(Reprinted from my guest post on PharmaLive)

It is very interesting to me that we are still trying to figure out how to improve our working relationships with clients. In the health care advertising and marketing business, we’ve largely been working with the same 20 or so core companies for 40 years. The answer is not better communication or sharing more, or even better contracting. Those improve things marginally.

If you think about it, focusing on these types of things is only necessary because both the client and agency have a shared responsibility for every project or implemented strategy. As a result, things like improving contact or better sharing are the solutions that we typically focus on as they relate to the way that we work in general.

I dare say that the answer is actually in communicating less but trusting more.

Think about it. Every single project that an agency works on has a client owner who passionately wants to contribute to its success. It is impossible for a marketer not to want to put a little bit of their DNA into almost every project for their brand. This desire is the source of “make my logo bigger” or “I don’t like the color” type of comments that drive everyone nuts, and drive absolutely no improvement to the end product.

The agency, on the other hand, lives for the day that our clients would actually let us do what they hire us to do without interference. (Note – this is why clients often get the best ideas in pitches.)

And while both perspectives are understandable at some level, there may be another way.

Imagine a world where every project you work on has only one owner; either the agency or the client, but not both.

In this world when the client owns a project, the agency restricts its efforts to cost-effective studio resources that focus on information design and mistake-free project management. The client runs the project, soup to nuts. They call the shots.

Project number two is agency-owned. In this scenario, the client owes a thorough brief, but after that briefing, the client goes away. The agency takes care of strategy, developing the idea, taking it through med, legal, regulatory review, and works directly with needed resources to print the sales aid, deliver the e-detail, produce the convention panel or leave behind, or upload the website. All completed post briefing with little if any direct client involvement.

Obviously this approach isn’t for all relationships. But when the agency and the client have been working to develop the brand and its visual assets, and intimately know its marketing and communication objectives, this approach can work. Surely we can work more independently than we do today.

This type of approach creates a world where the talent to task is vastly improved on both sides. There is also a huge reduction in non-value-added churn between the client and the agency. Job satisfaction will increase on both sides. More work for the brand can be completed as each party is enabling the other to focus “elsewhere” at different points in time.

Client and agency teams can usually shrink as a result too. And, the client will begin to feel that their agency is really complementary to their team working and extensions of their corporate resources. Clients are even able to focus on the 847 other things outside of work that involves their advertising agencies.

Oh, and this approach saves the client a lot of money while allowing the agency to maintain its margins. In this world, agencies aren’t commodities. They are strategic partners.

Hey, where have I heard that before…?

Any examples of working this way with your agency or clients? Any thoughts?