Agency Social Practice Diagnostics

The Problem

Two national agencies, a full-service independent and the U.S. flagship of a global network, had strong social talent and award-winning work. Both had the same complaint: social was misunderstood inside the building. Account teams didn't know what social did or how to sell it. Creative teams weren't accountable for social craft. Scopes left social under-resourced, and each client team was building its own version of a social team from scratch.

What I did

Discovery. 65 one-on-one interviews across social, account, creative, strategy, media, analytics, HR and leadership, plus a review of 45+ documents: scopes, new business decks, briefs and finance.
Findings. A diagnosis leadership could act on: disconnected departments, no shared point of view, social treated as a last step, data used only to report results, and scopes that didn't resource the work.
Structure. Three structure options for each agency, from a central practice to a creator studio co-led with the creative department, with the trade-offs of each.
Operating model. A new social-first brief, named partners in every department, a scoping process, and a crawl-walk-run rollout plan.
Leadership. A profile of the social leader each agency needed, and help assessing internal and external candidates.

What changed

Team restructuring, new leadership hires and increased social new business wins.

Why it worked

I've run a practice like theirs, so the people I interviewed talked to a peer, not an auditor. The recommendations were built for each agency's real staff and clients, not a generic org chart.