The Philadelphia CMO Summit asked me to take part in a panel discussion. There was an open spot on a 4 person panel discussing “Building Strong Agency Relationships”. It was the last spot left. I went for it.
I have had strong relationships with our agencies over the many brands i have worked on. Clear brand strategies, strong brand leaders and agency capabilities were large determinants of a strong relationship. However, I found that team dynamics were the key factor for success.
I was working at a large consumer products food company in the days of strong agency/client relationships where social media was still in its infancy and TV budgets still reigned supreme for new product launches and brand-building campaigns. While we had many brand teams, each of us knew each team’s relationship with their agency counterparts. There was competition and pride in having a great team. A great team was often cited as a determinant of which brand managers got promoted.
I will shamelessly say that I had a great team. And it helped me get promoted.
However, there was another team I envied and always thought executed very well. So I thought about that team and what made them tick and produce great creative and drive their business ahead. They were actually a junior team of just a new director and a couple of assistant managers but what they were getting done was amazing. Their brand insights, positioning and creative was better than all of us and the sales results showed. So what were they doing right? And what could we learn from them?
Here are my observations about how to build a great agency and brand team:
- The brand director and the agency committed to an open and honest working relationship with strong camaraderie within the brand team and with the agency.
- Ideas flowed up and down through the team, and credit was given to all on the team for great ideas. They had to build this supportive dynamic with team-building activities. Not talking about beers after work, although I won’t rule that out. It was a commitment to training and development. So many teams are dysfunctional because a leader seeks personal credit and protects information and ideas. This alone, lead to an environment of blame on how things weren’t working well. The creative results were not strong, and over time, agency staff were yearning to get on another team or quit the agency.
- There were big projects taken on that gave the team vision. They avoided minutiae. Both the top of the brand team and the agency focused on a few key priorities needed to move the brand forward. There was a lot of work and a lot of extra hours spent defining and executing strategy.
- There were clear metrics for the success of the team. Everyone on the team felt accountable for defined metrics around metrics for advertising awareness, trial, repeat, and sales results of their projects and felt charged up to win in the market. Competition was fierce and the game was fun.
- The team leaders had an open and frank dialogue about what was working and what needed more fine tuning – strategically and tactically.
- People felt valued on the agency team and the brand team. You had the support of the higher ups and they listened to your ideas.
On paper, executing a clear brand strategy with the agency seemed so obvious, yet so many brand teams seemed to struggle with the relationship with their agency partners. Bad teams always had tension and blame. There wasn’t a clear unique brand positioning and the creative usually was mediocre. The result of a poor agency partnership a loss of advertising funding
The relationship of the brand team and the agency is critical to sales growth. When a brand and agency team are working well, the result is great insights and creative that drive sales. Bad teams struggled. We could measure the difference in sales and profits in millions of dollars. This was an enormous deal.
In retrospect, it surprised me that our company viewed the brand/agency relationship as a “performance indicator” rather than a critical element of business success.
How is your team doing? What have you learned? Please share.
