Client-Agency Relationship: Why the Distrust?

Building successful client-agency relationships requires trust, honesty and communication. However, agencies often claim that distrust, on the client side, prevents them from producing good creativites to drive IMC campaigns. Blessing Nwobodo speaks to brand owners on the isssue.

Professionals maintain that client-agency relationship is nurtured by honest and consistent communication, mutual respect, and chemistry. It is on these foundational elements that great strategies, powerful campaigns and market-moving ideas are built. However, because of the inherently conflicting goals between the two parties to the relationship, though they have one business motivation, there are bound to be different paradigms from both sides. The brand manager commissions a campaign with the hope of increasing sales and improving the bottom-line. The agency, wants to score double in the process: meet clients target and carve a niche for itself in creativity, and be credited with cutting edge ideas.
As positive as these points of view may look, clients are eager to see agencies bring their ingenuity to bear on the objectives of the brands as communicated in the briefs. Brand managers fear that agencies are less concerned about the brand, with more efforts put into winning creative awards.
On what clients expect from an agency, Emeka Uchenna, national key account manager, GlaxoSmithKline says that as a brand owner, he looks out for creative in alignment with the brands vision that suits the budget set aside for the campaign. “Every brand has its own budget, but often times, agencies come up with creative conflicting with the brand’s vision and budget. These creative, you discover, may not be sellable to the public. The brand owner has a focus of what it wants to achieve with the campaign at the end of the day, we don’t have the money to spend on some campaign jamboree for the fun of it. A campaign should deliver the overall objective of the brand.”
Best practices show that open communication is paramount in achieving good results in a brand’s marketing communications efforts. Not only must agencies ensure that their clients know the state their projects, clients must ensure their agencies’ contacts have all the information they need, to be as helpful as possible in the brand building and sustaining efforts. Agencies need to truly understand the environment that their clients operate in so they can help them navigate the corporate waters and deliver what clients need to grow their brands.
To what extent do clients disclose all needed information about the brand to an agency? M2 findings reveal that most clients do not have complete trust in their agencies as to fully give details of their brands to the agencies for fear that they may steer the brand in the wrong direction.
Jeremy Mullman, writing for adage.com, quotes Peter Krivkovich, the CEO of Independent Cramer-Krasselt, as saying that crediting consultants as outstanding at what they do is linear thinking which can be detrimental to brands. Krivkovich stresses that “it’s just important for clients to remember that human behaviour is not linear.” He warns brand managers and custodians that positing that consultants “can be outstanding at what they do is linear thinking and process.”
Mullman makes an example of Anheuser-Busch’s over-reliance on consultants being “a major factor in Bud Light posting the first full-year sales decline in its history.” This fall in sales, according to Mullman, is traceable to the brand custodians allowing the consultants (agency) to take uncontrolled charge of the brand’s marketing communications “beyond portfolio management,” based on the consultant’s research findings.
A professional that spoke under anonymity passes his message in this words: “It is just like saying a mother should completely entrust her baby to the nanny. In as much as the nanny does the bulk of the job of taking care of the child, she cannot take the place of the mother. “Every mother has her own special language which she uses to communicate with the baby. So is a brand to the owner, you don’t expect that the client should give out all information about the brand to the agency.” He emphasizes that the client has a right to withhold certain information from the brief which the agency may convert and use for another client.
Stressing the need for caution in communication between clients and agencies, he makes an example of agencies using information from one client to service another. “We have seen situations where an agency drops the brief of one client for a bigger brief and then uses the same idea on the bigger brief. There is also the movement of staff from one agency to another. If, for instance, Mr A was working on a brief in Agency B before moving, he is likely to move with the whole information to Agency C. It is happening frequently and it is not likely to abate any time soon,” he says.
Corroborating the above position, Kufre Ekanem, Corporate Affairs Manager, Cadbury Nigeria opines that there is no such thing as completely entrusting an agency with a brand. He would not expatiate on the matter beyond stating that agencies should work with clients’ briefs, maintaining that clients must have a say in what communication material best suits their brand.
Sometimes in a bid to come up with a more sophisticated campaign, the agency loses sight of the main trust which is to communicate the brand value to the audience in a clear and understandable manner.
Ekanem’s position seems to be in tandem with Uchenna’s who says “In coming up with a campaign the target consumer must be put into consideration. If, for instance, your product is targeted at buyers on the bottom-line of the pyramid, it will be useless and wasteful to come up with a communication material that does not align with their level of reasoning. We cannot also downplay the fact that culture plays an integral role when coming up with a campaign. You can’t compare the level of acceptance of some of these sophisticated messages in developed countries with how it will be accepted here.”
It remains a fact that both parties (clients and agencies) need each other’s help for the good of the marketing communications business. To help clients get the best out of their agencies, experts suggest that understanding the business and communicating it clearly to the agencies will go a long way to promote the relationships. According to them, if the agencies understand the audience they are trying to reach and the triggers to their behaviours, they can make good decisions at first time saving time, money and other valuable resources in the process.
For the agencies, it is  good that they collaborate at every opportunity with the clients realizing that while the client may not understand the things they do, they own the brand and hold the vision that the marketing communications mission aims to accomplish. Agencies should make no assumptions in the bid to earn accolades while delivering on clients’ briefs. It is advisable that agencies communicate in the client’s language. Ultimately, if clients think you are driving the process and things are progressing, they will feel comfortable and the relationship will be smooth. Uchenna seems to sum up in these words “Agencies should get more creative but they should not lose sight of the budget (and vision) of the client.”
Mullman, Ekanem and Uchenna’s opinions are summed in Mullam’s words which stresses that brand owners/custodians are responsible for their brands and cannot abandon it to consultants or agencies. “The degree to which consultants/agencies’ recommendations and findings can translate directly into creative is becoming a familiar frustration for agencies.” For Mullman, it is a “big blunder, letting consultants steer brand.”