I’ve been watching a sad disintegration in client/agency relations for the last decade or so. If it had a theme song, it’d be Tina Turner’s “Better Be Good to Me,” bemoaning a lack of devotion. Distrust. Disrespect. More fight club than fan club.
A few years ago many clients began demanding diversity from their agency partners (hooray!) but failed to turn the mirror on themselves (boo, hiss).
An excerpt from a piece I wrote at that time:
It seems embarrassingly obvious that consumer audiences (which are increasingly multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and female-dominated) would jolt clients awake to the enormous economic opportunity of marketing to them from a place of understanding.
Yet the very memo-writers who sounded the alarm on diversity (clients) seem oddly quiet about their role in supporting their agency partners in diversity efforts.
Here are three ways clients unwittingly perpetuate the homogeneity of their agency partners:
1). Creating constant fire-drills
Ad agencies these days value availability over creativity.
That’s because many clients demand record-speed turnaround as a default, all but guaranteeing that only those who can devote themselves solely to work will service your account. Anyone who has a child, a dog, an aging parent, or a passion project is unlikely to swing this. So clients get one kind of creative around-the-clock.
2). Vendorizing agencies
Unpaid pitches, revolving-door engagements, digital devaluation.
Treating agencies as disposable suppliers creates a culture of scarcity and burnout that correlates inversely with environments where diversity and creativity flourish.
Take a look at the most ground-breaking work winning at Cannes and you’ll notice something. It’s the clients and agencies with the longest tenured relationships that build the trust and ability to navigate new markets and technologies necessary to make great work. (And lest you think only agencies care about awards, Cannes reports a 69% uptick in submissions by clients from 2016 to 2017.) This trend is reinforced by a study of The One Show Annual that revealed that the higher the pencil awarded, the greater the number of women on the creative team.
3). Permitting Cultures of Fear/Harassment
The most recent and comprehensive study of gender bias and harassment in the ad world – The Elephant on Madison Avenue – revealed that over half of women who responded had been subjected to an unwanted sexual advance. 49% of those came from a client.
One respondent shared:
“I was propositioned not once but twice to go to bed with the CMO of a major Fortune 500 company. After I said no twice, we lost the business the following month.”
If it’s hard for women to report harassment from a peer who is perceived as a rainmaker inside the agency, imagine how much harder still to implicate the very man signing the check from outside of it?
I was so determined to imagine something better for clients and agencies that I pitched a “client bootcamp” to Facebook when Antonio Lucio was their CMO. He agreed (as good leaders do, knowing they can always be better).
So it felt like kismet, right here in the present day, when Eleven’s Director of Client Health, Eric Lombardi, unveiled a new client engagement plan that echoed my beliefs of what’s broken and offered a clear roadmap forward. Rather than try to explain its approach, I’ll let you read it for yourself. 11 tenets centering on shared accountability and alignment.
It’s amazing that so few agencies (any?) do this. When you’re embarking on a new partnership where the whole spirit of the gig is creation, shouldn’t you talk about how you can work best together? Or are you so drunk on victory when winning a pitch that you leave it all to chance?
This tidy little document serves a big purpose.
Call it a pre-nup. Dismiss it as unenforceable. However your skepticism is telling you this won’t work, I encourage you to take a moment and ask the question creative companies love to ask: why the hell not?
At a time when all people – whether client or agency side – are asking BIG questions about why they do what they do in the first place, why not huddle and ensure joint prosperity? Eleven’s clients are welcoming this level-setting and even adding their own thoughts to the mix.
I’m seeing it in my own personal circle, too. A good friend in a senior role at a global brand texted me recently that she’d been offered a job at another company – just as big but not quite as shiny. She wondered if she would be trading down.
Here’s what I texted her:
“I think the only thing that matters is how your life will feel. Will it give you more joy? More time with your kids? More or less travel, depending on what’s important to you? Absolutely nothing matters from the outside in. It’s all about quality of life. The world is changing – people are less swayed by the old trophies. Having the right job at the cool company isn’t cutting it anymore. People get that we have limited time and the world is precarious. Doing what feels good and does good is the new achievement.”
Imagine joining Eleven right now, as an employee or a client. Wouldn’t you feel better knowing there was a process in place for successful relationships, right out of the gate?
Until next time, remember that culture is the new creativity.
Lovely post Kat. We also believe that the best work comes out of great relationships built on trust and respect. We had the pleasure to work with Antonio Lucio over the years and he's a wonderful example of a leader focussed on the right things. You linked to the 11 Tenets deck in this post but it seems to be password protected. It would be helpful to see it. 11 is such a good number! all the best, -paul