The Transformative Power of Harmonious Relationships
Marketing Management Consultant Hasan Ramusevic Shares His Process for Driving Harmony Between Brands and Agencies
Hasan Ramusevic is a distinguished professional with over 34 years of experience at the intersection of agencies and marketers. After graduating from Syracuse University in 1989, Hasan embarked on a decade-long partnership at a New York consulting firm specializing in agency selection for marketers. His fairness and impartiality earned him respect among ad agencies and CMOs.
You have had a long career in advertising, but you’ve spent most of it in this non-traditional role of helping brands find agency partners. How did you get into the matchmaking business?
Not surprisingly, I stumbled into it. I wanted to be a creative director, so after college, I got a job at an ad agency. It was a newly merged mega agency on Madison Avenue called DDB Needham, and I got a job as a secretary. I started doing whatever I could to get promoted. There was one executive who liked me and introduced me to the woman who ran a company called AAR that helped brands find agencies.
I knew nothing about new business, and I didn’t care that much. What I knew was that this little consulting firm dealt with many ad agencies. At the time, agencies didn’t have new business roles, so we worked directly with the presidents. I was like a kid in a candy store; I wanted to meet all of the agency presidents. I basically took the job with the sole purpose of looking for the next one.
It’s 30+ years later, and I’m still doing it.
Most firms that do what you do call themselves agency search consultants, but you gave yourself a different title. Why?
I prefer to call myself an agency engagement consultant. I’m not really searching for anything on a daily basis. That’s not how I spend most days. I’m helping clients maximize their partner ecosystems and manage their engagements, all in service of seeding partnerships that endure the test of time.
I’ve done this work for pretty much my entire career, but maybe seven or eight years ago, I stopped to really think about where I was adding value and why I was doing this. I think the essence of what I do is about transparency, integrity, clarity, and harmony. I realized that this is very closely linked to who I am as a human being. I believe that harmonious relationships are the most prolific, whether personal or corporate partnerships. Harmony is what drives joy and productivity. Harmony doesn’t mean 50/50 equality, though; it means that all factions are thriving off one another's energy and provoking one another to be better.
Imagine a situation where you have a team from two different organizations working together, and everybody is jibing so well that you can’t remember who the client is and who the agency is. I'm interested in producing that kind of partnership. With that in mind, I've reworked the entire process of how you go to market to find a new agency. We now focus on the humans rather than the qualifications of the agency.
So, what is your process? There are a lot of intangibles when trying to match people on the human level. How do you help your clients figure it out?
The only way to really do this is for the clients to give me the keys to examine under the hood. Even though I'm usually brought in by the Chief Marketing Officer, I need to work with the Chief Financial Officer, the Chief Human Resources Officer, the Chief Product Officer if they have one, and, of course, the CEO. Hopefully, they’ll be transparent, and I’ll get a really good view of that leadership team's DNA and culture and how marketing can support that organization.
As for the process, we don't bother with all the bulls**t associated with RFIs and reading bloated agency experience decks and stuff like that. I spent 30 years doing that, and I realized it was a proper waste of time. We’re much more concerned about who the humans are and whether they can help us define the problem and solve it.
In traditional searches, you put together an RFI and send it out to around 12 agencies, and the five best responses get a face-to-face meeting, but in the end, the winner is always about the chemistry. So, I start with chemistry.
I do my due diligence. I call agencies and ask about their current clients. Then, I tell them about my client and ask them to put together a team. A client isn’t really buying an agency; they’re buying a team, so I want to know who is going to be on the team. And I help the agency figure that out by giving them a lot of deep background. I’ll provide them with background on the product, the CMO and CEO, and anyone else who will be in the room. I’ll go as far as to say, “This one is a big thinker, this one is a strategist, and this one gets more into the weeds.” Then I’ll tell them what I think the client needs, “I need a senior-level strategist, someone who knows the food industry well, and a very seasoned account executive.” And I’ll ask them to put together the dream team specific to this client.
“I believe that harmonious relationships are the most prolific, whether personal or corporate partnerships. Harmony is what drives joy and productivity.”
You mentioned that when you started your career, there weren’t new business roles, but most agencies have this now. Sometimes, the people doing the original pitching aren’t the same as the ones doing the work. Does your process change this?
Yes, we try to control for that kind of bait and switch. It doesn’t take the new businesspeople out of the equation; they’re usually my main liaisons and the conduit to making it all happen within the agency. But I don’t want someone assembling a crackpot team of their best pitch people if those aren’t going to be the people who will be working on the business if they win it. The next step of this is what I call the chemistry meeting, and it doesn’t matter if you have chemistry with a team you’re not going to be working with in moving forward.
