Why Are We Still Trying to Fix the Client-Agency Relationship?

Marketing, procurement and agencies agree on more than you might think. So why do the same problems persist?

For an industry obsessed with change, marketing has a remarkable ability to keep returning to the same relationship problems. Briefing. Communication. Compensation. Trust. Transparency. Respect. The meaning of partnership.

None of these are new concerns. Yet they continue to surface even as almost everything surrounding the marketer-agency relationship—media, technology, agency models, procurement, data and now AI—has changed dramatically.

Perhaps one reason is that we’re still using language that no longer quite describes the relationship we’re trying to fix. We call it the client-agency relationship. But who, exactly, is “the client”?

For Joanne Davis, whose career has been spent helping marketers and agencies choose one another and work better together, that question eventually led to a realization.

Her first book focused on “Client and Agency.” In writing her second, she says she recognized something she wished she’d made more explicit the first time: the client has two dimensions—the marketer’s agenda and the procurement agenda. And the gaps between marketing and procurement, procurement and agency, and marketing and agency aren’t necessarily the same.

But it also raises a larger question: If we’ve spent decades trying to improve these relationships, why do so many of the same problems remain?

The Strange Thing Is How Much Everyone Agrees

The Internationalist has had an unusual opportunity to look at that question.

In research conducted for Joanne Davis Consulting and the ANA Advertising Financial Management community, we asked marketers, procurement professionals and agencies what mattered most in their relationships—and later explored where their actual experiences diverged.

The first finding was almost reassuring: Everyone essentially wants the same things.

Across the three groups, clear and open communication, mutual respect, teamwork and shared goals consistently rose to the top. Communication was nearly universal—cited by roughly 93% to 100% across the groups.

So the fundamental problem isn’t that marketers want one kind of relationship, procurement wants another and agencies want something entirely different. The more interesting problem begins when we move from what people say they value to what other people actually experience.

The Experience Gap

One of the simplest examples involved agency debriefs:

Both statements can be sincerely accepted. And that is precisely the problem. The gap between what one party believes it is doing and what another party experiences may be one of the most persistent—and least discussed—problems in business relationships.

Joanne Davis sees it constantly. Her answer isn’t another process chart. It’s perspective: understanding what the relationship looks like from somewhere other than your own seat.

And sometimes that requires recognizing that the three seats aren’t interchangeable.

Same Company. Different Lens.

Marketing and procurement may both represent “the client,” but they don’t necessarily arrive at an agency relationship carrying the same mandate.

None of those objectives is inherently incompatible.

But each changes what someone notices.

The same conversation can therefore produce three very different experiences.

And that may help explain something Jim Akers finds remarkable.

Twenty Years Later, Why Are We Still Having the Same Conversation?

Jim Akers has spent more than 30 years in procurement and has worked with Joanne Davis for more than two decades.

He remembers marketing procurement leaders wrestling with many of today’s issues in 2006 and 2007. Twenty years later, he is surprised by how familiar some of the conversation still sounds.

Historically, organizations sometimes placed accomplished generalist buyers into highly specialized marketing procurement roles without giving them enough grounding in the complicated services they were suddenly expected to buy. That helped create the enduring caricature of procurement as the person who treats creative services like widgets.

His prescription is both more demanding and more useful: marketing procurement needs to understand marketing. It needs to understand how agencies work. It needs to educate itself continually. And it needs to be capable of communicating in the language of the colleagues and partners it serves—not simply in the language of procurement.

Or, as Jim Akers puts it, procurement needs to “speak marketing.”

That’s an interesting reversal. We often ask agencies to understand their clients’ businesses. Perhaps procurement should be held to the same standard.

Meanwhile, “Partnership” Has Changed

Bill Duggan looks at the same relationship across an even longer horizon.

His 47-year career began on the agency side, including account management at Grey, before 26 years at the ANA.

His conclusion is straightforward: the marketer-agency relationship has changed.

Bill Duggan can be skeptical about how easily the industry uses the word “partnership.”

But when asked what makes the relationship work better, his recommendations become strikingly fundamental.

Which raises another question: If the business around these relationships has changed so dramatically, why have the human requirements changed so little?

Respect Is More Practical Than It Sounds

One finding from The Internationalist’s research is particularly revealing.

---

When agencies were asked what they wanted from procurement—

---

Those might sound like semantic complaints. They’re not. Language reveals how someone believes value is created.

If expertise is treated as interchangeable, the conversation naturally gravitates toward price. If expertise is understood as differentiated, questions of capability, effectiveness and value become harder to ignore.

And agencies themselves have responsibilities here. Joanne Davis makes a point that agencies sometimes miss: procurement professionals are clients too. Invite them in. Explain the work. Show them the studios. Show them the tools—including the new AI tools increasingly changing how work gets made.

Her reasoning is characteristically simple: “How can you buy something you don’t know?” And, from the agency’s side, an informed buyer can become a better buyer.

Walking Through the Door

Perhaps the most surprising part of our three conversations wasn’t where Joanne Davis, Jim Akers and Bill Duggan differed. It was where they independently arrived at almost exactly the same place.

• Joanne Davis advocates what she calls Take Procurement to Agency Day.
• Jim Akers says he has encouraged procurement teams to spend a day, a week, or even an internship period inside agencies so they can understand the complex services they’re buying.
• Bill Duggan remembers an early P&G marketing procurement executive spending a week embedded inside an agency. Whatever apprehension the agency may initially have felt, he recalls the executive describing the experience as enormously valuable. Both sides understood each other better afterward.

Three careers. Three perspectives. Essentially the same practical advice. Perhaps “walking in the other guy’s shoes” isn’t merely a metaphor. Sometimes you actually have to walk through the other guy’s door.

The Relationship Isn’t Going to Get Simpler

AI will alter scopes, staffing, production, compensation and definitions of value. Agency models will continue to evolve. Procurement will continue to face pressure to demonstrate savings and accountability. Marketers will continue to face pressure for growth.

None of that suggests the relationship among the three will become easier. Which may be precisely why its simplest requirements matter more: Clear communication. Respect. Shared goals. Understanding the pressures on the person sitting across from you. The research tells us we already agree on much of that.

The harder question is whether the other two sides experience us the way we think they do. And that may be where getting the relationship right finally begins.