Tough Love: What Brand Clients Wish Their Agencies Knew

By Pat Lafferty, CEO, APR

Every agency client relationship begins the same way: Endless optimism for groundbreaking work, swift ROI, and generous partnership. Sometimes it sustains, frequently it fades. Why?

I’ve spent my career in marketing, at agencies and on the brand side. Now, leading a global production advisory, I help clients architect and implement content ecosystems. More often than not, our teams are not-so-simply helping agencies and marketers work better together.

Here are a few lessons in the world of building healthy client-agency relationships.

“The Client” Has Clients, Too

Early in my career at Leo Burnett, one of my motivations to go client side was to become the one making decisions. But when I landed at Discovery Networks, I quickly realized I wasn’t directing the agency unilaterally. I had to get buy-in from many others.

New contracts, concepts and campaigns had to survive internal debates, finance reviews, and input from many corners.

The best agencies help clients sell inside their own organizations. They arm clients with the competitive context, data-backed insights and compelling evidence needed to win internal support.

AI Doesn’t Replace Human Judgment

Conversations about AI are ubiquitous, but it is surprising how many agencies and clients are on parallel tracks that have yet to meet.

The agencies seeing the greatest client connection are treating AI as a shared capability rather than an individual experiment. AI hasn’t figured out how to spot human ideals like camaraderie and sharing.

Another area for agencies to watch: AI can make creative production incredibly efficient, posing vast opportunity and an element of risk. Hundreds of assets are meaningless if they pull in different directions. More content isn’t the same as more marketing; clients need coherence and a 360-degree production strategy.

The Compensation Conversation Has Changed

Retainer models were built on staff counts and hourly allocations. AI is forcing agencies and clients to confront an uncomfortable question: if technology dramatically reduces the time agencies need to produce work, how should they be paid?

The same debate surrounds value-based compensation. Performance pricing sounds straightforward until a campaign wildly exceeds expectations. When results disappoint, many are happy to pay less. Few are prepared to pay more when results outperform.

Finance departments value predictability. Outcome-based compensation will remain harder to implement than many expected. Both sides need to talk it through and align during the pitching process.

Let’s Talk About Staffing

It’s an old story. Agencies pitch with senior talent and service with juniors. Few issues create more friction than that.

Some clients want experienced leadership involved in every project and are willing to pay for it. Others prioritize efficiency and are comfortable with junior teams. Neither approach is wrong, but problems arise when nobody discusses those expectations until after the work begins.

I’ve reviewed staffing patterns across multiple agencies and brand engagements. We’ll flag it when teams look too senior or junior for the job. Those conversations are healthiest before work starts, not after misunderstanding sets in.

Is Your Agency Too Big to Succeed?

This is one for the holdcos. Despite all the industry’s evolution, the most common problem I still see is a lack of integration.

Creative, media, PR, social, experiential and influencer teams often work independently, producing strong parts that don’t fit together.. Integration doesn’t happen organically. It has to be consciously managed.

Whether that’s the agency, the client or both matters less than making sure it’s someone’s explicit responsibility and that the teams are incented to work together.

The Bottom Line

Healthy relationships require consistent work. AI is accelerating and amplifying everything – the good, the bad and the ugly.

Help your partner sell inside their team; simplify, don’t simply multiply; compensate as you would want to be compensated; staff the right people at the right level, and integrate, don’t separate.

Do these things and your relationship is way more likely to succeed and to last.