Agency Review Meetings A way to improve client agency relationship

Shrinking advertising budgets and fierce competition in the marketplace have paved the way for marketers to spend less time focusing on building better relationship and engaging in a regular review process with their incumbent agencies.A� The procurement team within the organization is more focused on the fees quoted by the agency and contract terms while on-boarding the agency. Once an agency contract is established, the marketer briefs the project objectives to the agency and then gets back to the agency only when the final output is ready. This process brings about a complexity in terms of meeting expectations since, lack of communication and proper briefing may lead to variations in the output as compared to the expectation of the client. Due to the hectic work schedule, marketers sometimes fail to allocate time in building better relationships with their agency. When marketers are dissatisfied with their agency, they usually terminate the contract with the existing agency and look for other agencies that could provide better services. However, it would be more advisable to understand what went wrong by talking to the current agency to ensure that lack of communication is not the reason for this discontent from the client side. Regular review meetings are an opportunity for the client and agency to understand each other's working culture, align values and set expectations to ensure they work in close coordination.