Professionals highlight barriers to collaboration amongst agencies
By Zion Rufus
Collaborating with existing players in the marketing ecosystem to enhance value offering and revenue generation channels has been identified as the ad agency model of the future.
The model, informed by the changes in livelihood and consumerism, has prompted marketers and ad agencies to reevaluate their campaign strategies and respond to the evolving marketing trends by abandoning their old agency of record practices to instead canvass for collaborations so as to deliver greater benefits to their clients.
However, as experts across fields continue to emphasize the need for collaboration amongst ad agencies, others have highlighted some of the challenges and barriers to the reality of the model.
Agency competition didn’t start today and I doubt it will end today as I believe it’s as old as time. Having experienced it over time, I would liken it to sibling rivalry. Just like the older child needs to understand that there is more fun in numbers, the same way as agencies, we need to understand that collaboration benefits all parties involved.
In an interview with MARKETING EDGE, Tolulope Medebem, Vice President of the Experiential Marketers Association of Nigeria (EXMAN) and Chief Executive Officer of Aster Integrated Marketing Limited explained that truthfully, most agencies might not want to collaborate for different reasons.
She said: “ I believe they imagine they are protecting their businesses and this can be rightly understood. In the long run, though, I believe that agencies would need to get past all these preconceived notions and collaborate (hopefully) to work together and produce the best possible campaigns for their various clients. Truthfully, some clients might have agencies that they are more comfortable with, but long-term integration/collaboration might serve the client/brands better.
According to Medebem, this is not to say that even having done everything right, there won’t be bickering and rivalry (as daily, new agencies come up, clients pitch, and new teams are on-boarded and added on to the creative / agency teams), “and truth, the client might be best served to just take a seat and watch it play out.”
“In all this though, the client must also be seen/perceived as open to all agencies within the team on equal terms (as best as possible), and each agency is credited with their ideas/solutions even if and when they won’t be implementing and this way, the teams see themselves as part of a bigger picture and hopefully integrate.”
She noted however: “Agency competition didn’t start today and I doubt it will end today as I believe it’s as old as time. Having experienced it over time, I would liken it to sibling rivalry. Just like the older child needs to understand that there is more fun in numbers, the same way as agencies, we need to understand that collaboration benefits all parties involved.”
On a similar premise, Otis Ojeikhoa, Managing Director, CEO, Brands Optimal shared that the industry needs a place for healthy collaboration, “where we can establish such structures and mechanisms, co-share, and cocreate, but not be in extreme negative competition. A sort of platform that helps you do better, execute better, cost better, but still competitive.”
“The word has been thrown around a lot, but really, how do you collaborate without revealing your competitive secret? It is easy to say, but the first thing is we all face an existential threat that is competition, because we know if we don’t resist it or fight it, it will kill us. So how do you open yourself to an enemy that wants to kill you? The word has been thrown around a lot, but it is easier said than done.”
Buttressing some of the existing barriers, Otis explained: “Individually, within common likes principles, because you cannot collaborate with someone that doesn’t share in your principles, it is difficult to work like that, if for example my principles will allow me to work with a client that will pay me thirty days after, and your principle is to work with clients that will pay you thirty days before, how do work together? It will be difficult. But where there are common interests and principles, yes please let’s collaborate. We have a lot of work that we have done with the same agencies.”
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