This chemistry meeting sounds like a first date. What do you do on this date? What are you looking for?
The first date is always interesting because I'm a chaperone. I have been selling the agencies to the client this entire time, and I've been selling the client to the agencies this whole time. So, the chemistry meeting usually comes with tremendous enthusiasm because everybody has heard so much about each other now. The meetings are usually spirited and fun.
The traditional process is clients approaching agencies as buyers with their guards up and agencies responding as sellers who are often seen as full of BS. We try to break down the barriers of the buy/sell dichotomy and be intentional in the way we bring people together to build a partnership.
As for chemistry itself, I can tell a lot just from having everyone in the room. When a team has been working together for a while, and they genuinely like each other, they're playful. Anybody can answer a question. It’s easy to spot dysfunction inside a team when you're sitting in the audience; throw a tough question at them, and they're all looking at one guy before anyone answers.
Obviously, with these long courtships, you’re talking about shopping for an agency of record. There’s been a lot of talk about brands moving away from this model in recent years. Do you think this is still the best relationship for brands and agencies?
This process is only worth it if you're looking for an agency of record because it’s a big investment on everyone’s part. Agencies put their heart and soul into this process, and everyone spends a ton of money. The four A’s and the ANA did a study recently that found that the cumulative cost of a big search—between the time the client puts in, the time all of the competing agencies put in, and the consultants—is about a million dollars. It’s only worth it for a long-term relationship.
As for a preferred method, I believe in longevity. I think that clients should have long-standing agency partners. That said, it wouldn’t bother me if AOR goes away. That's basically a contractual term about how you pay your agency. I actually think how agencies get paid should change. Many agencies are moving away from hourly billing to productizing their offerings and saying, “This will cost X, and this will cost Y.” I think it’s a good idea.
“It’s easy to spot dysfunction inside a team when you’re sitting in the audience; throw a tough question at them, and they’re all looking at one guy before anyone answers.”
You said earlier that you’re interested in helping brands with their entire ecosystem. Can you explain what you mean by that?
Yes, we talked a lot about our search services, but the focus of our business today is actually trying to work with CMOs before the pain builds up so much that they feel like they need to look for a new agency. We offer a marketing ecosystem audit to help identify what is and isn’t working. Most brands have more than one agency partner plus a large in-house team. All these people and all this marketing has to be integrated somehow. There’s a lot of money flowing into this thing, and sometimes, CMOs need an outside perspective on how well the entire engine is running and how it can be optimized.
We help rearrange the agencies, rearrange the scopes of work, and decide who should be doing what. We also look inside the clients’ own organizations and how their people are interacting with the agencies. We often find that the clients themselves are causing some of the pain. Clients sometimes break agencies' trust because they don't understand that they've made certain unspoken commitments, like promising to pay the agency on time, providing feedback in a timely matter, and provoking creativity. A lot of it comes down to being open and honest with your agency partner and providing an environment where the agency can be direct in return. Those companies that work to achieve harmony get better results and better work.
In your other role, you’re a matchmaker; this sounds a little bit like being a therapist. How do you work with multiple agencies who may all be competing with each other? And what kinds of suggestions do you make for reaching harmony?
I listen to people and allow them to express themselves without any judgment. I suppose you could say it’s like being a therapist. By actively listening, I’m often able to guide people out of conflict and provide them with clarity, or at least a new perspective, or perhaps suggestions in the case of clients.
My suggestions could really be anything from realigning the scope of the agencies to changing the way the agencies are paid and what they’re each making. I usually make a lot of suggestions to the clients about how they’re working with the agencies. Maybe they’re taking too long to provide feedback, or maybe their internal structure is wonky, and adding a position that could provide more clarity between internal departments would help. We’ll get into the structural, operational, and financial aspects as much as the client will let us.
Given all of your experience as an “agency therapist,” do you have any advice for leaders who think their teams are dysfunctional?
Don’t ignore the elephant in the room. Have an open and candid conversation with your team. If you know there's friction inside the organization, you must attack it as soon as possible and smooth it out.
You also have to be really intentional about hiring. If people genuinely don’t like one another, it will always be a problem. You want qualified people, but in the end, if you hire posers whose hearts are not in the work and who are always managing upward, it doesn’t help anybody. You need to have an authentic, honest group of people who enjoy working with one another. If you don't have that, it will be dysfunctional. Conversely, when you have a team with great internal chemistry and with great output, it’s very attractive to clients.
Last question: have you ever played matchmaker in real life by setting up friends or coworkers?
Oh, I want the answer to be yes. That would be great, but I’m afraid I have not.
March 6, 2024
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