How to

How to coordinate with an ad agency on a merch program

A working framework for brand managers in Mexico City, Monterrey and Guadalajara who outsource creative to an external agency but keep merch production in-house: how to split the work, who owns the file, where the deadlines live, and how to keep the brand expression honest across print, embroidery, packaging and digital.

The 7-step flow Useful tools

Why this coordination usually breaks

An ad agency thinks in campaigns. A merch program thinks in substrates. The first wants a key visual that travels across OOH, social and a microsite; the second wants a vector that survives a six-color screen print on a 200 g/m² cotton tee, a deboss on a PU notebook and a full wrap on a stainless tumbler. When these two views collide without a protocol, the agency delivers a beautiful PDF and the production team redraws half of it for two weeks.

Add Mexican specifics and the friction grows. The agency works in RGB; production needs Pantone with thread and ink equivalents. The agency uses licensed fonts; production needs an embeddable outline for embroidery digitizing. The agency wants a launch reel; the merch buyer needs a strike-off approved in five business days. None of these conflicts are technical — they are about who owns which decision and when.

The way out is not to choose between in-house creative and external agency. Both can coexist. The way out is a written handoff with deliverables, formats and timing — what agencies call a SoW and what production calls a technical brief. This guide is the bridge between the two.

The eight steps below assume a typical Mexican mid-sized program: 1,500 to 10,000 units, three to seven SKUs, a four-week clock, and an agency billed under retainer or project fee in MXN with IVA. Adjust the volume and currency if your scope is different; the structure stays.

The 7-step coordination flow

  1. Write a one-page creative brief. Five sections: business goal, audience, brand expression (3 adjectives + 3 don'ts), merch scope, and timing. Distribute to agency, production and procurement on day one. Without a brief the agency optimizes for aesthetic and the buyer optimizes for cost — and the program loses.
  2. Lock the brand assets before kick-off. Logo in vector (AI, SVG, PDF), official Pantone codes with thread and ink equivalents, brand typeface with license, photography style reference. Send via shared folder with version control — never as email attachments that overwrite each other.
  3. Define deliverables and formats. Specify AI or PDF vectors, color mode (Pantone + CMYK fallback), minimum stroke weight, minimum text size, and embroidery-ready simplification rules. The agency cannot guess; spell out "no gradients on embroidery" and "no text under 8 mm on tote bags".
  4. Agree on the approval matrix. Three signatures: brand manager (visual + tone), procurement (cost + lead time), legal (claims + compliance). One approval matrix posted in the project channel beats ten scattered emails. Each sign-off has a 24-hour SLA.
  5. Run the kick-off as a 90-minute meeting, not an email. Agency, production, procurement, brand and a senior decision-maker in the same room for 90 minutes. End with a printed timeline, a printed asset list, and a printed approval matrix. Photo each printed sheet and file it.
  6. Build a strike-off plan into the schedule. Reserve five business days for a strike-off on the hero SKU and three days for the rest. Do not let the agency deliver final creative on day 25 of a 30-day program — there is no time left to redraw for production.
  7. Close the loop with a post-mortem. After delivery, write a one-page retrospective: what worked, what slipped, what to change next time. The agency should be paid for attending. Skipping the post-mortem is how the same mistakes repeat at the next launch.

Common pitfalls that quietly burn the budget

The first pitfall is treating the agency as the brand owner. The agency is the brand's interpreter, not its guardian. The brand manager must hold the line on tone, color and typography; if the agency decides on its own, you get a beautiful but off-brand line of tote bags.

The second pitfall is delivering RGB JPEGs and expecting production to color-match. Color matching without a Pantone chip and a ΔE target is fiction. Request Pantone codes from the agency on day one, not at the strike-off stage.

The third pitfall is skipping the strike-off because "we already approved the PDF". PDFs lie. Substrates, inks and stitches always introduce drift. The strike-off is the only true preview of the program and should not be optional, no matter how tight the timing.

The fourth pitfall is forgetting the 16% IVA when the agency quotes in USD. A USD 5,000 agency fee plus IVA plus the dollar-peso spread at the moment of payment can become 30% more than the budget row showed. Build a 10% currency buffer into the original PO.

The fifth pitfall is letting the agency talk to production directly without procurement in the loop. The agency can ask for free samples; production says yes; procurement discovers 30% over budget. Keep all production conversations triaged through procurement.

Tools, templates and references

Brief template: one-page Word or Notion doc, five sections, signed by brand manager and procurement before kick-off. A weak brief produces a weak program; a strong brief removes 80% of later friction.

Asset checklist: logo vector, Pantone codes (with thread equivalents for embroidery), licensed typeface, brand book, photography style. Distribute via a shared folder with read-only access for the agency.

Approval matrix: three columns, three signatures, 24-hour SLA, posted in the project channel (Slack, Teams, or WhatsApp Business for smaller programs).

Strike-off timing: 5 business days on the hero SKU, 3 days on the rest, decision window 3 days. Beyond that, the production slot may be reassigned and the timeline slips.

References: Brand book, NOM-050 for textile labeling in Mexico, REACH SVHC for pieces crossing to Europe under USMCA or T-MEC, ISO 105-C06 for wash colorfastness, and the supplier's own substrate catalog for available colors and Pantone equivalents.