REASON Agency

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am the President of a medium size gift company. Our products are branded and imported from China. The product line we went with for this project was our inspirational Christian product line.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire REASON Agency, and what were your goals?

We hired Reason to take over the digital marketing for one brand. They were responsible for the entire digital marketing effort for that brand. They were hired to take the brand from nominal to significant. They gave us projections and missed all of them.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

We had interviewed the vendor and during the interviews they came off as very authentic, honest, and forthright. Good folks that were experts in the field. They spent the time to develop a very informative study on our brands and the companies president came on a zoom call and spent 2 to 4 hours reviewing the information with myself and my brand manager. We were impressed and sold on them as a top-rate agency.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and marking tools used.

They were responsible for every aspect of the digital marketing for this brand. Strategy through implementation. They advised us that the market study they did for the brand would be the "bible" that they used to successfully grow our brand D2C through marketing.

How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

We worked with everyone on the team. CMO on down.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

Overall, we found the company to be incapable of delivering. They promised sales that never materialized. they created strategies and chased their tails trying to implement. They have a common problem among agencies. They take on too much work and then cannot manage the client base that they have. We specifically asked if they had the bandwidth to handle our account.

They confirmed and then hired more people. We got the B team. The unproven, and unqualified. They fired most of them either during the 3 months we were with them or shortly after. They then moved us to the A team and while i will say the CMO is very good and the lead FB guy is very good. This is an agency that charged us $8k a month and is happy to take the money and not deliver.

Knowing these were their internal problems they still didn't offer a credit or a few free months to compensate us for the time they waisted. They didn't value us as a client. they only valued the billed dollars and when those dry up they move onto the next client. The biggest issue that I found is that they outlined a clear MUST INCREASE AOV to $70 goal in the initial plan and didn't really spend any time making that happen.

So they spent $25kish a month in advertising without actually increasing the AOV. They never got the right offer which meant that all of the advertising they did for us was unprofitable. Additional things i found bothersome, were that the company had incentives in their contract and failed to deliver those incentives after the contract was signed. I found this to be a theme with the owner.

I felt like he made many promises and comes off very authentic and honest...but that when it comes down to making decisions that require him to follow through on the words he says...he falls short. So beware of empty promises with this agency owner.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

They have a decent communication system set-up and we pushed for deeper communication and involvement to try and help make them successful. We knew this was our last attempt at D2C and if this failed we would not be continuing with this path as it was too expensive with no return. So communication was not an issue. All of our issues were with implementation, follow through, etc.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

I think the CMO was bright and capable. Someone should take him to an agency that actually has a heart and soul. This one only talks the talk but doesn't walk the walk.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

They should have been focused on raising the AOV since that was the #1 thing to make the advertising profitable. They focused on an offer that was $35 and had an average order value of $50. Our AOV dropped when they were involved. They provided a tool for us to give them information which we spent a lot of time completing and then they barely used it. I could continue to go on and share more issues and problems but instead will just issue a warning...stay away.