Agency succeeds by breaking down internal barriers

Forget all that stuff about consistency being the hobgoblin of little minds.

At The Richards Group, a Dallas-based agency with projected billings of $1.2 billion, consistency counts. When the agency finds a marketing message that works, it sticks with it: think Chick-fil-A cows.

“Advertisers often ask their agency, ‘Well, what’s this year’s campaign going to be?’ says Stan Richards, who founded his eponymous agency in 1976. If a campaign works, you stick with it, says Richards. “You don’t change positioning, personality or brand vision,” he says, though you might try a fresh approach with a new media, such as online direct marketing.

That’s why The Richards Group resurrected the Fruit of the Loom Fruit Guys when it landed that account a few years ago. The agency knew inherently that consumers knew the fruit guys, loved them and responded to them — so why not keep a good thing going?

That level of consistency extends to the agency’s creative approach. There are no divisions between employees who prepare television spots and those who create direct marketing programs.

“In so many advertising agencies, direct is a group of people who are kind of off to the side and work in their own area. All they do is direct,” says Richards. “That’s not the case here. The same people who are working on TV spots running during the Olympics or the Super Bowl are also doing the direct mail for our clients. It’s a discipline that we have the highest level of respect for, and our most senior people will work on direct just as they do national TV spots.”

One way The Richards Group conceives a consistent message and brand for its clients is by holding workshops with senior management to make certain both client and agency hold “a single point of view on positioning so that we can ensure consistency of communication at every point of customer contact.”

“We usually begin with positioning and its three pieces — define the target audience, define the frame of reference or the category in which the business competes, and define the brand’s most compelling benefit,” Richards explains. “For starters, we don’t define the audience in demographic terms — women 18 to 49. That’s not going to help us. What we look for is a psychographic definition.”

In the case of Motel 6, here’s what the agency figured out: “They’re frugal travelers,” says Richards. “Frugal isn’t just people who don’t have a lot of resources. It could be someone with substantial resources, but frugality is that person’s major trait.”

Secondly, it’s about comfort, he says. “We want the people who would consider sleeping on Aunt Millie’s couch to spend the night with us at Motel 6. So, in defining the frame of reference, we say we’re a comfortable place to stay.

“Then, the compelling benefit we try to establish is that we are the lowest price of any national chain,” he says. “Why is national chain important? When you’re on the road, you don’t want to be staying at the Bates Motel. You can count on certain things at a national chain, and if your units all over the country run at the same level of excellence, you can count on things.”

That approach is part of the reason the agency has many longtime clients. The same is true for employees. Turnover at the 662-person agency is well below the standard for an agency, maybe because Richards rewards longtime employees by naming a conference room after that person, whether that person is an accountant or someone’s assistant. Currently, there are 45 such rooms with employees’ names on the door.

That kind of treatment makes it easy for the agency to retain employees — and maintain consistent brand messaging across all channels. And that makes clients happy, too.