It was no coincidence that the Marketing Agencies Association (MAA) chose Bristol as the location for its Agency of the Future debate.
“Silicon Gorge” has emerged as a creative tech and innovation hub, and is causing some much needed disruption within the industry. The assembled audience was therefore well placed to contribute to a lively debate on meeting the demands of the modern client.
The event panel included Barnaby Davis, divisional director for group retail strategy at Nationwide; Ian Bates, creative director at The Real Adventure Unlimited; Alistair Bryan, CEO of One Inch Punch; James Caig, True Digital’s head of strategy; and Suzanne Barnes, MAA’s head of agency and talent development.
Five key themes emerged throughout the discussion to help agencies work better with clients:
- Be open to change
- Bring value back into creativity
- Invest in relationships
- Focus on clarity
- Be brave
The audience agreed that the attempt to meet these goals will be challenging, but will lead to more interesting, diverse and successful agencies in the future. John Argent, managing director of Studio Six, said: “The agency of the future should surely reflect continued flexibility to provide our clients with whatever it is they are unable to produce for themselves – regardless of whether this is strategic, tactical or merely executional. Whether or not we are called suppliers or partners, we will always be able to offer objectivity – something the client organisation can never give themselves.”
This flexibility is seen by south west-based agencies as a real strength that they possess, driven partly by the diversity within their teams. Beth Pope, joint-managing director of The Real Adventure Unlimited, hosts of the Bristol event, said: “It’s a culturally diverse city and clients no longer mind where you are – they care about what you do and how you understand their business.
“In Bristol we have the talent so are not just recruiting people from a conventional marketing and business degree background. People are coming to us straight from school and across all walks of life, which is reflected in the quality of our work.”
But to realise their full potential, Pope argued that agencies need to be more proactive in their dealings with clients: “Clients want more entrepreneurship and new thinking from agencies. It’s too easy for agencies to lay the blame with clients.
We need to be braver in making the case for creativity and being open to change while being more confident in the value that we bring.”
Others echoed this. Dominic Bradbury, director of Bath-based Kerve Creative, said: “The statistics don’t lie; clients think agencies are ineffective – and as much as we hate to admit it, they’re at least partly right. As an industry, we’re scrambling over each other for work, making promises we don’t have the expertise to keep. Advertising agencies offering UX [user experience], digital agencies offering video. We need to be honest about our abilities and play to our strengths.”
That said, Bradbury was confident that agencies in Bristol are well placed to face the future: “The good news is that the audience showed the south west realises this.
The Silicon Gorge is almost devoid of full service agencies. Instead, it’s being built by agencies delivering one or two services brilliantly – a region of effective specialists, rather than ineffective generalists.”
Bristol provided an excellent launch pad to progress the debate around the client/agency relationship. Building on this is something that the MAA will work on intently during 2016, offering more insights and events to inspire agencies and clients to work together successfully.
Mette Davis is director of digital and regional innovation at MAA
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