As a marketer, have you ever found yourself looking forward to meeting with your agency team, considering it the highlight of your day or week? Have you had team members request to be included in agency meetings, because of the energy and ideas that come from these interactions? We’ve seen this dynamic many times and we take it as a positive sign. It means that meetings are fun. But more than that it means that the meetings and the agency and client relationship have the conditions and atmosphere best suited to solving complex marketing problems.
The Challenges Marketers Face Today
It’s possible that it has never been more difficult for marketers and brands than it is today. Some of the factors that make it particularly difficult include increased competition, rapidly changing consumer behavior, the fragmented media landscape, rising customer expectations, economic uncertainty, and the short attention spans of consumers. These conditions and more collectively create a complex and dynamic environment where marketers must be increasingly agile, data-driven, and customer-centric to effectively manage and grow their brands. This leaves brands with tough problems to solve.
The Brain Science of Advanced Problem Solving
Neuroscience research tells us that brains in a more relaxed state are capable of solving problems that cannot be solved in a state of stress. When under stress, the brain’s stress response is activated and the brain experiences reduced cognitive function, impaired memory and learning, decreased focus and attention, limited creative thinking, cognitive overload, and altered brain activity. In contrast a relaxed brain shows better functioning of the prefrontal cortex for logical decision-making, improved memory recall and learning capacity, enhanced focus and attention on the problem at hand, greater capacity for creative and flexible thinking, and more cognitive resources available for complex problem solving. This underscores the importance of creating psychologically safe environments for effective problem-solving and cognitive performance.
The Power of Trust
Back to that positive dynamic between marketers and their agency partners. That fun atmosphere dynamic is found in emotionally safe spaces and those are built upon trust. When you trust your marketing partner and your marketing partner trusts you, the stage is set for enhanced collaboration and efficiency, access to the agency’s expertise and fresh perspectives, strategic alignment, consistency and continuity with deeper understanding of the brand’s identity and goals, increased productivity, cost savings, and better problem-solving as mutual trust allows both parties to address challenges more effectively. Together, these can deliver a competitive edge for a brand in the marketplace. And they are all born from a relationship of trust.
As brand leaders take their brands to market with promises built upon their competitive advantages of being faster, less expensive, tougher, more flexible, more reliable, safer, consider the competitive advantage that just might be the most powerful of all: a genuine relationship of trust with their agency partners.
If you would like to know more about how Jigsaw builds strong relationships with clients and exactly how those relationships help produce extraordinary results for clients, check out this case study, or simply reach out to us. We’d love to hear from you. It might be fun. It might be a whole lot more.
