• by Michael Aneto , Op-Ed Contributor, July 16, 2015

Good agency / advertiser relationships used to be pretty simple. The longer you worked together, the more you understood each other and – with a bit of luck – the better the work you forced out of each other. 

You could call it the diamond approach (think about it…) that, broadly, that still holds; the longer companies work together, the better the relationship and the better the work. 

So why are there only a few long-standing relationships that inspire? Apple and TBWA, for example, or Nike and Wieden & Kennedy spring to mind as exceptions rather than the rule. Why has the average length of agency / advertiser relationship fallen to less than three years?  

As with most things in marketing today, digital is at the heart of the answer. Not only is it how creativity, impact and sales are delivered but it has also influenced the nature of agency / advertiser relationships. 

A brief look at large but progressive agencies and advertisers offers four clear, connected lessons to agencies on how to nurture relationships without relying on the luxury of time. Or to put it another way, this is what you need to do to if you want to create a long-lasting relationship from day one. 

Inspiration: Agency services need to be both where clients are and where they don’t know they’ll be yet. Agencies need to inspire clients not only with their ideas but also with their anticipation of the way consumer behaviour changes. R/GA’s excellent content work on Beats By Dr Dre comes from this - anticipating how the competition and consumers would change and inspiring Beats to act. 

Their understanding of the Beats brand’s maverick lifestyle personality allows R/GA to conceive and make product ideas such as The Pill wireless speaker. They populate an increasingly sophisticated social media presence like Beats’ Instagram with content that sets visual trends and is always on point. They even created last year’s best World Cup film bar none. 

Breadth: Agencies should also think about how they can work with these separate divisions from right across their client’s business. The traditional approach of agencies relying on marketing departments to brief a project or marketers being precious about agency relationships is a little outdated. Both parties understand the more different bits of their companies work together, the more likely your relationship is to last. 

Unilever, for example, has a global Foundry project to help it identify and work with innovators of all kinds on sustainability. They don’t see any reason why an agency can’t do a banner campaign in for Ariel Brazil and branding on a global sustainability project. Both are viable ways of working with the Dutch behemoth and ultimately mutually beneficial.  

Depth:  Focusing attention on understanding stakeholders outside the marketing department and the brand team can be tricky. Day-to-day client service is paramount. But so is collaborating with the operations director, IT, retail marketing, head designer and so on.  If you want to make great ideas happen you need a broader base of interactions than just the marketing department. Actively seek out such relationships and you’ll last longer. 

A traditional approach would be to send an agency team to work on the shop floor for a week to ‘get under the skin of a business’. But while working in Starbucks for a week might give you a better understanding of the employee and customer experience, it won’t help you get integrated projects off the ground. 

Intensity: This is not simply about speed or effort. It’s also about having the ability to switch modes and focus internal talent accordingly. You need to demonstrate that you can work in more than one area of expertise. 

TBWA/Chiat/Day’s impressive body of Gatorade work over the last few years is testament this. Perhaps due to their MediaArts heritage, those guys know how to turn hustle into gold be it in advertising mode, content factory  mode or sponsorship mode. 

All these examples point to one thing--agility. 

An agile mindset is at the core of getting under the skin of existing (and prospective) clients. Handily, it’s also how to ready your organization for the opportunities that may come its way. 

Given the time, most agencies could probably still get under the skin of a client business but that’s luxury both parties can seldom afford – things happen too fast now. Competitors are a Skype call away. And in most big brands there are internal departments itching to grow their influence and remit. Without an agile mindset, you’ll be lucky to get to a paper anniversary, let alone a diamond one.