Long collaboration between an advertising agency and a client on its brands is the ultimate crowning glory for both the sides. Because decades and years of relationships are built only on win-win situations like any long-lasting partnerships in life.

For an agency retaining their brands through continuously delivering on strategies, ideas, and execution over a sustained period of time (five years and over) and maintaining a transactional relationship (while all admen will say that this gets converted to friendship by mutual trust, which is correct, but strictly based on performance) is one of the key challenges agencies have been facing since time immemorial.  

The retention of the same advertising business over a sustained period of time is simply based how agencies can pre-empt challenges faced by the brands and come up with effective answers to address the problems. The business of Advertising is to continuously develop winning strategies, ideas, and solutions to refresh the brands and demonstrate results in a continuous fashion year after year in diverse and often unpredictable market conditions, competitive pressures and changing consumer dynamics have always been a herculean task for any agency.

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There is also a factor of sameness and boredom that can set in when relationships continue over the years. At the agency side when relationships last over a long time, there is often a tendency of taking the client for granted and complacency sets in. This, I have experienced is the biggest pitfall for long-serving businesses and the Agency management needs to be alive to this danger. Therefore, agencies face the multiple challenges of re-engineering & refreshing brand solutions, keep the internal teams on their toes, and address the issues of building bridges almost all over again when there are changes at senior levels at the brand and/or the agency side, and nurture relationships with the client teams all the time. And the longer the relationship gets, the challenges get more difficult.

We live the challenges every day in our professional relationships and very often we have to think of newer solutions on our feet, rather than resting on our past laurels as these successes and solutions from the past may not be relevant for today’s unique problems. Similarly, there is a constant endeavour at the agency’s side to bring in fresh ideas and engage the brand teams regularly in brand reviews, fresh planning perspectives and new directions to take the brand forward.  

Globally, there has been a practice of reshuffling agency’s brand leadership and key members particularly in strategic and creative side of brands particularly on global businesses, as often this leads to new energies, fresh thinking and re-inventing the brand narrative, given the market & consumer dynamics at that point in time. This practice has worked well for some cases earlier, but less practiced today, unless the client team demands it, as the business environment and real good quality talent base in advertising agencies is far less abundant than what it was two decades back due to agencies’ shrinking revenue base arising out of severe competition and clients’ hardball commercial negotiations, which frankly can often be counterproductive.  

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From my nearly five decades of advertising experience, I have seen that in any new advertising business, traditionally the honeymoon period between an agency and a client has not lasted beyond six months to a year at best. But in last 10 years this period has come down drastically due to unforeseen challenges established brands have been facing from the fast-changing consumer behaviour, new e-com-based distribution channels & networks opening up, fast evolution of digital communication, technology up-gradation and fresh new brands with innovative ideas constantly sprouting up (many of them from ‘start-ups’) to challenge the erstwhile leaders and capture the imagination of the new-gen consumers.  

The patience levels to show results at the brand team’s end have now come down to a near zero. ‘Deliver Daily or Die’ is the new mantra. As a result, the expectation levels at the brand team’s end have gone up considerably due to the pressure on them to perform or perish. This pressure is in turn passed on to the agency. We at ad agencies always live with the ‘Damocles Sword’ hanging on our heads and every moment our performance is evaluated even by longstanding businesses.  

In such situations, retaining & nurturing client relationships depend on the agency’s capabilities of living up to the challenges and delivering results, which ultimately speak for themselves. Yet demonstrating results are not entirely in the hands of the agency team. As it takes two hands to clap, so does the combined effort of the clients’ brand team and the agency team. And there must be a complete trust between the two.  And of course, in-depth knowledge, efficiency, transparency, mutual respect, diligence, and passion from both teams are a must to succeed in this competitive marketplace. Well, let me hasten to say that this is better said than done.

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The article has been authored by BEI Confluence Communication CMD Tapas Gupta.