Agency Relationships
Beyond general performance evaluation surveys, JLB + Partners (JLB+P) offers client-agency “marriage counseling”, a deep-dive analysis of specific issues in the working relationship with your agency. Our diagnoses often provide more time and cost-effective solutions than changing agencies.
Less than optimal performance in most of the client-agency relationships we have examined is usually rooted in one of two areas:
- A misalignment or misunderstanding of performance and working relationship expectations. The client and agency might not be on the same page, or the client’s interpretation of what is expected is different than the agency’s. This can be exacerbated when there are multiple client or agency stakeholders working together, and they are not all working against the same defined expectations within their respective organizations.
- The client and agency are simply not working together well, even when performance and relationship expectations are fully understood and in alignment.
JLB+P can offer best practice solutions for improving the client-agency relationship, and solutions that are custom to the specific issues at hand. Our solutions are based on extensive experience diagnosing client-agency relationship issues and opportunities across a wide variety of industries, agency types, and client-agency processes.
The following are areas that we commonly examine and diagnose through interviews and proprietary diagnostic tools:
- Client briefing of agency: strategy, the scope of work, and information-sharing
- Client and agency review and approval processes
- Other workflow processes (at marketer and agency)
- Organization and staffing issues