Client relationships with agencies are at a crossroads. The MAA’s recent ‘tFutures’ White Paper’ which launched the Transformation Futures initiative, highlighted how, among other things, 52% of clients struggled to demonstrate the value marketing brings to their organisation, while 69% needed to show proven return on investment (ROI).
The tFutures initiative has been launched to help identify models that could improve the prospects for agencies through new ways of working with clients. A series of panel sessions will support the project, the first of which focused on the issue of effectiveness.
Held at the London offices of SapientNitro and moderated by Neil Dawson, the agency’s chief strategy officer for Europe, the roundtable brought together 13 senior representatives from major brands and agencies in addition to procurement and effectiveness experts. Advertisers represented included BT, HTC, Legal & General, Royal Mail and UKTV. Agencies present were Bartle Bogle Hegarty, DigitasLBi, Initials, Proximity, Cheil and SapientNitro.
What followed was a discussion on how agencies and brands can work together on defining, delivering, and measuring effectiveness for a brighter future. Five key themes emerged that could help agencies and clients improve their work around effectiveness:
Be open, share more
Greater sharing of data is needed. There needs to be more confidence, honesty and openness between all parties to open this up. There remains distrust between clients and agencies about hidden agendas and agencies should be more honest with their clients to encourage greater access to data. From a client perspective, sharing business data can be unnerving but has the potential to be motivating for agencies, allowing them to build better commercial models with their client partners. Collaboration could also help to break down silos between roster agencies and client departments that act as barriers to data sharing.
Show your value and measure the right things
Agencies need to find ways of showing understanding of a client’s business, establishing their own ways of measuring clear business KPIs, as opposed to only the marketing impact. An agency that can help a marketer to prove why their business should focus £1 on marketing rather than invest it elsewhere in the business becomes a prized partner because marketers don’t necessarily have the time or resources to work alone on justifying every investment.
Work with clients on owning commercial models
Take joint responsibility with clients. Consider alternative methods of remuneration such as payment by results, and other ways of demonstrating a commitment to client business. Taking shares in a client business is a good way of demonstrating this as is co-investment in new products and brand launches. There are barriers to this approach – especially for more traditional agencies wedded to regular fee-based remuneration, but a more flexible approach can bring great rewards.
Bake effectiveness into the client relationship
High churn of people frequently hinders the client/agency relationship. Agencies can address this potential issue by showing that everything they do is in the interest of the client and has a demonstrable ROI. They could also consider building relationships beyond the marketing department. But be careful: lunch with the chief financial officer might not be welcomed by the marketing director.
From the client perspective, closer engagement between marketing and procurement could help to restrict cost-cutting moves from procurement colleagues.
Use data to tell an effectiveness story
Advertisers invest considerable sums in dashboards to measure the effectiveness of their brand’s performance, but are learning that data alone doesn’t tell a story. The narrative also depends on insights, on interpreting the data in a compelling way. Agencies could focus on developing the expertise to read the data and provide these insights to the client.
Both client and agency should be clear on the data that matters and explore how this can be connected to sales data. One way forward is clear: any agency that can improve the relationship between the art and the science of communications and find a way to join them together, weaving effectiveness through everything, will be onto a winner.
The panel discussion showed potential ways forward through flexibility, openness and understanding on both sides. That’s why the MAA will continue to host events and develop resources for member agencies to help build their tFutures.
Mette Davis is client services director at SapientNitro, and Patrick Woods is director of member activation at the Marketing Agencies Association
This advertisement feature is brought to you by the Marketing Agencies Association, sponsors of the Guardian Media Network’s Agencies hub
