How to choose an advertising agency: a checklist for brands working across markets

Choosing an agency is one of those decisions that feels reversible and rarely is. Once the logo is approved, the site is built and a year of content has been published, switching costs real time. So it is worth spending a few days getting the choice right.

This checklist is written for brands that sell in more than one market, where an agency has to cope with several languages, several audiences and different local habits at once. It also works for a single market. It has no rankings and no names. It explains what to prepare, what to look for, what should worry you and what to ask.

Before you talk to anyone

Agencies can only be as good as the brief. A day of preparation here saves weeks later. Write down:

• The business problem, not the task. “We need a new website” is a task. “People in two markets do not understand what we sell” is a problem.
• The markets and languages that matter, in order of priority.
• What already exists: brand assets, past campaigns, analytics, what you liked and did not like.
• A realistic scope and timeline, and what drives the deadline.
• Who decides. One approver, plus named reviewers.
• How you will measure success, in terms you can actually track.

If this is new to you, how to brief a creative agency has a one-page template.

What to look for

Work that resembles your problem. Not necessarily your industry, but your situation: a launch, a rebrand, a market entry, a bilingual build. Ask to see how the agency got from brief to result.

A team that can cover the whole job. Strategy, design, production, development and media rarely sit in one head. Ask which parts are done in-house and which are subcontracted, and who is accountable for the whole.

Real language skill. If you sell in an Arabic-speaking market, check the Arabic with someone who reads it professionally. The same applies to any language you depend on. Translation is not copywriting, and a typeface that works in Latin may have no good partner in another script.

A process you can describe back. Discovery, concepts, review rounds, delivery, support. If the agency cannot explain its steps in plain words, it will not follow them under pressure.

Clear terms. A proposal that lists deliverables, rounds of revision, timeline, payment stages and who owns the final work.

Chemistry with the people you will actually work with. The pitch team is not always the delivery team. Ask to meet the person who will manage your project.

Red flags

• A price before any questions. A quote needs a scope.
• Big claims with nothing behind them, such as rankings or promised results.
• Free creative work on spec, then pressure to sign.
• Vague deliverables: “social content” with no count, “branding” with no list.
• No mention of ownership, or ownership only after full payment, with no clarity on what you get.
• A portfolio with no explanation of the brief, the role or the outcome.
• No questions about your customers, only about your budget.
• Reluctance to let you speak to a past client, or to explain who left the team recently.
• A strong pitch from one person and nobody else you can meet.

Questions worth asking

1. Who will work on our account day to day, and who is accountable?
2. How do you start a project, and what do you need from us in the first two weeks?
3. What would you want to change in our brief?
4. Which parts are done in-house, and which are subcontracted?
5. How many concepts and revision rounds are included, and what happens if we change direction?
6. Who owns the final work and the source files, and from when?
7. How do you handle several languages, and who checks the quality?
8. How do you report, and how often?
9. What happens if a key person leaves mid-project?
10. Can we speak to a client with a similar project?

How to compare proposals

Give every agency the same brief and the same deadline for questions. Then set the proposals side by side: deliverables, rounds, timeline, team, languages, ownership, payment terms. Do not compare totals until the rows match. When a row is blank, ask. How an agency answers a basic question tells you how it will answer the hard ones.

Choose the team you trust to tell you something you do not want to hear, not the one that flatters your brief. If you are comparing agencies for a brand rebuild specifically, how to choose a branding agency has a longer version aimed at that decision, and brand identity design cost explains what moves a quote.

What to do after you choose

Agree the first two weeks in writing: who attends the kick-off, what you will send, when feedback is due and who signs off. Most projects that go badly fail in the weeks of silence between rounds, not in the creative.

Talk to CREATVZ

If you are weighing agencies for a brand, content or production project, send us your brief through the start a project form or contact the studio, and we will reply with questions and a scope that lists exactly what is included. See also our brand identity and social media management pages for how we scope those jobs.