Alex Malouf is the professional development and knowledge sharing co-chair at MEPRA
“Do you recall how we first met? Of course you do. I can vividly picture how you walked into the room, presentation in hand. We looked at each other lovingly from across the room as you told me how you’d revamp the public perception of my brand, how you’d rework our messaging and how you’d feature my general manager on the front cover of Arabian Business. I fell for you and all of your talk.
Those first few days and weeks seem so long ago. Today, I need to shout and scream and email you at all hours of the day to ensure my views are heard. You’re always late with requested materials (which never seem to conform to my brand guidelines) and I constantly have to re-edit and re-format what you’ve done. As for the front cover, the less said about that the better. It seems you just don’t understand me, despite all I’ve done for our relationship to work. Where did we go wrong?
Client-agency partnerships always set out on the best footing but often fail to last, owing to disappointment in media results, fall-outs and misunderstandings. While it’s often the client that ends the relationship, is it really their fault that things don’t go as planned? Agencies fail in their remit not because of their own inabilities but more often due to the client’s own failings. An agency is only as good as the client they’re working for and here’s why.
An agency is hired to provide expert advice on communications. An agency should always give advice with sincerity and with the best intentions of the client in mind, even if the advice is not what the client wants to hear. We pay agencies to be consultants, and while it’s up to us to take their advice or not, we still should treat them as advisors rather than people who do what we tell them and nothing more.
Secondly, the agency should be as knowledgeable as the client. This may not be feasible in practice, but it’s up to us, the clients, to keep our agency as informed as we possibly can, by inviting our teams to meetings and providing internal information. Can we blame our agency when they don’t come up trumps due to a lack of knowledge?
And the last piece of advice, is mutual respect. Far too many of us on the client side believe the more we stamp our feet, the more that the agency will produce results. While that may be true in the short term, no one wants to work in a hostile environment where abuse is the norm and where we shod over the opinions of our agency. No relationship should be like that, so why should we treat our agencies in this manner?
The responsibility is to put in the effort and help our agency help us with our communications and media outreach. We have to take the lead and not expect an agency to work miracles without lifting a finger. After all, public relations are a talented lot but one thing none of us can do is mind read.”