Collaborators will be.......rewarded! - Trust me, I'm an agency

Caused a bit of controversy the other week when we revealed clients did not trust agencies to deliver 360 integrated solutions.

"Too important to leave to the rhetoric of agencies"

"We have to lead this ourselves-agencies overpromise and underdeliver"

"Clients have to drive integration-agencies in-fight"

"Tried it, didn't work"

"No one agency can do everything well"

The clear sense from our qualitative research- 50+ in depth interviews, senior client and agency management, 12 countries, all continents- was that the Lead Agency Model, although seductive in theory, was rarely a smooth running option in practice. The model cannot, in itself, prevent  the turf wars and land grabbing which goes on between agencies, even when they have been asked to play nicely. Clients are now wary of the sell, as the delivery has rarely lived up to the promise.

Part of the issue is that marketing now recognise that it is absolutely vital that they deliver integrated communication solutions. It is a measure by which they are judged, and that means it is their neck on the line.

"Is is what we do"

"It is our job to make it happen"

Given this, it makes it emotionally harder to pass on responsibility to somebody else-or often a group of somebodies.  

But managing a group of disparate agencies, whether they from are within the same holding group or not, is a job in itself, and one which demands true leadership skills.

More about what agencies think of those leadership skills in the next blog...

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