The days of clients and their marketing agency being true partners in accomplishing growth objectives seem to be relics of the past.

They don’t have to be.

Agencies can rebuild that bridge with one word: Integrity.

Ideally, you’re already working with an agency with integrity, marked by their reliability, consistency, honesty and conviction. But how can you tell? You deserve to know you’re doing business with, so make sure you ask at least a few of the following questions:

• How long are their client relationships? If their clients have stuck around more than three years—and as many as a few decades—then you know you’ve found a keeper.
• Who is your team? If they’re doing it right, your agency is assigning talented individuals with specific expertise in what you need to help you achieve your goals.
• How long has your agency been around? The right answer is that they’ve been around the block enough times to weather multiple ups and downs not only of typical marketing cycles, but the major economic shifts that impact every aspect of our lives.

If these answers don’t match your agency’s response, then I can tell you that you deserve better.

I have seen hundreds of marketing agencies come and go in the past 35 years. Some were clever and hip. Some tried new models and chased the latest fads.  Many tried to inappropriately upsell clients, only staying focused on the bottom line rather than client goals.

Almost all of them are gone today. Those practices failed them. They failed because at their core, their philosophies and underlying motivations lacked integrity.

Those marketing agencies abandoned principles that are vital to great campaigns. First, an innate belief in the audience’s intelligence. Most important, they stopped ensuring that the talents assigned to accounts like yours were a strong, cohesive group with the expertise to challenge other’s preconceived notions and push each other farther.

And that’s when a marketing agency’s integrity fails—when its team members can’t sustain their passion enough to urge each other, every time, toward a product that they are always personally and professionally proud of.

When the passion dies, any version of “done” will do.

A marketing agency partner is a long-term commitment.  In the same league as your accounting firm, your law firm, and your financial advisor.  And as is the case with any long-term relationship, the foundation needs to be built on trust and integrity.

At Mascola Group, our foundation is integrity. For over 30 years, we have held strong to that foundation. It’s what guides our entire team to create meaningful and successful deliverables for all our partners.

Would you like to know what that means, how that feels, and why that model returns better results?

Meet with us. You’ll quickly see why integrity matters.