Agency relationships are like any other. They need nurturing, supporting, inspiring, sharing, challenging, rewarding and critiquing. In my previous agency life at Ingram, Unity and Carat I had all kinds of relationships with clients – some good, some bad and some truly ugly.
The best involved me in their business, encouraged me to give a communications perspective on all kinds of issues and integrated me into the wider marketing mix. The sad thing is that these have been few and far between.

The worst relationships saw clients treat the media agency like a supplier, sit on the fence, avoiding change, giving excuses not to do things differently, and killing creativity by boxing everyone in to their respective disciplines or giving all the power to the creative agency.
When I joined Fox, I was determined to become the client that I had wanted to work with and do the things that would have empowered me. To create this new relationship I had to create a new vision for how we work; not rules, but behaviours that could foster the best communications thinking.

The first element of the plan was to create a single team – in which the agency is not just an extension, but an integrated part of in-house, encouraged to question, debate and offer non-traditional ideas. This avoids the classic “relay situation” where a client hands the baton to the agency, which then hands to the buyers and by the time the consumer is exposed some of the key elements have already been lost in translation.

We have literally knocked down walls to create one centralised team area, with hot desks available for our agency colleagues when they need them.

The second move was to ditch ego. Marketing directors aren’t the ones that come up with the best ideas, pull off the best stunts or deliver the coal-face results. They are the ones who create the best atmosphere in which their best people can flourish.

Thirdly it was vital to get the agency involved from the very beginning of every brief. Too many agencies are briefed at the point where most of the plan is locked in, the creative is sorted and non-media channels fixed. This is simply too late. A good communications planner should be included at an early stage to help influence targeting, channel choice and even business objectives.

The key to making early involvement as productive as possible was clarity and a clear strategy at the outset. There is nothing worse than a woolly client brief or hesitation on key parameters such as audience and positioning. We don’t have all the answers, but there needs to be one voice from the marketing team that directs and shapes the process. If this single voice is absent the planning process will unravel, so if in doubt ask the marketing team for a one-page synopsis of strategy. This usually sorts the wheat from the chaff. If it can’t be summarised in one page it doesn’t work.

The fourth element of my plan was to balance consistency with fluidity. This is a tricky balance to strike. At Fox we adopt a marketing platform for every title and use it to interweave all our planned channels – which means we can then keep the door open for last-minute changes or ideas.

The next step is letting the communications agency survey the full comms mix. Many clients have been reluctant to do this as they feel it’s a slight on their intelligence and is “doing their job” (and that’s a direct quote). For those who haven’t been a marketer this independent perspective is critical.

We are in the fortunate position in the film industry that we receive a lot of exposure for free or at little cost – publicity, promotions, and partnerships. Before we commit a single penny we work through the exposure generated by these channels with our comms planners and how they impact on advertising.

The success of the campaigns for Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, Die Hard 4.0 and The Simpsons movies in the UK this summer were down to full integration of all channels with the core themes – even our brand partners for Die Hard promoted the real men theme (Snickers and ‘Go get some nuts’).

The bottom line is that creativity needs fostering. After working on an account for more than six months – like any relationship – things get a bit stale, fusty or stuck in a rut. Clients need to create a working environment that sparks ideas. For example, a mood reel or audience pencil portrait work so much harder than numbers ridden PowerPoint to kick off a brainstorm – or better still a trip out of the office altogether. Even then a good idea is only as good as its execution. I remember being in brainstorms where someone came up with a truly genius idea. Everyone got really excited and then nothing happened.

Many of the best ideas that we used to launch our movies this summer were at first glance high risk – a Silver Surfer on the centre of the London Eye, the naked Homer next to a Cerne Abbas chalk-carving stunt and a one-acre helicopter banner that flew across London saying “Yippee Ki Yay”.

All of these were talked about, registered high scores in post- campaign tracking and achieved significant column inches of coverage. As soon as I arrived at Fox I learnt that clients have to make things happen 100 times a day and rely on a group of close team players and agencies to do so. Agencies have to do a handful of things a day – so they can stand back, ponder and finesse. This is what clients are buying – neutral thinking time and polish.

Honesty is probably the most important dimension to the agency/client relationship. The master/supplier dynamic will only change if the planner is allowed to give a free point of view. Even if the decision remains the same at least the team has pressure-tested an idea.
As an agency person I have sat in meetings and wanted to push back against a client’s view – not done it out of “respect” then kicked myself when the plan didn’t work out. All planners should seize the day and stand up for what they believe in. Sounds a little melodramatic, but if you don’t you will be always be the little media guys that say very little in meetings. One of the most liberating moments of my agency life was being asked by a client to run a creative pitch on their behalf – which meant for once creatives respecting and taking a cue from media.

Every marketer has a right-hand man – and comms planners are the best placed for this role as they’re privy to the full communications mix.

Every planner should aim to be relied upon as a confidante, to be called up about a brief and consulted on the creative. This is the best and most fulfilling relationship I have had as an agency person, and my right-hand man at Fox is at every key meeting.
The final piece of the puzzle is recognition. Agencies need not only to be paid for the time they spend, but also the value they add to the business. We have set our agency, Vizeum, criteria based on performance and also softer measures such as creativity and collaboration.
In the end it all comes down to having the courage of your convictions. Some of the best plans and insights that we’ve had at Fox would not stack up in an econometric model. They are based on consumer insight – running a

TV ad at the end of the summer holidays that gets kids to see The Simpsons before they go back to school so they are not the odd one out or creating Simpsons avatars that were adopted by the tabloids and are now littered around Facebook.

It all comes back to three key factors. If you have a strong team behind it, then there’s a clear and consistent direction to hang ideas on and you just feel in your gut that it’s the right approach – the only question then is why on earth wouldn’t I do it?