The Drum Awards for Marketing - Extended Deadline

-d -h -min -sec

Open Mic Marketing

Open partnerships deliver better value than ‘master-servant’ client-agency relationships

By Kim Walker

Aprais

|

Open Mic article

This content is produced by a publishing partner of Open Mic.

Open Mic is the self-publishing platform for the marketing industry, allowing members to publish news, opinion and insights on thedrum.com.

Find out more

June 12, 2020 | 6 min read

Much depends on marketers overcoming hierarchical prejudices, and agencies stepping-up as true strategic partners.

Chris Liverani

In the modern western concept of healthy personal relationships, equity is key. What ‘I think of you’ should be pretty much equate with what ‘you think of me’. When there is a disconnect, trouble looms.

The same applies when comparing performance evaluations between two business teams, in this case between marketers and their agencies.

Our database reveals that at a global level, marketers score agencies -4.08 points lower than agencies score their clients.

aprais new1

©Aprais 2020

This ‘gap’ is in some ways understandable, but it is also reasonable to suggest that a large gap in perception between the two parties, as with individuals, is not a healthy place to start.

When we compare some of the world’s major markets against this global average, an interesting picture emerges.

Marketers in the US and UK start with a gap which is narrower than the global average. We interpret this to mean that they have a somewhat more equitable view of each other at the beginning of a relationship compared to markets with larger negative gaps.

In cases showing large negative gaps in initial perceptions, there are two possible forces at play:

1) The agency may be giving its client a high score for fear of retribution.

2) Clients may perceive the agency as a ‘servant’ to do their bidding.

Instinctively, neither are good when the independent voice of an external agency is one of their principle reasons for their existence.

The culture effect

Previous research has revealed that clients and agencies in North America tends to score generally higher than other countries – this is largely a factor of culture.

Yet among these ‘larger gap’ countries are some of the most powerful and dynamic economies in the world today which leads us to question which approach is better? To treat the agency as a ‘servant’ or as a trusted strategic partner?

To answer this we examined how some of these ‘worst case scenario’ relationships evolved over time and whether they responded differently to regular, formal relationship evaluations.

Using data from the 21,000+ evaluations Aprais has conducted globally over the past 20 years, we traced these initial differences over a subsequent two-year period (five evaluation rounds).

aprais new2

©Aprais 2020

As the chart shows, despite an unfavourable initial gap in the relationships, most of these cases improve (narrowing gap) over time, as we would hope and expect.

Two notable exceptions are China and Korea where the gaps widen and, it would seem, relationships worsen.

Why might this be?

Hierarchy v equity

Beyond the cultural influence of hierarchical structures on how ‘suppliers’ are perceived in certain cultures, there’s another contributing factor.

Back in 1983, Dr Peter Kraljic proposed that supply items should be mapped against two key dimensions: risk and profitability. The results were presented as a matrix (The Kraljic matrix) and until today it is considered the basic tool for cost categorization in companies.

As the illustration shows, the categories/product have been divided into four segments;

  • Strategic items
  • Leverage items
  • Bottleneck items
  • Non-critical items

Strategic items include criteria that agencies often dream of, such as the development of long-term relationships and collaboration and innovation.

Aprais new 3

While the Leverage items are defined as exploitation of full purchasing power, targeted pricing strategies/negotiations.

Price-driven or value-added?

The big question is, where do advertising agencies belong in this matrix of service providers and where are they are perceived by marketers and their procurement teams?

What marketers and agencies should do

To enable relationships to improve over time, marketers – usually in the driving seat of the client-agency dynamic, need to overcome hierarchical business prejudices inherent in their cultures. This will provide room for agencies to step-up as true strategic partners.

Based on the Kraljic matrix, agencies need to maintain, re-establish or establish their position as Strategic ‘suppliers’, moving away from commodity behaviour (and pricing) and further upstream into the realm of value-added suppliers. Agencies need to continually earn the right to remain among the inner-circle of client consultants.

Win-win

Regular, honest, objective two-way feedback is a proven technique to achieve this ‘trusted strategic partner’ position.

Analysis of thousands of client-agency evaluations in our database reveals a powerful, fundamental truth; clients get the agencies they deserve.

There is a clear interdependence between the performance of marketing teams and their agencies - as one gets better, the other gets better. The converse is also true.

Marketers that follow the 4 elements of being a good client can achieve 37% more value from their agency partnership, simply by changing the way they work with their agency.

Partner or servant? Dominant or equals? It’s up to both ‘partners’ to decide.

Kim Walker, chairman, Aprais

Open Mic Marketing

Content by The Drum Network member:

Aprais

Aprais are the global pioneers in building stronger business relationships.

Since we established the category over 20 years ago, we have advised the world’s...

Find out more

More from Open Mic

View all

Trending

Industry insights

View all
Add your own content +