Mastering Agency Selection: How to Build a Lasting Partnership with Hasan Ramusevic, of Hasan + Shumaker

Announcer: Welcome to the Ignite Podcast, the only healthcare marketing podcast that digs into the digital strategies and tactics that help you accelerate growth. Each week, Cardinal’s experts explore innovative ways to build your digital presence and attract more patients. Buckle up for another episode of Ignite.

Alex Membrillo: All right, what’s up, everybody? Welcome to Ignite. Y’all undefined know we always have fun, but we are going to do different today. We are going to do different, and we’re going to do something that is really useful for all of you guys. Usually, we’re talking about patient acquisition. We have in-house marketers from big provider groups. That’s really fun. Today, we’re going to talk all about agency selection, how you can do it better to make sure you’re getting partners that you love, that you harmonize with forever. Everybody out there, all three listeners, welcome, Hasan.

Hasan Ramusevic: Hello, everybody. I guess I’m Hasan. Thanks for having me.

Alex: Where do you hail from in this beautiful Southeast of America, what do you do, and how long have you been doing it for?

Hasan: Well, excellent questions. I live in Raleigh, North Carolina. I consider myself an agency engagement consultant, which means I help marketers go through the process of either selecting a new agency or helping them work better with their ecosystem of agencies.

Alex: I love it. How long have you been doing it?

Hasan: Been doing this for about 35 years. [chuckles]

Alex: There were non-digital agencies back then?

Hasan: Digital was just a word. I graduated college, and I fell into this side of the business. I worked for a little consultancy that helped clients look for new agencies, and it was really just traditional agencies at that time. You had your ad agencies, you had your PR firms, you had your direct response agencies, and the business was very different. You created one campaign for your entire audience. Today, there’s so much hyper-personalization that agencies are essentially creating, or brands are creating, a bespoke experience for every single consumer that they interact with. It’s completely flipped around from the time that I started in this business.

Alex: Is that why there’s so many different types of agents? Were there always all these specialized agencies, or you just had the AOR-type big holding coagency?

Hasan: It was mostly retainer relationships. Even the smaller agencies back then, their clients were still on some sort of retainer, but maybe a smaller retainer. The business was a little bit more relationship-oriented. The human aspect was a little bit more important back then, and I actually strive to bring that back into the business because it’s really important, actually, for the success of your brand in the end.

Alex: I love it. This is going to be– I don’t know if there’s a lot of questions. What are you finding more of these days? This is the end of 2024, maybe the world, if Trump wins. This is the end of 2024. Are you seeing a lot of the larger companies hiring specialist-type agencies? Are you seeing them still go with the publicist? What are you seeing a lot of?

Hasan: There’s a little bit of each. The international brands, the global brands, if the scope happens to be global in nature, then you’re looking at the McCanns of the world. Otherwise, not as much. Today, you’re seeing more specialist agencies. CMOs of large brands essentially have an ecosystem of agencies. They might still have that brand AOR agency, although that’s a little bit less today. Certainly, there’s a digital agency in the mix, there’s a performance media agency in the mix, or there’s a PR firm in the mix. Then there’s in-house capabilities that’s also in the mix. It isn’t like it used to be where you had one agency doing everything for you.

Alex: Good. I like that because we’re a specialized agency. We’re going to end up with how do we make a great agency relationship. Let’s start with where it usually starts. The big guys will RFP, or they’ll just reach out to a few. How do we start with a really effective RFP? I saw a post from you that someone reposted saying, “You must be smart because I see you all over LinkedIn.” We’re just talking about your theory towards agency selection and outreach and stuff like that. How do you start with getting really good agencies to engage with, creating a good RFP or outreach? Where do these groups start?

I see some really terrible RFPs and really terrible RFI outreach, and I’m like, “Oh, my God, dude. Good opportunity, terrible nonpersonal outreach here.”

