Throughout 2025, the world’s leading digital asset management (DAM) platform Canto has been offering essential tips to help creative and marketing agencies thrive. But if you missed any of the five-part video podcast series From Chaos to Control — fear not, we’ve got you covered with key insights from marketing experts across the series. 

1. Be client focused

You might think agency success lies in rapid growth or winning the most pitches. But one of the top principles you can adopt is being client focused, according to former Disney senior exec, Sharon Braude.

Being client focused? Doesn’t that mean pulling all-nighters and asking “how high?” whenever your client says “jump”? Not exactly, instead Braude suggests that top brands are looking for an agency partner who shares their vision and complements their team.

“I’ve been very fortunate to enjoy many successful agency partnerships. The best ones have been where there’s a mutual understanding of the joint goals and a shared methodology on how to achieve them,” she says.

Think strategically about how you complement the client’s in-house team, and how you can be trendsetters and bring fresh ideas to the client. Retaining existing clients provides more robust growth than just chasing new ones. 

2. Standardise your workflow

The low-key chaos that seems to define agency life doesn’t have to be inevitable. As Canto’s Andrew Hall says in his blog ‘The new agency growth formula’ this chaos stems from “poor planning, unrealistic timelines, and thin operational data”. And the solution is “building digital operational resilience”.

What does operational resilience mean in practice? Let’s look at an inefficiency-busting case study from leading DAM consultant Kristina Huddart: “I was working with a FTSE 100 company, looking at their in-house creative agency’s process for event photography. I mapped out the current workflow that they had, and it was about 40 steps. A lot of those steps were ‘call this person’ or ‘manually download these photographs and upload them somewhere else’. By really analysing it, we managed to get those 40 steps down to just ten, which was an incredible streamlining of process.”

So, the top tip is to identify those inefficiencies in your agency processes, then drill down into how those processes can be standardised and automated.

“For creatives hearing the word standardised can sound boring and probably pretty awful,” Huddart admits, “but actually standardising workflows means creatives can actually be more creative because they’re not thinking about what the next step is, or wondering if they’ve skipped a step.” 

3. Choose the right tools

The main tip from experts across Canto’s podcast series is to ensure you onboard the right tools. Get your tech stack wrong and you create more chaos, held back by fragmented tools and poor data quality. Get it right and you can grow sustainably while making strategic data-driven decisions.

In his blog ‘Is your agency surviving, not thriving?’ Canto’s Andrew Hall suggests agencies focus on three must-have interconnected tools: 

1. Accounting software
2. Work management software
3. A digital asset management (DAM) solution

Together, these tools will transform the way you manage your utilisation, streamline your workflow, and intelligently control your digital assets and content.

And whatever you do, don’t be tempted to build your own software. According to global agency MD, Tanya Bogin, this is the biggest operational blunder made by agencies: “The biggest mistake agencies make is deciding to grow your own system. Don’t do it unless you’re the best in the industry. Partner with the best in the industry, and make it their job to bring the developments and the investments back over to you.”

So, if you’re ready to make 2026 the year your creative agency feels less chaotic and more in control, why not pop these top tips on your to-do list?

Canto is an industry-leading digital asset management (DAM) solution, pioneering the way to help creative agencies work smarter, smoother, and faster. Watch Canto’s From Chaos to Control video podcast series on demand now.