We’ve won accounts from other agencies. We’ve lost accounts to other agencies. We’ve watched clients leave because they believed someone else could do a better job. And occasionally, we’ve welcomed those same clients back.
That’s business.
Sometimes the decision to change was absolutely the right one.
Other times, the business traded a familiar set of challenges for an entirely new set of problems.
And over the years, I’ve come to appreciate an important distinction.
Changing who’s responsible for a problem isn’t the same as solving it.
The Appeal of a Fresh Start
There’s something undeniably appealing about starting over.
New people. New ideas. New strategies. New promises.
When a business isn’t performing to expectations, changing agencies can feel like a decisive step toward improvement.
And sometimes it is.
But I’ve also seen businesses make significant changes without ever establishing what was actually wrong.
The existing agency gets questioned. Strategies that have been working are reconsidered. Campaigns are restructured. New reporting systems appear.
Everyone can point to what’s changed.
But can anyone explain what’s improved?
That’s the question that matters.
Because a new agency can bring an entirely new approach to customer acquisition without addressing the underlying constraints that were holding the business back in the first place.
And sometimes, in the process, it can disrupt things that were actually working.
When Change Becomes the Objective
There’s a scenario I’ve witnessed more times than I care to remember.
A company brings in a new CFO or CMO.
The new executive arrives with impressive credentials, fresh ideas, and a mandate to improve performance.
All good things.
But occasionally, the desire to demonstrate leadership gets ahead of the effort to understand what’s already working.
An established agency gets replaced. Strategies are abandoned. Campaigns are restructured.
Not necessarily because they’ve failed, but because someone wants a fresh start. They want to put their fingerprints on the business.
And it isn’t always the new executive.
I’ve seen longtime leaders do exactly the same thing when results disappoint, pressure mounts, or they feel compelled to demonstrate that they’re still in control.
Sometimes those changes are necessary.
But I’ve also watched people throw a grenade into a bunker without first determining whether anything inside needed blowing up.
The consequences can be significant.
Performance deteriorates. Institutional knowledge gets disrupted. Months are spent trying to recover results the business was already achieving.
And occasionally, the person who initiated the changes moves on, leaving someone else to sort through the aftermath.
The founder, meanwhile, still owns the consequences.
Making changes is easy. Understanding which changes will actually improve the business is considerably harder.
What Are We Actually Trying to Fix?
This is where I think many companies get ahead of themselves.
Performance has declined. Revenue isn’t meeting expectations. Acquisition costs are increasing.
Someone decides it’s time for a change.
That’s understandable.
But before making that decision, I’d want to know something very specific.
What do we believe the current agency is doing, or failing to do, that explains the results we’re seeing?
Not what we’d like them to do differently.
Not whether their reporting could be better.
Not whether another agency has a more impressive presentation.
What is the actual constraint?
It might be the agency’s strategy. It might be execution. It might be a failure to adapt as the business evolves.
But it could also be pricing, product availability, conversion rates, competitive pressure, measurement, or acquisition economics that simply don’t support the company’s growth expectations.
Those aren’t interchangeable problems.
And they don’t have interchangeable solutions.
If a business doesn’t understand what’s preventing growth, replacing the agency may only change the people working around the problem.
Activity Isn’t Progress
One of the things experience has taught me is to be skeptical of activity masquerading as progress.
New campaign structures. New dashboards. New methodologies. New terminology for strategies that aren’t particularly new.
All of those things might have value.
But none of them is an outcome.
I’ve seen businesses undertake substantial changes to their customer acquisition programs without first identifying the constraints preventing growth.
A campaign structure gets replaced because it’s unfamiliar.
A measurement system gets discarded because the new team prefers another.
An established strategy gets abandoned in favor of something that looks more sophisticated on a presentation slide.
And then the business spends months trying to recover performance it already had.
Not every change produces that outcome, of course.
But when it does, the cost extends well beyond the agency relationship.
Revenue is affected. Customer acquisition becomes less predictable. Teams lose confidence. And the business pays the price while everyone tries to figure out what went wrong.
The irony is that the original objective was improvement.
Sometimes the business doesn’t need a new strategy. It needs a better understanding of the strategy it already has.
Sometimes the Grass Really Is Greener
Now, I don’t want to suggest that companies should remain with an underperforming agency out of loyalty, familiarity, or fear of disruption.
Quite the opposite.
There are plenty of legitimate reasons to change agencies.
Performance may have deteriorated. The relationship may have become complacent. The agency may lack the capabilities the business now requires.
We’ve won accounts under exactly those circumstances.
And an agency that can’t explain its decisions, acknowledge its mistakes, or demonstrate a credible path forward deserves to be challenged.
But there’s an equally important responsibility on the other side of that relationship.
An agency shouldn’t defend a strategy simply because it worked in the past.
Markets change. Businesses evolve. What worked yesterday may not work tomorrow.
An incumbent agency that refuses to challenge its own assumptions is no better than a new executive who assumes everything needs to change simply because they’re new.
Both are substituting assumptions for evidence.
The objective isn’t to preserve the incumbent.
It’s to preserve what works, identify what doesn’t, and make decisions that improve the business.
Sometimes that means changing agencies.
Sometimes it means changing strategy.
And sometimes it means having the discipline to leave something alone.
Before You Climb the Fence
If I were advising a business considering an agency change, I wouldn’t begin by asking which agency they should hire next.
I’d begin by asking what needs to change.
What isn’t working?
What evidence tells us why?
What would meaningful improvement actually look like?
And perhaps most importantly, is the current partner capable of delivering that improvement?
If the answer is no, make the change.
But make it for the right reasons.
Mark R Brown
Founder, Voltage Media
The Lighthouse Research Papers are published by Voltage Media, exploring the decisions, constraints, and realities of customer acquisition through more than two decades of experience.