Agency Relations Committee Thought Leadership

From October through December 2025, select ANA members were invited to answer a brief survey on talent development and future skills.

Leading consultant Joanne Davis discussed how a deliverables-based model can reveal AI cost savings, and how marketers can start to make a compensation model switch if they aren’t currently on a deliverables-based system.

From April through June 2025, select ANA members were invited to answer a brief survey on their agency roster strategies.

A new ANA survey highlights a gap between what marketers need from measurement and what their organizations can deliver. From data silos to attribution challenges, the findings explain why some teams are turning to external partners — and what might help close the gap.

During a session at a March 2025 ANA Joint AFM and Agency Relations Committee Meeting, Evelyn Li, marketing sourcing director at L'Oréal, shared the brand’s ecological content production framework.

During an October 2024 ANA Agency Relations Committee Meeting, Shannon Cranbrook and Katie Hiller from General Mills and Scott Schwartz from UM discussed how to strengthen partnerships between brands and agencies through learnings from pitches, transition and onboarding, and scoping.

At a February 2024 meeting of the ANA’s Agency Relations Committee, author, inspiration expert, and veteran marketer Michael Fanuele offered his audience advice for inspiring their agency partners.

Johnson & Johnson described how it approaches supplier engagement in a way that reflects its commitments to the environment, social responsibility, and diversity and inclusion.

Ashley Gabb, director of supplier inclusion and diversity at Estée Lauder, explained how brands can engage and empower diverse suppliers to become their strongest partners in the agency roster.

Whether your company has begun experimenting with AI marketing or it is merely a topic of conversation, Joanne Davis walked through use cases of AI in marketing, how agencies are introducing this tool in their scopes, and what you can do to make sure it is leveraged responsibly in your marketing strategy.

In 2022, Decideware and the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) conducted a research study exploring industry perceptions on performance evaluations, KPIs, and compensation. It finds that neither agencies nor clients are fully satisfied with current KPIs to measure agency performance and relationship health.

Damian Branch, director of agency partnerships at PepsiCo, explained how he improved the organization’s approach to preparing scopes of work to improve communication between marketers and agencies.

Bayer’s Philipp Schuster discussed the key actions all clients should take to become their agency’s client of choice, and how those actions can result in better results for the client in the long term.

Anisha Jackson from American Family Insurance discussed how the marketing industry can influence and impact supplier diversity and how the company has developed programs to identify, engage, and match diverse suppliers with marketing needs.

AgencyAgile described how the chaos and inefficiency endemic to many marketing agencies results from three main difficulties, namely, the difficulties that agencies face in understanding, coordinating, and effectively empowering staff.

AgencyAgile CEO Jack Skeels and senior consultant Maya Krauss offered best practices for agencies and clients entering their next scoping conversations to ensure that the work is delivered on time and on budget.

Patrick Holly, executive creative director at Upwork, shared his in-house team’s approach to working with external agencies, identifying three types of projects that most benefit from the arrangement.

Flock Associates offered advice on how clients can improve their working relationships with agencies and shared nine tips for motivating and inspiring those agencies.

Agency reviews and scoping are top of mind for agency relations professionals this time of year. Heather Kaster, director of marketing services at Beam Suntory, and Julie Backer, senior manager of strategic partnerships at Target, shared the approaches they take to enhance and improve the client/agency relationship to obtain the best business results.

Bruno Gralpois, co-founder and principal of Agency Mania Solutions, shared existing advertising and partnership trends, which ones are likely to stick or vanish, and their implications on client/agency partnerships in 2023 and beyond.