Hasan: Yes. There’s a lot in that question. This could all be summed up with the fact that brands or the people behind brands oftentimes will approach agencies as buyers, which will then force an agency to respond as a seller. When you have a buy/sell dynamic, everyone is just looking not to be screwed rather than looking to intentionally build a partnership. Oftentimes, we’re kicking the tires of the agencies just a little bit too hard and being cold about it. Clients have to recognize the fact that they’re buying not an agency, but they’re buying a partnership.

When you think a little bit about the best meetings that you’ve been in and you’ve got agency, you’ve got client, you’ve got maybe three parties, and everybody is just mixing it up. There’s real dynamics in the room where there’s harmony. People are being provoked to think a little bit harder, you’re collaborating in a great way, and you don’t know who’s working for whom. When you think about that room, when you’re searching for an agency, that should be the thing that you’re looking for, not what has the agency historically done and issuing RFIs that have a lot of make-work in them. A lot of that information is unnecessary. It’s available.

Due diligence could be done in different ways, you don’t really need an RFI today, but the focus should really be on the humans behind the agency, the leadership, what they can do for you, and how we vibe with them because that’s where the rubber hits the road. If you’ve got that kind of partnership, then that leads into better work, which leads into higher success rates, which leads into more trust, which leads into more success, which leads into longer partnerships.

Alex: I love what you said. It’s really about how you vibe in a room, and we recently did that for a big pitch. We flew out there, we all got in a room, and we’re exchanging ideas. We’re like all one team, and you forget who’s working for who. Okay. I love that. A lot of times it does. I think you’re spot on. One person gets into buying, one person gets into selling, and you’re like, “This is awkward. Really we should be dating. Shouldn’t we both like each other? Yes, one person is going to pay you dinner, but we’re both in this.” How do you even get to that spot of picking the right homies to come out and vibe with?

Hasan: You have to get deep into the client organization. What I do, it’s the only thing I really know how to do. I interview every person on the marketing team, and I interview everybody on the leadership team, including the CEO of the organization. Now, I know that the CEO typically is not going to have anything to do with the agency. I know that the chief human resources person isn’t going to have anything to do with the agency, but interviewing those people gives you a great sense for the culture of the organization.

It gives you a great sense for what the mission is, where the misalignments might be, how marketing can support the organization and not just bringing in consumers. It’s really, really important because you get a really holistic view of the organization. Once you have that, then going to find the right homies becomes a little bit easier because you’re looking for people. You’re not looking for an agency with certain qualifications as much as you’re looking for human beings that are going to provoke this group of people here.

Alex: I love it. As an in-house marketer, I’m thinking, “Okay, before I issue that RFP, I’m going to go meet with the rest of my C-levels or VPs or whatever it is and find out what each one of them feels like. We’re missing the direction, the feel for the culture that we want because that’s where you can get a lot of pushback when you finally get to the end of the agency, and it’s like, “You selected someone with capabilities we didn’t really value.

Hasan: That’s right.

Alex: They’re more financial, more creative. That’s important. I get with the people, my internal team and see what they value in a partnership. I get that. I get the type of people we want, creative or analytical, small hustlers, corporate at a risk-averse because we got a big thing to protect. I generally get that. Then it’s step two, look for general capabilities or industry knowledge, or have I wasted my last 15 years becoming a healthcare marketing specialist? I’m scared right now.

Hasan: No. I skipped some stuff just because I’ve been in this business for so long, but a marketer who’s doing their own review will want to go through a bunch of due diligence. You want to go through listings and websites and figure out whether, “No, you haven’t wasted your time because the specialist agency in your space especially, has much more nuanced approach and much more nuanced understanding of the regulations behind the industries, and everything that you have internally is geared around things like patient acquisition and whatnot.” There’s real value into being a specialist healthcare agency.

Alex: It’s not the only thing that matters. I know you and I talked before and you said, “Well, it can be a benefit to not just go the specialist route because people can bring in things they learned in other industries like retail could help healthcare, or e-com could help that law firm.” There’s value in that too.

