you’ve found a client or an agency that you’re happy with, you’re thinking about working with them, should the client sign a contract with the agency that sort of ties them in long-term?

Matt: Very interesting one. I think agencies should work. It sounds awful. But we’re in an environment where we’re driven by capitalist values. So, most agencies are driven by like the biggest bill that they can see. And if you’re signing into a one- or two-year retainer for a big amount of money, sadly, they’re going to be more motivated than the one-month project. And that’s sometimes, yeah, I mean, that’s not true of all agencies. But you know, the big bill’s always going to be the most appealing one. So, there’s an argument there that that might mean, you get a better end result. Like if I were a client, I’d look to sign something into a medium sized – I’ve kind of completely avoided your question Alex – but I’d sign into a medium sized deal where there’s clauses on performance and deliverables and clear SLA’s. Going to short term, I think there’s a problem of short term and long term. Going to short term is, you don’t know enough about the agency. You might just stick with the core team who were there on the pitch, they deliver something over three months, and you haven’t really got an idea of how this works in the long term. You’re going on a very small sample size, so I don’t think you’re fit to judge it at that point. And then going too long term without the correct backup, the core pitch team disappear after three months and you’re left with second tier or the third tier, who now they want to turn your account into a cash cow, but you’re locked in for two years. That’s an absolute nightmare, it’s a nightmare scenario, and you have to elevate things and it becomes a battle. So, it’s tough for clients, but something in the middle where you’ve got enough time for an agency to prove their value, like a six-month retainer or one year retainer against a certain set of activities, giving them enough scope to prove their worth is what they say they are. And if it keeps working, you extend it. Too short isn’t enough and too long is far too much risk to put into one place.

Alex: Yeah, so you probably need a break clause, as you say, based on SLA’s. And then I think that to be confident in the team that’s going to be working on your business, because that change in account managers from a senior team at the intro to a more junior team as time goes on, would affect performance. And so, I think going into an agreement, some sort of caveat about this – these are the people that are actually working on the account that I’ve met on the pitch team or through this onboarding process.

Matt: Also, check the turnover staff of the agency you’re going to work with. If the core team, you go on LinkedIn, and they’ve only started a month ago, and you’re bought into them, and you’re trying to sign into a two-year deal – I’d have concerns there. Where does everyone come from? Where’s the previous team? You kind of need to go – because you’re buying a service, you’re buying people. And if that team is fairly new, or they’ve moved around a lot, there’s risks that come with that as well, because you might get caught out – sounds like I’m trying to sort of scare people. But you know, you’ve got to do due diligence to make sure that the committed core team are aligned to the values that you’ve bought into.

Alex: I think once as an agency, once you can give the client the confidence in terms of performance, the team that’s working on the business, I think to get into a longer-term agreement is a good thing because it gives the agency owner confidence to be able to adequately resource and commit to staffing levels, and sort out certain contracts that that will affect that sort of decision-making process potentially.

Matt: Throwing the argument after argument on it, but a short-term agency agreement doesn’t allow the agency to learn about your business and start to offer real value. Sometimes you need someone to really work on that account for six, nine-12 months before the alarm bells start going off where you’re like, hang on a minute, I’ve just realised they do this a certain way or the sales team work in a certain way, and there’s something else we can do here of value. Whereas, if you give people this short timeframe, it’s just a firefight, just quickly do the thing you’ve been told to do. So, that longer term relationship with a good agency, you’ll get people to work on that account who start to really understand your business and can spot problems and fix problems where you might not see them from an internal perspective.

Alex: So, short termism versus long termism – that’s the greatest, that’s why democracy’s probably the worst set up to try and solve climate crisis, because politicians have to make such radical change that’s going to affect their voter base in the four-year period. They won’t bother doing it, so we’ll sort of just rumble on. So, what we kind of need is a global benevolent dictatorship just to resolve everything.

Matt: Feels like a very intense separate podcast where we could probably go into the details of that.

Alex: So, in the agency world, what agencies and political leaders from the past do you really admire from your space?

Matt: I’m going to avoid the second question because even if I make a joke, it’s a super scary topic to bring up. I’ll go with the agency one. So, there’s three agencies that I really like and for slightly different reasons. So, one that I really liked a few years ago is a company called Byte, I think they’re called Byte Technologies. The articulation of their story and their value proposition was so clean, and something I’m really interested in is that they’re all about how they use technology and digital and data and combine it with really good creative and experiences. And even like a few years ago, they’ve just gone from strength to strength, they’ve quadrupled in size and they’ve just been bought out – I forget who’s bought them out now – but they’re now part of a much bigger group. But there was something about their ethos and approach which I really bought into and their branding was super cool as well. So, Byte is one to look at. 

Alex: B, Y, T, E?

Matt: Yeah, B, Y, T, E. And there’s two others that are relatively new. So, I’ve kind of got an interest in performance marketing agencies and how people tell that story because that’s an area I’m in at the moment, and just looking at people that look like us. There’s a New York agency called No Good and I just love their approach. Again, their branding, their story and how they go about stuff and just the way their whole team is quite aligned. Everything on LinkedIn is really tidy and the shop window for No Good – it’s just really beautiful. And the way they talk and get out in the industry is really impressive. And then there’s another one, which started last year and it’s not someone I actually know personally, but there’s a guy who’s started an agency, a B2B agency called Ziggy. And they’re basically all about, what I believe is the thing that’s missing in B2B, which is really using data and data science to drive lead generation and really good monthly automation, performance marketing – those bits and pieces. Super cool brand, it’s kind of David Bowie inspired so they’re really cool. They’re really cool. They’ve got a really nice look and feel, and it looks like they’ve grown rapidly – really cool case studies. And it’s like, yeah, I think you’re hitting the market with the right story at the right time. So, they’re super impressive, quite a broad church of B2C, B2B, and then one massive company now in Byte. 

Alex: Matt, this has been great. Where can people find out more about you online?

Matt: Best bet, probably jump onto LinkedIn and type in Matt Laybourn. There’s not many people with my slightly strange name. So yeah, check it out, or if you want to see what we do as an agency, check out TMW, TMW London, TMW business. It’d be good to talk.

Alex: Perfect. Thanks for joining me today.

Matt: Thanks, Alex. Appreciate it.

Alex: If you found the conversation useful, please join me again next time for Choosing an Agency.

Choosing an Agency is available for you to download from all the usual podcast platforms or find out more, here: www.alexholliman.com