On “Marketing Champions,” our host speaks with experts within the marketing community. This week, Mike White sits down with Robby Berthume from Bull & Beard and Agency Match.
Bull & Beard is an agency matchmaking service that connects mid-sized to Fortune 500 brands with small to mid-sized agencies. Agency Match is an exclusive directory of vetted and vouched-for agencies with profiles written by Bull & Beard. They reduce risk, breakdown barriers, and brinkmanship and streamline agency searches.
Company: Bull & Beard and Agency Match
Website Address: https://www.bullandbeard.com and https://www.agencymatch.co
Interviewee: Robby Berthume
What is the Bull & Beard and Agency Match?
We started in June 2013 and we were focused on building up a collective of agencies and then match them with midsize to Fortune 1000 brands. Over the years as we’ve grown, we’ve spawned Agency Match, which is our directory of innovative agencies.
What’s the biggest or the greatest amount of resources that someone requires from you?
Probably at the top three would be PR, branding and maybe a tie between media and digital marketing. I’d say those are the most popular capabilities that we’re engaged with around agency searches.
What do you think the biggest change that is coming to the way people advertise over the next two years is going to be?
The constant trend with CMOs and marketers is certainly very data-driven and analytics-driven, results-driven. When they’re looking at these partners, they want to find chemistry and have somebody they trust to be able to roll up their sleeves and work together with them. I think that’s an area where agencies tend to struggle a bit. I’ve read some research recently around 20 percent of agencies feel ready to answer the call when it comes to data and analytics. Most agencies feel like it’s a weak area. So I think that’s where they should focus their time and attention.
What was the biggest challenge that you had in building Agency Match?
The biggest challenge was certainly building up our collective. We have a paid agency review process. It’s a one time fee for three hundred dollars and that covers an interview, that covers reference checks, work review, setting up a matchmaking agreement, really taking them in and building that relationship. That’s a requirement to join Agency Match. Now we have over 300 agencies in our collective. When we take those 300 agencies through that process, we make sure to build the relationship for each and every single one.