Agency Relations Committee

The Agency Relations Committee is for client-side marketers who manage agency relationships and want to enhance and improve the client/agency relationship for the best possible work and business results. While the advertising agency is a crucial marketing partner, relations with other types of agencies are also considered (e.g., media, direct marketing, digital, social, and other specialty agencies). This committee provides a forum for education, networking, and discussion that helps elevate individuals in their respective organizations, as well as advance client/agency relationships throughout the industry as a whole.

The ANA Agency Relations Committee is currently meeting virtually every other month through 2021. You can register to attend through the corresponding meeting links in the right sidebar. 

Committee Co-Chairs:

• Nicole Apple, Head of Global Strategic Agency Management – Kimberly-Clark
• Kerry Kielb, Director, Global Agency Strategy and Operations – InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG)

ANA Staff:

• Barbie Romero, Senior Manager
• Greg Wright, Vice President

Resources:

• 2021 ANA Advertising Financial Management Conference presented by Active International (Hybrid Event) June 27-30, 2021
• Presentations and recaps from the 2020 ANA Advertising Financial Management Conference
  
• The Business Case for Relationship Management
• Resource List of Certified Diverse Suppliers for Marketing/Advertising
• Best Practice Guidelines for Agency Search Consultants
• The Agency Search and Selection Playbook

Discussion Topics:

• Audits
• Agency contracts and negotiations
• Agency diversity and inclusion strategy
• Agency evaluations
• Management models
• Agency operations staffing (how to build the right agency team, finding diverse talent within agencies, etc.)
• Agency search
• Future Agency Trends and Future Agency Work
• Getting great creative
• How to be a great client
• Incentivizing your agency
• Managing an in-house agency with external agencies
• Managing multiple agencies
• ROI & ROO
• Scope of work management
• Elements of a great brief

Leadership Initiatives

The Business Case for Relationship Management
A strong client/agency relationship management program with at least an annual 360º evaluation component is key to ensuring a long-term client/agency relationship that is built on trust. This report from the 4A's and ANA covers the findings from quantitative and qualitative research conducted to measure the current state of affairs related to relationship management program adoption levels, overall satisfaction, and benefits derived from their use.

Best Practice Guidelines for Agency Search Consultants
Agency search consultants can provide a valuable service to marketers and agencies by running a well-structured agency review. This guide provides the industry with ten Best Practice Guidelines for agency search consultants, with the goal of creating an environment where all parties are clear about the role of search consultants in the agency search process. These best practices have been endorsed by the 4A's and the ANA in an effort to align the interests of marketers and agencies around agency searches and make the process clear and beneficial for all parties.

Issues that Contribute to the Breakdown of Trust in the Advertising Ecosystem
The ANA launched the Trust Consortium in partnership with our outside counsel, Reed Smith, to help address the issue of trust between marketers and the advertising ecosystem. To identify future focus areas for the Trust Consortium, a survey asked client-side marketers to rate a number of issues on how they contribute to the breakdown of trust.

Enhancing Trust Between Marketers and Agencies
There has been recent discussion and debate about the level of trust in the advertising industry today. To determine exactly where things stand, the ANA fielded a survey focusing on the current level of trust between client-side marketers and advertising agencies, and asked if trust has changed versus two to three years ago and how it can it be enhanced going forward.

ANA Agency Compensation Task Force
The current model of compensating agencies based on hours/inputs isn't working anymore for many marketers and agencies. The objective of this task force is to explore new methods and practices for agency compensation that are mutually beneficial for both. To kick off this task force, eleven subject matter experts shared their perspectives via webinar. A recap is available here. You can also view the webinars on demand.

Better Creative Briefs
A brief is a roadmap and catalyst for creative, but clients don't always give the brief the attention it deserves. A good brief provides direction and inspiration that leads to imaginative work. A bad brief can start a time-consuming and expensive process heading off in the wrong direction, leading to many rounds of revisions, confusion, and unnecessary tension in the client/agency relationship. Furthermore, there is the opportunity cost due to subpar creative in the marketplace. Bad briefs waste money! The ANA Briefing Task Force was established to provide guidance for developing briefs and optimizing the briefing process, and produced the white paper, "Better Creative Briefs."

Using Data to Manage Agency Relationships — What's Important to Marketers
Research was conducted to better understand how ANA members are using data to manage agency relationships and how learnings can be applied to optimize client/agency performance. The work looked at 37 different data points across broad categories including media, billing/budgets, agency time/fees, production, and creative. This was a joint collaboration between ANA and Decideware.

Agency Reviews for Project Work
Project assignments are on the rise, but are limited in time and scope, and usually driven by a need to address a defined business opportunity. While best practices for conducting an agency search for an AOR are well documented, agency reviews for project work did not have a similar guidance tool – until now. The ANA and the 4A's have collaborated to provide both clients and agencies with considerations to help optimize the review process for project work. Done well, project work can be an efficient way for clients to find new resources and for agencies to find new business opportunities.

Enhancing Client/Agency Relationships
ANA conducted parallel surveys among ANA members and agencies on issues related to the client/agency relationship. Clients and agencies agree that their client/agency relationships are strong, a long-term client/agency relationship is important, and they trust the other. However, there are pockets of dissatisfaction. Clients and agencies are not in agreement on whether clients provide clear assignment briefings to agencies. Clients and agencies are not in agreement that the client approval process works well. 

Other

List of Agency Search Consultants
The 4A's is pleased to provide its list of Agency Search Consultants to ANA to make available to our network. The search consultants on this list have read and agreed with the guidelines in the 4A's/ANA 2020 Best Practice Guidelines for Agency Search Consultants, and the list is updated on a regular basis.