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Are you a marketer that wants to squeeze more from your agency? Do you feel like they should be doing more? Delivering better results? Turning things around faster?

All sound like good ideas, right?

What’s surprising in our experience is that while most marketers aspire to have their agencies deliver more, better and faster, their approach almost always ends up having the opposite effect. Particularly now.

Hit hard by the great resignation, agencies are already scrambling to retain employees and fill gaps left by those who’ve already left. And if you’re already feeling the effects as a client, stepping up the pressure and asking for more will likely only make a bad situation worse.

“Depending how hard agencies have already been squeezed, marketers could face rate hikes of up to twenty percent.”

Even though there is reason for optimism with a vaccine on the horizon, these next few months may prove even more challenging for marketing and agency teams. Pandemic fatigue is the new catch phrase. So now more than ever, managing in a time of crisis is a “make or break” requirement.

During the current crisis, businesses have worked faster and better than they dreamed possible just a few months ago. Maintaining that sense of possibility will be an enduring source of competitive advantage.
– McKinsey & Co.

Recently, Aprais undertook an in-depth analysis of our global database of over 21,000 client-agency evaluations to uncover the defining behaviours of resilient teams – those who rebound in times of crisis.

While most marketers have been busy revisiting business plans, modifying marketing activities and coming to grips with the new realities of a COVID world, others have been actively tackling their agency rosters.

And if you’re a marketer who was contemplating an agency search prior to the pandemic but decided to hit the brakes, here’s some good news: It’s not as scary – or as difficult – to undertake an agency search process with rigour and diligence as you may have thought. In fact, it may prove to be easier, less time consuming and more thorough than you imagined.

Establishing a more transparent media marketplace has been top-of-mind for marketers this year, and on June 10 at the ACA Executive Forum, marketers showed how they are taking action. The topic – Taking a Hard Line with Online: The Client Perspective – created considerable buzz among the more than 100 attendees in a cinema at […]

Among top of mind issues for marketers in 2015 will be transparency for media buys. A major focus of these transparency issues is the burgeoning digital media advertising space—a significant new channel for marketing communications. The importance of this new channel is reflected in the phenomenal growth of programmatic buying/trading of digital media ad views. […]

By Tom Hendrikson, Chief Breakthrough Officer, Sixsense Strategy Group Inc. Here is a situation that may be familiar: You begin to experience frustration in your dealings with your MarCom agency. That frustration leads you to terminate the relationship with that agency. But, later, you find yourself in a similar situation with a new agency. The […]