Intricate Marketing Journeys Demand A Hybrid Vehicle

Traditional agency-client relationships no longer work. A new varied approach is needed that includes onsite and external solutions while providing answers to each client’s particular needs.

I love driving. Sorry to come over all Jeremy Clarkson, but I enjoy the challenge of urban obstacles as much as the rush of burning along rural highways. So when I get behind the wheel these days, I want to know that I’m driving a vehicle that will offer me the flexibility of efficient stop-start city motoring as well as equally high performance when there’s clear road ahead of me.

I’m not alone. A growing number of people, according to car sales experts SMMT, are joining me in desiring a hybrid option. The model I’m after has lots in common with the way brands feel about agencies in an era driven by nimble campaigns and rapid ROI.

With agencies under pressure to perform with greater speed, agility, and commercial acumen, while achieving award-winning levels of creativity and innovation, traditional client-agency relationships no longer work. Instead of being left to it for weeks on end until they crack the brief, agencies need to become challengers and evolve their offerings at breakneck speed to ensure clients receive agile creativity.

This is because clients are struggling to keep pace with what consumers want. Brand lifespans have contracted from 61 years in 1959 to just 18 years today, according to Yale University’s Richard Foster. Dotcoms are planning their tenure around 10 years at most.

A recent study from creative agency Southpaw also found some of the biggest grocery brands of recent times, including Cadbury’s, Birds Eye, and Heinz, had become on average 10% less relevant to consumers in the past five years. This figure might seem small, but its impact on global revenue will be colossal.

This is something that can be seen in every sector. We only need to look at BHS and Austin Reed to understand what can happen to even the most monolithic retailers if they don’t keep up with the times.

In Or Out?

As brands look to seriously up their game, smart-thinking agencies are embracing it as an opportunity to reinvigorate their services and stimulate competition.

One trend shaking up the agency landscape is the hired in-house team. These champions of agility, collaboration, and cost efficiency can deliver exceptional work for clients. However, the danger of in-house solutions is that they execute effectively to a brief, but do not focus on breaking the mould.

Clients hire agencies to be challenged and inspired. Rather than relying solely on the hired in-house trend, agencies need to let clients have their cake and eat it. They need to offer—and constantly modify—an array of solutions that are packaged to each client’s continually evolving needs.

The Only Constant Is Change

We know that for clients today the only constant is change—and agencies need to practice what they preach. Only by allowing the challenge of delivering creativity at speed to develop into a tangible approach will agencies ensure their clients are equipped to succeed long term.

The way we have approached this at PSONA is by curating a portfolio of onsite and externally based client solutions that ensure our services are both challenging and balanced. We spend time with each client to find out exactly what their needs and challenges are, and build services around it.

Agencies should offer onsite teams with specialisms in every single channel, from creative and artwork to strategy and account management. These teams will be responsible for delivering on day-to-day campaigns, optimising marketing activity, and producing outstanding creative. These capabilities should be packaged to reflect the client’s ambition and the team should constantly work with the client to improve partnership efficiencies with no hidden agenda.

But agencies should also offer solutions that offer a hybrid effect, such as SWAT teams to bolster specific projects and flexible teams that can provide an additional resource at busy times of the marketing calendar, such as upping the copywriting team for a short-term period.

Harnessing Different Ways To Drive Success

Structural shake-ups create many hurdles, particularly for larger agencies for which speed and agility might not come naturally. One of the main challenges I have experienced is attracting the best people who are happy working onsite with a client, particularly if the environment is corporate. Agencies often expend vast resources while creating cultures that don’t translate onsite. But embracing change and ensuring teams are frequently rotated, restructured, and reinvigorated prevents this from happening.

The pace of change means that agencies and clients are set to work more closely and effectively than ever before. The only way to survive in the long term is to continue to move through the twists and turns of the road ahead.

As agencies and clients start to embrace this challenge together, the industry as a whole will need to know when to put its foot on the gas, but also when to apply the brakes, to get from A to B as efficiently and smartly as possible.