Hasan: There’s absolutely value in that. I’ve seen that it’s been a personal preference with the CMO. Oftentimes, I’ll hear– not oftentimes, the truth is less times I will hear, “Hey, let’s get out of our own industry, let’s take a look at agencies who have done this for other industries, and let’s get some outside perspective.” That, I hear a little bit less. It usually leads to something interesting, but it usually leads to something interesting for a short while, whereas–

Alex: If something– Yes.

Hasan: Yes, because what happens is there’s too much oversight with those types of agency relationships. Whereas if you’re a healthcare marketer and you’re dealing with a healthcare agency, you’re probably going to have a little bit more confidence in knowing that the agency has the ability, has the foresight to anticipate problems, et cetera. Whereas a general market agency, unless they’re staffed with people that have healthcare experience, it’s going to be hard for them to have institutional knowledge that’s beneficial to you.

Alex: Yes. There’s value in that all kinds of specialists. The people we just flew out to, they told us they took 40 initial calls, so the vibe was clearly important to them. Is that like it takes? Maybe that was extreme, I love them, but that felt like a lie. I’m honored that we made– To get to the right vibe capabilities and stuff, it takes a ton of work.

Hasan: It sure does. I look at it more than 40, honestly, so I’ll look at probably 150 or so. Our databases have thousands of agencies in them. The thing is the database is going to help you sort out the objective criteria. Geography might be a thing. Size of agency might be a thing. Experience in certain categories might be a thing. Having certain disciplines internally might be a thing. You sort that out in the database, and problem is it’s picked out a list of 150 agencies. Then you’ve got to look at the subjective criteria. Who are the people at my client organization? Who are the people inside this agency? Is that a fit? Sometimes it’s easy.

Sometimes, you have a client that is very risk-averse, might be very corporate in nature. You come across one of your 150 agencies, is a dynamo agency run by 25 year olds. You’re like, “Okay, well, that’s an instant no.”

Alex: That was us 10 years ago.

Hasan: We definitely go through that list probably six different times, making that six different times until we get to about a dozen agencies. At that point, we do make the phone calls, we interview, and we bet until we feel comfortable with five. Then that’s where we begin the process.

Alex: You’re a matchmaker that essentially cuts down on a CMO’s time of trying to get to the five. They don’t have to take 40 calls. They take five good ones.

Hasan: That’s absolutely right. Before we even do that, we take a very holistic view of the CMO’s world. We want to understand where the pain points are and how we can then support those pain points. We’re putting in recommendations on the types of agencies they need, not just who they need.

Alex: For instance, okay.

Hasan: I recently had a client who came to me looking for a performance media agency specifically, but then we ended up with a full service agency where there was a slant more towards the creative and brand side. That is only because throughout the discovery, we came to the conclusion that was a required thing.

Alex: That they were going to have way more brand advertising than they initially thought, or there was less demand for the capture-type stuff?

Hasan: Without getting into it, for whatever reason, the organization was thirsty for that holistically.

Alex: It takes all of the stakeholder interviews to get that idea–

Hasan: Exactly, to get all of that.

Alex: It feels like every CMO or VP of marketing, whoever is doing agency selection should work with you at least once to learn the right way to look at this because it’s probably not just, “Here are the five calls. I’m going to teach you how to have five good calls. Then I’m going to teach you what to do when you get them in the room together. Then I’m going to teach you how to deal with referrals or looking around to vet them finally or something.” I bet this feels like everybody needs to work with Hasan once at least.

Hasan: I would love for somebody to work with Hasan at least one time. By the way, it takes a lot of care. Marketers who are doing their own review oftentimes don’t have the amount of time that it takes to nurture each one of these relationships. It leads to cold run reviews because what’ll happen is the brand team will brief the agency and go, “Okay, see you in a couple of weeks.” Then there’s probably no interaction in between teams. In the way we run the reviews, we’re interacting with the agencies almost on a daily basis. We’re open to them. We’re their stage moms. They’ll ask us the stupid questions. We’ll make them better. That’s not cheating.

