Anyone remember the good old days of agency retainers? When clients paid their agencies thousands each month to retain the relationship and cover both the day to day time on their business and longer-term strategy? Once Procurement got involved and around the same time client’s horizons shortened to the next trading quarter and their next job, we entered the land of projects, even if you’re officially agency of record or on the roster.
Add to that increasing campaign complexity resulting in correspondingly complex project management and it’s easy for an agency-client relationship to be that of a supplier, rather than a business partner.
Everyone in an agency (and their freelancers!) should effectively be pulling together to add value that the client never could on their own in order to create and deliver creative, effective work that meets the client’s objectives and solves the problem that meant they needed to communicate with their target audience in the first place.
If we’re just pushing virtual paper through an agency according to the spreadsheeted project plan then we’re not exactly landing that. And I fear that’s what juniors in particular are being exposed to and led to believe is the norm, the commoditisation of both strategy and creative.
If agencies are hitting their numbers and clients are happy, why worry? Well, because clients can easily replace suppliers, but true business partners are much harder to say goodbye to.
The big consulting firms know this and are muscling in on strategic business that would previously have gone to an agency, or in some cases they’re going the whole hog and just buying up agencies. I asked a strategist in one of these agencies what had changed after the acquisition and they simply said “my charge out rate”.
Because there’s value in partnership.
photo by Manny Becerra via Unsplash