Why Agency Consulting?

This brings us to our announcement. In addition to writing Web Smart newsletters and building robust marketing websites, Newfangled is now offering Web Smart Agency Consulting. Newfangled is a website development company. Websites are always at the center of web marketing plans, but web marketing is more than just the website. In fact, a robust web marketing plan should inform what a website should be and do. Unfortunately, Newfangled is often brought into a website discussion around the vendor evaluation stage (and we're very happy to be included in that!). However, by the time it comes to developer evaluation, the underlying web strategy (or absence of one) has already informed the website plan. We usually find ourselves responding to existing objectives and requirements rather than guiding clients into robust, full-featured web strategies. Regrettably, during the development process, we often find that our clients come to recognize how much more potential their websites have and how much broader their web strategy could be. Problem is, the middle of a web project is not the best time to re-examine an overall web marketing plan. It's far better to begin a project with an analysis of web strategy that will inform the website project.


Before I describe what our new Web Smart Agency Consulting includes, let me address my vision for agency consulting as opposed to direct client web strategy consulting.

The first websites Newfangled ever built were through advertising agency Leonard/Monahan (my employer prior to starting Newfangled). Having worked in the agency environment, I understood the strategic role advertising agencies fill for their clients. I have great respect for agency planners and account executives who make it their business to understand their clients' businesses in order to serve their marketing interests. And while creatives usually get most of the glory, unless strategists set the right trajectory, brilliant advertising may win Clios and One Show pencils without improving the client's position. Planners and account executives are the unsung heroes of the advertising world.

Newfangled does work directly with clients, but there is no way for us, as a specialized website development firm, to understand every aspect of any particular client's business like an agency planner or account executive can. Yet most planners and AEs can't maintain deep expertise in web strategy since they must serve a broad range of their client's marketing needs. But by combining forces through Web Smart Agency Consulting, we can help agency partners integrate robust web strategies into their overall strategy well before a site map hits paper or an RFP gets written for a web project.


Our newsletters, and more recently our blog, have served to inform agency partners in their thinking about the web, web marketing, and web technology. This is a great start, but it lacks direct application to specific web strategies. That's where Web Smart Agency Consulting comes in.

Web Smart Agency Consulting should result in web strategies that flow from the agency to the client. Building strategic relationships between an agency and their clients is our goal. That's why, while we'll continue in an advisory role to agency planners and account executives, we won't write web strategies for them. Building web strategy into the agency's expertise is our goal.

Web Smart Agency Consulting has both an outward orientation and an inward one. Outwardly, we consult with agency principals, planners and account executives to help them write web strategies for their clients. Inwardly, we work on the cultural web-oriented shifts in thinking needed to work effectively in web strategy.   next >