We want them to be better because it’s going to create an easier onboarding experience once the client selects one of these agencies that have been gone through this process.

Alex: It self-selects out too. You try to make them better, and you say, “Hey, listen, this is what it’s going to be. If it’s not a thing, don’t waste your time.” I agree that going cold– Let’s talk about things that go wrong from– also, I have the agency perspective of things that go wrong, but going cold is one of them. You know what irritates me? I’d love to hear your POV on this-

Hasan: What’s this?

Alex: -is the asking for references. It’s the same with employees. I never asked for them. Why? Because you’re going to give me your two best friends. No, I’m going to go look around. Do I know someone on a board? Have you worked with other [unintelligible 00:14:21]? What undefined is the right way to do advocate? “Hey, go ask for references.” My smartest client said, “I went and talked to this one, this one, this one behind your back, and they said, ‘You’re good.'”

Hasan: That’s exactly what happened. In the old days, we used to require references as part of the process. Honestly, it was probably better for me than it was even for the agencies because I got to meet clients that way. In the end, I got to meet a lot of happy clients because they love their agency. As you point out, you only give your best references. What happens today is clients really do their own sleuthing, and we don’t even get into the references anymore. They look you up on LinkedIn, and they go, “Okay, well, we have the same connection. Now, I’m going to call my guy, or I’m going to call my person or whatever.” They get into their own reconnaissance. [chuckles]

Alex: Yes, as they should. Whenever I get that question, I’m like, “Ah, it doesn’t feel like a super–”

Hasan: It’s less– It’s interesting that you get that. I’ve stopped asking for that.

Alex: We need you teaching a lot more people. I still get that. “I need to talk. Oh, I need to talk to another one.” “Why?” “We’ve done hundreds of– Of course, I’m going to give you the people that have said great things.” I go find everybody else. There’s not many detractors out there from Cardinal, but I would not be asking an agency for– The other thing that peeves me is going cold after an agency. Any agency has spent a ton of– You got a custom audit on everything. Someone spent a lot of time at food. At least tell them– This is what often happens when clients go in-house. I see this more often than not. A month goes by, and they never respond.

Finally, I’m hitting up the CEO like, “Hey, the team deserves to respond.” I would want every client to just be honest. You decided to go in-house. You chose another agent. Tell them why. The best thing that happened to us this year was we lost a deal. Then my friend, Matt, because I call him my friend now. This was very valuable. He wrote a novel of why we lost, and we changed our sales. We changed how we approach leads.

Hasan: It’s fantastic.

Alex: Be honest and be fair about–

Hasan: How was that?

Alex: It was awesome. Sometimes, a loss can help get five more wins. Look at it that way if you’re telling them [crosstalk]

Hasan: For any clients that are listening out there, it’s absolutely critical to provide some feedback. Even if you don’t have necessarily any feedback, at least call to thank them for their effort. It’s a big, big investment. Agencies will say, “If you start to calculate all the time, the investment is anywhere from $50,000 to $500,000 and trying to win a piece of business.” Even if it’s on the low-end, you’ve spent some time, you’ve spent some money, and you’ve spent some energy. It’s an opportunity cost because while you were doing that, you weren’t doing something else.

Alex: Then they started because it went farther enough along. They potentially started hiring or moving, reallocating, and stuff like that internally if it’s a big deal and you’re far along because they only have 30 days till you start, and it takes 45, 60 days on-ramp. We started doing all like that. You really got to be transparent about how you’re feeling.

Hasan: That’s the other thing, piece of advice to clients out there. When you hire your agency, please don’t expect them to be ready on the very first day. There going to be probably positions that haven’t been filled. An agency is a moving train. You’ve got momentum. You’ve got all your projects going on. You’re moving. For a new client to board that train, they got to run alongside you for a little bit and then hop on because you’re not stopping the train for them. Clients feel like you’re going to try to stop the train for them, they’re going to hop on, and they’re going to be onboarded on day one.

