Trust. It’s what makes the world go round.
Sometimes it’s innate and other times acquired but it’s foundational to every relationship ever: to love, confidence, expression and transaction.
If a brand is looking for a partner to shine attention on its brightest sparks and brightest ideas and earn the trust it deserves, shouldn’t trustworthiness be the agency’s core? Beyond the obligatory mission and values on the website, an agency that understands the world order as it should be vs. the order book as they’d like it to be should be able to easily tick off the following simple check list.
Let’s see who passes.
- Does your firm currently represent or in the past ten years has represented a dictator?
- Does your firm engage in and/or did it invent astroturfing?
- Has your firm and/or senior executives of your firm been convicted of fraudulent billing practices?
- Has your firm ever engaged in a dirty tricks campaign to plant negative stories in the media?
- Is any of your account leadership team romantically involved with a key journalist in the media we’re seeking to reach?
- Have members of your team paid for relationships with media?
- Does your firm also represent our competition? Stated otherwise, does another separately branded division of your organization extract dollars from our competitor that ultimately contribute to the same P&L our fees are contributing to?
- Does your firm have investments in media and/or social media organizations our program may seek to engage with on a paid or earned conversation?
- Are there any social/political/environmental issues on which your firm has a stated position? Has that position ever been dynamic?
- Does your firm ever pull the account-leadership-bait-and-switch after earning business?
If the firm can’t manage it’s own trust issues, how is it going to manage yours?
