A brand recently invited us into their agency selection process. Partway through, we made the decision to step out because we didn’t feel it was a good fit. Rather than moving on without us, they asked us to help evaluate their three finalists and guide the rest of the review.

While it’s not a common request, we agreed to assist with the final agency evaluation process. Since much of our assessment and advice applies to just about every agency pitch, we’re sharing it here with the names removed.

The Pitch Is the Easy Part

Buying media isn’t hard when it’s working. The beginning of the relationship is often the easier part. Strategies are developed, budgets get allocated, the numbers look good, and almost any competent team can run with campaigns as they get started.

The hard part comes when things stop working and adjustments need to be made. Campaign costs can increase, a competitor can unexpectedly enter the market, or the creative angle that carried you for six months can stop converting.

Nearly every brand we talk to describes some version of this. Things were going well until they weren’t, and the answers they get from their agency partner don’t inspire confidence. Getting through this isn’t about bid management. This work looks more like business consulting and creative problem solving.

Every pitch proposal is written to show how well the agency will run your account in month two. However, a more useful question is how they’ll approach things in month ten, when performance may have slipped.

The Work That’s Easiest to Shortchange

For brands that sell on look, feel and demonstration, like DTC, fashion, beauty and CPG, media management is rarely where the real hours go. They go into creative production, UGC and a properly resourced creator program.

Those are also the areas where an agency can under-deliver without anyone noticing. Media performance shows an increase within weeks. Creative and creator quality take months to reveal itself.

If a proposal covers a broad scope of work at a surprisingly low cost, ask how the work will actually get done. Heavy automation can make a low fee work on paper, but it works when things are going smooth and breaks when they get rough.

Forty Assets Might Be Five Ideas

If you sell something people need to see, touch or try, the most important line in any proposal is how many new creative ideas you’ll get each month. In fashion, beauty and CPG, where the ad has to show what the product does, it often determines the outcome.

Templates, iterations and resizes are useful, but they’re versions of ideas that already exist. A proposal promising “40 assets a month” may contain five actual concepts. With platforms largely automated, what limits you is how many different ideas reach the algorithm, because that decides whether you find the next winning creative angle when the current one fades.

UGC belongs in that count, since real customers and credible creators using the product are often your strongest creative advantage. Some proposals leave it out or list it as an add-on, which means the number you’re comparing isn’t the real number. Ask every agency to put it in writing: net-new concepts per month, how much is UGC, and what it costs all-in.

A Flat Fee Has a Year-Two Problem

A flat fee is predictable. The trouble shows up in year two, when the work grows, the fee doesn’t, and service slowly shrinks to fit the budget. An agency with no way to earn more when you win has little reason to push for continued growth in performance beyond what is expected.

Performance-based fees help, but the details matter. Before you sign, get clear answers to a few questions:

• Is the bonus based on platform-reported revenue, gross sales, or revenue net of returns?
• Who reports the number?
• Is the bonus held back against the fee, or billed on top of it?
• Is it paid monthly or annually? Seasonal brands can pay out on a strong quarter that a soft one later erases.
• What happens when a viral moment or celebrity sighting drives a spike nobody planned?

Then ask the agency to model what the bonus pays in a genuinely good year. If the answer is a few thousand dollars, it won’t change anyone’s behavior.

What Happens When Your Agency Also Serves a Competitor

Agencies with a competitor on the roster will point to separate teams and NDAs. Reputable agencies do their best to honor them. An agency holding two competing accounts has every reason to keep them out of each other’s way and no reason to help one take share from the other.

When it comes to strategic advice on competing against a brand the agency already serves, the advice and strategy can tend to be softer than it should. In creator-driven categories, where the pool of creators who can speak credibly to potential customers is small, two brands are competing for the same pool of creators. One is winning their attention, and one isn’t.

That doesn’t disqualify an agency. But put the protections in the contract, including no shared buyer or senior strategist and the right to revisit if the competitive landscape changes.

Three Questions Worth Asking Every Finalist

What revenue do you expect this budget to produce, and what will it take to reach our goal? How an agency handles a question that isn’t in its interest tells you a lot about the next three years.

Who specifically will buy our media, and can we meet them? These individuals make most of the decisions that shape your results. Meeting them should be a condition of signing.

Tell us something about our business we don’t already know. Ask competing agencies for one observation from your own numbers. It’s the fastest filter we know to test their thinking.

The First Six Months Will Tell You a Lot

Notice what they ask for in week one. Ad account access alone means you hired execution. Requests for specific data around customers, prior insights, and future plans indicate you hired a partner.

Check whether brand and non-brand search are reported separately, since blending them flatters the overall performance number. Count the concepts actually delivered, because concepts and assets drift apart quickly once a quarter gets busy. At 90 days, ask what they’ve stopped doing.

Above all, watch how they handle the first month that misses. A specific diagnosis and a clear plan will tell you more than the entire pitch did.

The Bottom Line

Hiring an agency is a leap of faith, and no amount of diligence gets you to certainty. What you need to do is learn to tell true capability from salesmanship before you sign.

One thing we look for is specificity under pressure. Ask each finalist something that isn’t in their best interest to answer well and watch whether the answer gets more specific or more general. An agency willing to tell you that your budget probably falls short of your goal and explain why is showing you how it will handle the difficult conversations later in the relationship.

And remember, the chemistry that matters isn’t with the pitch team. It’s with the people who will actually be on your business. Make sure you get to meet them and that they’ll be your team after the pitch is over.

For more on how we think about brand and agency partnerships, check out our recent episode on this topic on Contrary to Popular Opinion, a podcast from Vuja Dé Digital.

If you’re weighing agency options or rethinking your current partnership and want an outside perspective, get in touch.