Jun 11, 2026 · 47 min · 9 segments
This week, we kicked off our new series: Bare-Knuckle B2B, a partnership between Lesniak Swann and B2B Marketing. The first episode features Harry Davies, VP of Marketing and Strategy Investment and…
Harry DaviesGuest
Matt HicksHost
Kavita SinghHost
What's the point of an agency? What's the value to you as a client in working with
I think, you know, particularly media agencies, there's a large range of value that they bring because there's a certain amount of buying power that they have, which can reduce costs.
But if we think about creative agencies, the real value is bringing creative strategy and the creativity.
Now, You can buy those skills in-house, but the advantage of using an agency is that they're working on multiple clients across different sectors.
Clients can get very myopic and get stuck in their rivers of thinking quite easily.
And then also agencies spend, or people who work at agencies spend years thinking about advertising.
They've probably read more of the... advertising and marketing theory than a lot of clients.
And they've got more time to think about how that how that can work and how to apply that.
And I think, you know, in a perfect world, you see the agency as an extension of your own team as part of the group of people that are trying to drive value for the business.
I worked client side for some years, and that was one thing I looked for in agencies was to have that level of constructive challenge you need, really, don't you? As you say, it can seem deceivingly simple, I suppose, to set something like that up in-house, but to bottle that kind of dynamic you get with an agency is very, very difficult in that respect, isn't it?
yeah yeah definitely and it's like i know that my own work i i get to a certain point after about three years where you're coming across the same problems yes and you've kind of you know what's happening and so you kind of slip into well what did we do before and you're not necessarily pushing things out and so getting that fresh thought in is really important yes yeah yeah
What's the point of an agency? What's the value to you as a client in working with
I think, you know, particularly media agencies, there's a large range of value that they bring because there's a certain amount of buying power that they have, which can reduce costs.
But if we think about creative agencies, the real value is bringing creative strategy and the creativity.
Now, You can buy those skills in-house, but the advantage of using an agency is that they're working on multiple clients across different sectors.
Clients can get very myopic and get stuck in their rivers of thinking quite easily.
And then also agencies spend, or people who work at agencies spend years thinking about advertising.
They've probably read more of the... advertising and marketing theory than a lot of clients.
And they've got more time to think about how that how that can work and how to apply that.
And I think, you know, in a perfect world, you see the agency as an extension of your own team as part of the group of people that are trying to drive value for the business.
I worked client side for some years, and that was one thing I looked for in agencies was to have that level of constructive challenge you need, really, don't you? As you say, it can seem deceivingly simple, I suppose, to set something like that up in-house, but to bottle that kind of dynamic you get with an agency is very, very difficult in that respect, isn't it?
yeah yeah definitely and it's like i know that my own work i i get to a certain point after about three years where you're coming across the same problems yes and you've kind of you know what's happening and so you kind of slip into well what did we do before and you're not necessarily pushing things out and so getting that fresh thought in is really important yes yeah yeah
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