It's not about the distance between the agencies – it's about the distance to the client
OPINION: “How far apart are your agency partners?” asks Martin Ove Rasmussen of Mindshare in a genuinely sensible piece. Collaboration between agencies has not become any easier, and I am sure the growing use of the larger, integrated agencies is a clear expression of exactly that. Martin describes the challenge with one central point: physical distance. As I see it, he hits the bull's eye – but on the wrong target. This is less about the distance between employees within the agency, or between the agencies. It is far more about the distance between the company and its partner(s). After all, what good is a single partner when agency and company still sit more than 50 metres apart – and might as well be “on the other side of the world”?
In my view, this says a great deal about how agencies see their own role and what they deliver. That they see the value they create as something that happens detached from the client's work and business. That closeness is certainly valuable in the core processes – but those processes do not involve the client. Martin – and any other agency director – will of course dismiss my claim. Of course. But it is still my claim that one of the central challenges for agencies is a lack of understanding of the value they create in the concrete context of the client's business.
To caricature it slightly, I would argue that the agencies' engagement model with their clients is designed to produce mediocre results. The process is built around few interactions, with a great deal at stake in each one. Lots in writing, big presentations with a significant element of surprise (“the big reveal”). The agency works in its ivory tower, and the client is graciously granted an audience for the presentation of the solution – when it is, mind you, very close to finished. And major problems and plenty of conflict arise if the solution is not accepted more or less without reservation. The opposite of agility.
There are many better solutions
There are many other engagement models that can bring more closeness to a collaboration. In my time at Magnetix (now Isobar) in Vesterbro, there were dedicated client teams with one or two of the client's employees physically present on larger, long-running projects. That created closeness and integration around the specific solution.
Our good friends at Advance work closely with Coloplast, and their permanent team of creatives, project managers and strategists, on a semi-structured basis, often spends far more time at the client's headquarters in Humlebæk than at Landemærket, just as the agency's people also spend several person-years at LEGO in Billund.
At Responsive, we have chosen a model where we are on site with our clients as much as possible. Where we try to become integrated into our clients' teams and work processes. Implementing that way of working has been part of our shift from agency to consultancy. It is the model we believe in.
Closeness works
The strength of the model is being illustrated very clearly – and somewhat ironically – in these months, because most of our clients have restrictions on external consultants being on site. So we are not with our clients to the same extent as usual. And that gives us a very clear sense that our normal state creates considerably more value than our involuntary current situation. Even though we try to compensate with a great many short, scheduled check-ins on Teams and the like, the absence of closeness affects both pace and quality. I know it is forbidden to say this out loud among the agencies, where the unanimous story is that “the transition to a virtual organisation has gone completely smoothly”. Perhaps because their processes are essentially decoupled from the clients?
Our reality is that we often work as part of long transformation processes that are deeply tied to business processes and systems. And there, closeness to the client – both the employees directly involved and the wider stakeholder landscape – makes a huge difference.
And now to the point
“Is there a point to this, Schlegel? Or are you just having a grumpy-old-man day?” I can almost hear you ask. And yes, there is a point. Two, in fact. The first is that marketing organisations up and down the country should challenge their collaboration models far more than they have historically. Expect and demand that agencies do their work closer to you. That processes are opened up, and that on both sides there are fewer presentations and more working sessions.
The second is that agencies need to understand that the value of closeness in their processes with clients is just as great as in their internal processes. Otherwise, the threat from insourcing will certainly not diminish in the coming years.