Client Relations

The info you need to maintain good relations with your clients, including tips on improving account longevity, trends in agency-client relationships, and more.

A relationship management program helps build essential trust at every step of the agency-client relationship.  The 4A’s Relationship Management Best Practices Guidance explains how it’s done.

The ANA/4A’s Business Case for Relationship Management reveals how clients and agencies both feel about the benefits of such a program.

4A’s Relationship Management Best Practices Guidance

2020 ANA 4A’s Business Case for Relationship Management

Find additional information on maintaining good relations with your clients, including tips on improving account longevity, trends in agency-client relationships, and more, below.

Maximizing Client-Agency Relationships

Partnership in 2021: An Inconvenient Truth

Agency Mania Solutions takes a closer look at the effect the coronavirus pandemic continues to have on partnerships between brands, agencies, and the broader marketing supply chain.

Turning a Neglected Assignment Brief into a Stellar Pitch Presentation

4A’s member OpenHuddle provides tips for producing creative briefs that win new business.

13 Questions to Help You Write a Compelling Creative Brief

Hubspot provides a guide to writing the great creative brief for ad agencies.

Effective Business Development: We Asked Your Prospects the Question for You

4A’s member OpenHuddle recommends tactics ad agencies, especially those specializing in healthcare, can use to meet interested new business opportunities.

Save Your Agency-Client Relationships from Drowning in the Pandemic Sea

Bruno Gralpois of Agency Mania Solutions writes clients can minimize risks and set a strong foundation for agency-client relations during this tense time by moving away from squeezing and pushing agencies to prioritizing and pulling them up.

Automation is the Future of Effective Client/Agency Partnerships

Bruno Gralpois of Agency Mania Solutions outlines how automation can improve workflows in marketing, in the agency world, and in client/agency partnerships.

Turning Agencies into Growth Agents

Bruno Gralpois of Agency Mania Solutions finds that automation of common agency tasks and activities in the agency workflow can drive business and impact brand growth for marketers.

2020 ANA 4A’s Business Case for Relationship Management Program

“The Business Case for Relationship Management,” survey was conducted jointly by the ANA and the 4A’s and serves as a follow-up to an April 2019 4A’s report, “Relationship Management Best Practices Guidance.” The report revealed that both marketers and agencies are aligned on the benefits of a relationship management program and employ a variety of […]

Successfully Managing Agency Partnerships in Tumultuous Times

Agency Mania Solutions provides five actions marketers and agencies can take during the current global health crisis to foster their relationship.

The Domino Effect: Bracing for Impact

Bruno Gralpois of Agency Mania Solutions outlines four major changes due to COVID-19 that will produce a domino effect within our industry.

What Metrics Should Advertisers Use to Make Effective Use of Their Agency Partnerships?

Read this article from Agency Mania Solutions to learn what key performance indicators (KPIs) brands and agencies should put in place to produce high-performance partnerships.

Peter Field’s Seven Lessons for Advertising During a Recession |

Peter Field looks back at the lessons learned during the 2008 recession and adapts them to help ad agencies and brands emerge from the current coronavirus pandemic much stronger.

Financially Considerate Marketers Get Better Results from Their Agency |

Aprais finds that marketers who are financially empathetic to their agency partners get better results.

Building Stronger Partnerships with eTraining

Agency Mania Solutions highlights the importance of online training for building productive agency-client partnerships.

Responsible Measure in Uncertain Times

Bruno Gralpois of Agency Mania Solutions finds that during uncertain times advertisers have the opportunity to turn agency relationships into true partnerships that are based on mutual respect, collaboration, and innovation.

What’s Your Risk Profile?

Bruno Gralpois, co-founder of Agency Mania Solutions, outlines the four decisions advertisers have to make when creating successful ad agency relationships.

Mastering Agency Relationships |

  Marketers can master agency relationships with several critical skills.  Bruno Gralpois of Agency Mania Solutions details the many hats marketers must wear to have successful agency relationships.    

How Brands Prioritize Getting Better Work and More Value From Their Agencies at Every Stage of Their Fiscal Calendar |

Integrate demands into the partnership lifecycle to better weather the current business environment.  Find out how from Agency Mania Solutions.  

Cutting agency fees to answer your budget challenges may be a big mistake |

At a time when corporate restructuring, zero-based budgeting, and other cost-cutting initiatives make up most headlines, reducing a large part of advertisers’ marketing budgets – namely agency fees – is without a doubt very tempting. However, asking agencies to cut their fees, without careful consideration or understanding of the downstream implications, is a bit like […]

Fix Client-Agency Relationships Before Replacing Them |

. As the average length client-agency relationships grow shorter, it may be time to consider if replacing is better than repairing.  Bruno Gralpois of Agency Mania Solutions urges advertisers to conduct a diagnosis of the root cause to figure out if relationships that aren’t broken are being replaced.

Value of relationship longevity

How can relationship longevity contributes to quantifiable value for brand advertisers through more effective collaboration and institutional knowledge?  Find out in this latest piece by Bruno Gralpois of Agency Mania Solutions.

Webinar: Perspectives on New Business and Client Relationships |

This presentation was delivered to the 4A’s Central Region New Business Committee on June 13, 2019 by Deb Giampoli of Stone Soup Consultants.

New CMO=New Agency |

4A’s Research Services gathered recent examples of clients putting accounts in review when new CMOs are hired.

4A’s Guidance: 4A’s Relationship Management Best Practices Guidance

Relationship management is how you keep winning after you’ve won. 4A’s Relationship Management Best Practices Guidance is your new playbook.