Agency Relations Committee

The Agency Relations Committee is for client-side marketers who desire to enhance and improve the client/agency relationship to help lead to the best possible work and optimal business results. While the advertising agency is a crucial marketing partner, relations with other IMC agencies are also considered (e.g., sales promotion, 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.

Committee Chair:
Jason Chebib, Vice President, Consumer Planning, Diageo North America

ANA staff managing the Agency Relations Committee are Greg Wright and Pamela Gross.

Discussion Topics 

• New agency management models
• Auditing creative/media/digital agencies
• Getting great creative
• Agency evaluations
• Agency compensation
• Incentivizing your agency
• Agency briefs
• Agency contracts
• Managing integrated marketing communications (IMC) programs
• ROI & ROO
• Managing multiple agencies
• How to be a great client
• Agency search

Leadership Initiatives

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 much 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 and this document recaps the learning. To view the webinars on demand, click here.

Better Creative Briefs
A brief is a roadmap and a 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. Project assignments are limited in time and scope, and are 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. 

ANA/4A's Agency Selection Briefing Guidance
ANA and 4A's believe there is an opportunity to further improve the productivity of the agency search/new business process, for both agencies and advertisers, by developing specific best practices guidance around the subject of agency selection briefing throughout the entire agency selection process, including initial list/RFI phase, semi-finalist/RFP phase, and finalist phase. Our intention is to provide basic guidance for clients who are unfamiliar with the fundamentals of briefing an agency during the agency selection process, and give clients experienced in agency selection briefings additional best practices to consider. This is a follow-up to Guidelines for Agency Search, released in 2011.

Agency Trading Desks White Paper
The purpose of this document is to educate ANA members on agency trading desks regarding what they are, what they do, potential benefits, questions to ask, and more.