Becky McKinlay, Managing Director of Oystercatchers, explores 10 reasons why clients use intermediaries and how they can deliver value to your brand.

Last week, we covered that ‘intermediary’ might not be the best word to describe our services.  It wouldn’t be much of a market or an industry that survived over many years if all we did was ‘act as a link between people in order to try and bring about an agreement; a mediator’ or ‘pass messages or proposals between two people of groups’.

Oystercatchers intermediary remit is much more strategic and much more proactive than that of a ‘go between’.  While the terms of our engagements vary, what is common across them is; improving relationships, building enhanced processes and ways of working, helping create future-focused partnerships, elevating standards and improving outcomes.  In talking to our clients, past, present and future, they’ve been very clear on why they use intermediaries and what they need from us.

How can an intermediary deliver value?


Many of our agency Club members hear this from us when we meet them formally and informally, but in the spirit of Oystercatchers’ guiding principles -  transparency and fairness -  here are the frequently cited reasons why clients use intermediaries and how they assess and recognise our value:

1. Specialist Advisors

Clients need intermediaries to be, and many are, specialist advisors. They expect them to be knowledgeable about the things that are critical to their business and their marketing success. That is what brings relevant and additive context, an informed perspective and overall value to the process. When intermediaries invest a lot of time in understanding the client’s business drivers, the team capabilities, the level of ambition, the history of the brand and the short- and long-term marketing objectives, they become a respected partner who challenges existing thinking in the most productive way.

2. Providing Tangible Value

They expect tangible value. Intermediaries like Oystercatchers charge their clients for their advice and their outputs -  and we are transparent about that.  We don’t make money from charging agencies for the work we introduce and for good reason too.  Agencies are specialists too and deserve to be paid for that expertise.  If we took commission from the work we introduce to them, ultimately the client pays, and the outputs could suffer. And that’s because the agency will need to recoup those charges from somewhere and it’s likely to come from the way they service that client’s business.

3. Dedicated Time and Resource

Choosing the right agency partner(s), or designing optimum ways of working or a new marketing ecosystem, simply can’t be done in a client’s spare time or by the person with the most capacity. We hear time and time again that it is our deep-seated understanding of the agency landscape and the rigour of our discovery processes that creates value that is not replicable by any other means.

4. Challenging Client Thinking

Intermediaries should not be afraid to challenge a client’s thinking. Their engagement or tenure with a client is typically time bound, and in many cases, intermediaries are small teams.  Clients appreciate and benefit from this advisory-focused intermediary model – one that does not use fee models to feed hundreds of mouths over multiple years, or claw back commissions from elsewhere.  They pay intermediary partners like Oystercatchers who are happy to tackle and advise on the critical issues, speak truth to power and do the hard yards of validation to find the right fit, with no particular cause to defend.

5. Ensuring Impartiality

Clients want impartiality. Oystercatchers see the best, and worst, of both clients and agencies.  We treat both sides with equal respect.  Because agencies don’t pay us to be on pitch lists, we don’t have to justify our fees to them or keep any of them sweet with leads that are not real or speculative.

6. Comprehensive Agency Knowledge

Clients also want a comprehensive view.  So, it is everyone’s best interest that we know the agency landscape well.  And not just the landscape, but the individuals who make up the agency, the agency’s approaches, experience and capabilities. Because clients pay us for our consultancy services, we leave no stone unturned in knowing them well. We ask the right questions, challenge bias, and delve deep into them to ensure we create a level playing field of opportunity and also ensure the right conversations are held, over a realistic timeframe, to make the most informed decision.

7. Solving Internal Challenges

Clients want us to help solve problems to elevate their marketing– so if challenges exist internally rather than with their external partners, we help them create solutions from the inside.  A marketing team structure or process that can’t support the ambition of the organisation will never be solved by changing agencies. In those instances, a good intermediary will never recommend a pitch until that internal elements are addressed.

8. Blending Enjoyment with Efficiency

Clients need that advice, but they also want an efficient, enjoyable process.  They need a trusted partner, wise counsel, and never have to worry about confidentiality or the mechanics of making it all come together.

9. Implementing Proper Processes

Lots of clients, and really a very surprisingly high number, have never actually had the opportunity to run a pitch process.  Done with due care and attention, it is incredibly time-consuming and nuanced. And it is important it is done right, no matter the budget or brand. Clients that run poor pitches or continually pitch and re-pitch, are not attractive to many of the agencies who can help them most.

10. In summary…

Put simply, clients want a service that makes the most effective use of time and resource, adds invaluable market insights and increases their own understanding to help validate one of the most important selections and investments a client makes in their role.

Or as one client said to us recently, “Working with Oystercatchers makes me a better client”.  We like that. It provides us with our focus, our reason to exist and ensures we continue to act in best service of this industry and to ensure we continue to elevate standards.

To find out more about how we can help you can reach me here.