Most agency reviews take longer than they should, evaluate things that do not predict performance, and end with a decision that looks defensible on paper but feels wrong by month three. The brand ends up back in a review cycle within two years.
This is a structured process for running a review that actually works — one that prioritizes the criteria that predict long-term performance, eliminates time-wasting steps, and gives you a clear basis for a decision you can stand behind.
Why Most Agency Reviews Fail Before They Start
The problems are almost always structural, not circumstantial.
Wrong evaluation criteria
Most reviews over-weight creative portfolio aesthetics and under-weight the process questions that actually predict whether the work will be strategic, on-time, and consistently strong. A great portfolio says something about what an agency has done. It says almost nothing about who will be on your account and how decisions get made.
Wrong internal team running the review
Procurement-led reviews optimize for cost and risk management. Marketing-led reviews optimize for chemistry and creative ambition. Neither is wrong, but neither alone produces the right outcome. The best reviews involve the CMO, a senior brand manager who will be day-to-day, and someone from finance who can pressure-test scopes. That is the right triangle.
Too many agencies in the room
Reviewing eight agencies is not more thorough than reviewing four. It produces more paperwork, longer timelines, and more fatigued decision-making. An RFI process that asks 12 agencies for written responses returns 12 documents that all say approximately the same thing. Thin the field early based on objective criteria, then go deep with three or four finalists.
Asking for speculative creative too early
Spec work before an agency understands your business is expensive for the agency and misleading for you. An agency that produces impressive spec creative without having done meaningful discovery has likely produced impressive spec creative for a problem it invented. What you are actually evaluating is how well the agency can guess. That is a different skill from how well they can solve.
A Five-Step Agency Review Process That Works
Target timeline: Eight to ten weeks from brief distribution to decision. Any longer than twelve weeks and stakeholder fatigue sets in, decision quality drops, and the agencies you most want to work with start to disengage.
Step 1: Define your actual problem before writing a brief
Before any agency sees a document, your internal team needs to agree on one thing: what is the specific brand or business problem you are hiring an agency to solve? Not “we need better creative.” Not “our brand needs a refresh.” A specific, falsifiable problem statement:
- Our packaging is losing at shelf in the better-for-you beverage category against brands that launched after us
- We are spending on campaigns that are not driving consideration among the 35–54 demographic we need for category growth
- We are about to enter three new markets and our current identity system does not translate outside our home region
If your internal team cannot agree on the problem, the review will end with an agency that was good at presenting — because that is what you evaluated.
Step 2: Set objective elimination criteria before anyone presents
Agree on your non-negotiables before the first agency walks in the door. These are not preferences — they are filters that eliminate agencies before you waste their time or yours.
Common objective criteria:
- Category experience (required, preferred, or irrelevant)
- Team size and seniority model (will senior staff be day-to-day or supervisory?)
- Geographic footprint (do you need a local team or does it not matter?)
- Budget range compatibility (do not spend three weeks evaluating an agency whose retainer starts at twice your budget)
- Services in-house vs. outsourced (if you need production, do they own it or subcontract it?)
Apply these criteria to your longlist before writing a full RFP. You should be able to thin a list of 12 to 4–5 finalists on criteria alone, without a single presentation.
Step 3: Run a working session, not a presentation
The standard agency pitch format — credentials deck, case studies, a speculative creative idea — evaluates how well an agency performs in a theater setting. It does not evaluate strategic thinking, client listening, or the quality of process.
A more useful format: give finalist agencies a real brief (or a lightly disguised version of your real brief) and ask them to run a working session with your team, not a presentation for your team. You want to see:
- What questions they ask before they offer any answers
- Whether the people in the room are the people who will staff your account
- How they handle a challenge or a pushback — does the conversation get better or does it get defensive?
- Whether their strategic framing reflects real understanding of your business or generic category knowledge
This format consistently produces better signal than a polished deck. Agencies that are good at pitching but weak on delivery can survive a presentation review. They cannot survive a working session.
Step 4: Reference the actual account team — not the pitch team
Before you shortlist, ask each agency to confirm in writing which individuals will staff your account on a day-to-day basis. Then ask to reference those specific people — not the agency’s general client list, but clients who have worked directly with the team that will run your business.
The question to ask references is not “would you recommend this agency?” — the answer is almost always yes. The useful questions are:
- Who was your primary day-to-day contact? Were they the same people who pitched you?
- When you pushed back on creative or strategic direction, how did the team respond?
- Did you feel the agency was invested in solving your business problem, or managing your account?
- Would you use them again? If not, why not?
Step 5: Negotiate the first 90 days before you sign anything long-term
A 12-month or multi-year AOR commitment, made before you have seen the agency do actual work on your actual business, is a risk that does not have to exist. The better structure is a defined 60–90 day engagement — a brand strategy sprint, a campaign brief, or a creative platform development project — at the end of which both parties decide whether a longer-term relationship makes sense.
Agencies that are confident in their work welcome this structure. Agencies that push hard against it are typically more confident in their pitch than their delivery.
Red Flags to Eliminate Early
These are disqualifying signals, not yellow flags. If you see them, move on.
- The pitch team disappears after week two. Ask directly: who will be on my account, and are they in this room?
- Strategy and creative are different teams. If the strategist who wrote your brief is not the creative director who acts on it, you will lose something in translation on every project.
- Vague answers about process. A strong agency can describe its process in specific, sequential terms. “We’re very collaborative” is not a process.
- No questions about your commercial goals. An agency that asks only about brand voice and target demographics but not about revenue, distribution, or competitive pressure is building creative for creative’s sake.
- Speculative creative that does not reflect your brief. If the work they brought to the pitch does not connect to the problem you described, it was made for a different audience — the people judging the pitch, not the people running your brand.
What a Good Agency Review Produces
A well-run review takes eight to ten weeks and produces three things: a clear decision rationale that anyone on your team can explain, a relationship that starts with aligned expectations on both sides, and a 90-day plan that both parties have agreed to before the contract is signed.
It does not produce a perfect agency. It produces the right agency for your specific problem at your specific moment in the brand’s development. That is the only outcome worth optimizing for.
Learn how Agency Squid approaches brand strategy engagements — and what we deliver in the first 90 days.
Why Agency Squid’s Model Is Built for How Brand Relationships Should Work
The traditional agency model — large teams, billable hours, a pitch team that hands off to a delivery team, and a retainer that renews on inertia — is not built around your brand’s interests. It is built around the agency’s revenue stability. Those two things are not the same.
Agency Squid operates differently. We built the agency around a hybrid model that combines the strategic depth of a consultancy, the creative execution of a production studio, and the commercial instincts of operators who build and launch their own brands alongside client work. There is no separation between the people who develop your strategy and the people who execute it. No junior team absorbing your day-to-day account management. No holding company overhead extracting margin from your investment before it reaches the work.
This is where the agency industry is heading — not because it is idealistic, but because CMOs are demanding it. Brands reviewing their agency relationships in 2026 are not looking for a larger vendor. They are looking for a smaller, more accountable partner whose business model is aligned with brand performance rather than billable hours and retainer renewal. The hybrid model answers that demand structurally, not just in pitch language.
We welcome the working session format described above. We will tell you exactly who staffs your account before you sign anything. And we are built to start with a defined engagement — because we are confident enough in the work to let the first project make the case for the relationship.
