How Indie Agency Terri and Sandy Use the Power of Relationships to Fuel New Business

For smaller agencies, dedicating significant resources to pitching for new business can get in the way of keeping their current clients properly staffed and happy. Winning new business through organic growth and prior relationships is key for growing independent shops, something New York-based indie agency Terri and Sandy has prioritized for years.

Terri Meyer and Sandy Greenberg share two main things: An agency they co-founded and a creative partnership of 25 years powered by emphasizing human relationships.

The 12-year-old shop has accumulated a number of new clients in the past seven months—including Sennheiser, Cambio Coffee Roaster, Barr Hill Gin and Universal Nutrition—through pre-existing relationships that allowed the agency to take the business on with little pitching necessary.

Greenberg told Adweek that going back to their days of working at FCB, they always invested in getting to know their clients. “It was unusual for creatives like us in the big agency world to have the depth of relationships.” she said. “So it was always a priority. We always knew that it was our security and our power.”

Winning through relationships

Greenberg and Meyers’ focus on building relationships instead of allocating resources to building pitches continues to win them new business.

Greenberg spoke to Adweek about the “obsession” agencies often have with pitching. She said, “The sexiness of a pitch…everybody’s obsessed with ‘I won this.’ Yeah, but you spent $300,000 and it’s going to take you three years to make that up.”

A closer look at Terri and Sandy’s history with its new clients speaks to the “power of relationships” Greenberg believes in.

Sonova is a hearing solutions company that has been a seven-year-long client of the agency and acquired Sennheiser, a German audio company that specializes in consumer-orientated audio innovation. Martin Grieder, Sonova’s group vp of consumer hearing, knew Greenberg and Meyer from when he worked at Nestle. The duo’s previous success with Nestle earned them some of the Sennheiser work.

Cambio Roasters coffee is a sustainable, environmentally conscientious brand that makes k-cups for Keurig coffee machines. The agency’s new business in this case came in the form of their old client Kevin Hartley, the CEO and co-founder of Cambio.

“Even though we’re a tiny little company, we felt like our dream deserved [breakthrough creative],” Hartley said.

Hartley previously worked at Keurig Green Mountain as its chief innovation officer and helped introduce k-cups after noticing a gap in the industry, reported Greenberg. The duo met Hartley when Green Mountain was one of the agency’s first clients.

When Greenberg, Meyer and Tony Scopellito—T&S’ managing director—were at FCB, they worked with Bob Levi, who held a role at Kraft at the time. Levi took his business, Universal Nutrition, where he serves as CEO, to Terri and Sandy when he was in search of a creative shop.

Greenberg and Meyer knew current Barr Hill gin board member Mark McCullom from his days at Campbell Soup. The agency’s successful pitch on this account introduced them to the spirit industry.

Maintaining relationships

Kevin Hartley’s goal for Cambio is to cut down on the 18 billion k-cups that are sent off to landfills each year. He expressed his admiration for how Terri and Sandy’s unique approach to business would help him achieve this.

Hartley explained how in a capitalistic market economy (consisting of human, environment and financial capital) most agencies would usually only optimize on financial input. The indie agency, however, doesn’t only prioritize the bottom line.

Part of the reason he chose Terri and Sandy was that, according to him, its strategy was “freaking amazing.”

“I mean, just reading it, it made me choke up and made me cry,” he said.

Working with the team ensured that his business was in the hands of senior creatives with whom he shared a “friendship relationship.” So much so that he said that the agency would reach out to him if he were ever “homeless and stranded” and go as far as to help fund his next start-up.

Differentiating itself

While being a smaller women-led advertising agency is a rarity in the industry, that’s not all that differentiates Terri and Sandy, according to Greenberg. Thinking about the power of relationships and “passionately” caring about the successes of its clients, also play major roles.

The “heart of it,” she explained, isn’t the Mad Men method of “golfing and martinis”—it’s truly knowing the client’s business inside out and being committed to their goals for growth. Along with business success, however, what really resonates with clients is their positive relationship with the agency at the time of business.

Greenberg described that this genuine care for the client can be reflected through sustained contact even after a project, keeping in touch through shared lunches and sending over recent work from other projects.

It is this very ideology, she said, that has allowed the agency to become the “most effective independent agency” on the Effie Index in 2020.

Greenberg said she prioritizes human relationships by caring about who the agency’s clients are, encouraging their achievements and helping them continue such winning streaks.

Taking into account the impersonal turn business has taken due to the pandemic, she suggested more in-person involvement when possible. She pointed out that a simple phone call to check in may make more of a difference than a scheduled one.

The last part of the puzzle is good work and hard work. Greenberg emphasized the pre-existing need to be smart, advise clients intelligently and produce campaigns that furthered their ideas.

The underlying reasoning for this is that while clients may not always listen to advice imparted, they will pause to think about it.

“You should stay in touch with who’s in charge,” she said. “You should follow them through their career. And you should be smart so they respect you.”