Whereas on the agency side, what’s happening is you got the big news, but suddenly it’s a panic because how are you going to squeeze them in between all your other things that you’ve got going on. That first month, it’s very difficult.

Alex: Yes. What you can do from client side to help your agency the most is invest lots of time. You should be clearing your calendars a good bit too. I loved your analogy. I’m going to use that about the train. Our train is going to be going, we’re going to help you guys board it, but just know we’re taking time away from chief strategy officer, everybody. It’s going to be a little in month one, but we’re going to sort it up. It’s really a 90-day onboarding till it’s running smooth. Please clients allocate a decent amount of time. If you want your agency to be successful, you’ve got to allocate a lot of your time and your team’s time for a few months.

Hasan: Absolutely. To bring out an old term, garbage in, garbage out.

Alex: I wonder if we’re the garbage. I hate being the garbage out.

[laughter]

Alex: Hasan, any final thoughts on selecting a phenomenal agency?

Hasan: Yes. The final thought on selecting a phenomenal agency is this. You have to make the agency phenomenal as a client. An agency, the way it is, is a suit that you pick off the rack. You have to fit that suit to make it fit your body and for it to drape properly. The way you customize an agency is for feeding information properly through briefing properly, through having the proper team and the proper resources around you.

Alex: I’m going to send a video of this interview to every pitch. I love it. Wear us like our new headline. Wear us like a suit. I guarantee you’ll like it.

[laughter]

Hasan: That’ll only make sense to one guy out there.

Alex: That’s true. It takes a really good bit of knowledge and knowledge sharing to make the whole thing work. You say harmony all the time. I don’t think there’s a better word. You can say vibe or harmony, but it’s got to work like this. You’re getting married to these people.

Hasan: That’s my entire philosophy. If you’ll allow me to discuss it for just a second, I’m a big believer that harmonious partnerships are the most prolific. Whether that is a personal relationship you have with somebody or a corporate partnership with a set of people, harmony is what makes each of you essentially thrive off of the other’s energy to become a better version of yourself and to create something together that is impossible without the other. It also doesn’t mean 50-50, honestly. It just means very much what I said, that each is feeding off of the other’s energy. In the agency review process, we don’t allow that to happen very often, especially if it’s a procurement-led review.

Clients tend to keep information very closely held, don’t provide you with an awful lot. For clients that are listening out there, what happens there is you’re picking an agency who is taking a stab in the dark, and you are going to have to start fresh once you select that agency. The review process itself should be held in a manner with which it provides an on-ramp to a partnership. Whatever a client does in a review process should enable a partnership rather than disable it with skepticism and stuff like that.

Alex: Love it. Agency selection process is all making onboarding easier if I heard you right. It’s really just an on-ramp to onboarding. I love the working session thing. Get in a room with these people and see how you all vibe. Make sure half of those people will actually be probably working on your account, so you’re not just getting the chiefs. We like to bring the actual people. See how you vibe and get the working thing going, and see how you bounce ideas. It’s the only way to really get it done. I love it, Hasan. I learned a lot from you. Let me think about it because I think we’ll do multiple rounds of this later in the year. We could do another session.

I’d love for you to potentially attend our conference and help us. Man, we could do a lot. This was good. I feel like we just need to talk before.

Hasan: I’d love it.

Alex: We could do a lot more content. I’m going to see how this episode pans out, especially online. We’ll find out on LinkedIn.

Hasan: I can wear this shirt again if you need to add anything to it. [laughs]

Alex: No, they’ll be like, “Why are they always in different outfits?” Everybody, thank you, Hasan, for joining Ignite. This undefined was awesome. We’re going to do something again in the future because I feel like there was 10 more things I want to discuss about how to pick a great agency. Thank you for coming on Ignite.

Hasan: Thank you, everybody. Appreciate your time.

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