CANADIAN MARKETING AGENCY LEADERS SPEAK OUT ON CLIENT STRENGTHS & WEAKNESSES
-- Client Quality Survey: A Global Voice for Marketing Agency Leaders --

Toronto, ON, March 25, 2009 – Canadian client marketers need to invest more in market research, improve their integration efforts, and provide clearer agency briefs, say the leaders of their marketing and communications agencies across Canada that participated in a global client quality survey in February 2009.  Canadian marketers, however, score higher than their counterparts in the U.S. and Europe in their ability to motivate and financially reward their agencies.

“This is the largest body of client-agency relationship research ever conducted to simultaneously compare the views of Canadian marketing agency leaders with those in the U.S. and Europe,” said Sheila Corriveau, Partner, AgencyLink Inc., which conducted the survey in Canada as part of its strategic affiliation with SCAN International, author of the study, A Global Voice for Marketing Agency Leaders.  “We believe that the key learnings from this survey will help to stimulate client-agency dialogue and lead to improved business relationships.”

Approximately 620 agency leaders from seven countries participated in the survey, including 106 agency leaders in Canada. The respondents lead integrated, advertising, digital, direct, public relations, media, promotions, branding and multicultural agencies. The survey was designed to give agency leaders at the CEO or GM level a voice to shed light on the role of clients in client-agency relationships.  Historically, client-agency surveys have only focused on the client’s perspective, but today more clients recognize that they are equally accountable to the partnership and are keen to be better clients to maximize their ROI.

Dr. Alan Middleton, Executive Director of York University’s Schulich Executive Education Centre, and author of the recent guidebook on client-agency relationships, Come Together, said, “This survey screams for more open and direct communications by clients with their agencies, for more investment in good marcom research, and much stronger and earlier integration into marketing mix decisions.”

Highlights of the Canadian agency leader responses compared with other countries include:

• Canadian clients need to improve accountability in sharing their performance results, score cards and metrics with agencies. Agency leaders say 36% of Canadian clients are weak in sharing this information.  In the U.S., 26% are weak, while in Europe 23% are weak.
• Marketing clients globally need to better address their concerns with agencies to limit agency churn.  61% of agency respondents globally say clients do not openly discuss their concerns about agency performance and make an effort to find solutions before the client ends the agency relationship.
• Client sectors in Canada that are better than average in quality of performance are in business-to-business (66% better than average); services (65%); and financial services (60%).  Client sectors rating highest in quality in the U.S. are consumer products (78%); services (58%); and consumer durables (52%).
• Client sectors in Canada that score poorer than average in quality of performance are government (69%); consumer durables (63%); and not-for-profit (62%).  In the U.S., the poorest rated sectors are government (84%); not-for-profit (70%); and financial services (62.5%).
• Canadian client marketers rank the best among all the countries surveyed in their ability to inspire and motivate agencies.  27% of Canadian agency leaders say their clients are excellent motivators. Only 9% of Canadian agency leaders say their clients are weak in motivating them, while in the U.S. (29%) and France (34.5%) agencies respond that their clients are weak motivators.
• Canadian client attitude and willingness to invest in market and communications research scores poorly compared to other nations.  In Canada, 38% of agencies classify Canadian marketers as weak, while only 16% say they are excellent or good investors in research.  Comparatively, in the U.S. and U.K., 24% of clients are rated weak while another 24% are rated excellent/good.
• In the area of compensation, Canadian agency leaders that responded to the survey are much more positive than their global counterparts.  For instance, when asked are clients’ compensating you for the value you create for them, 20% of Canadian agency leaders responded with excellent, while only 3% of European and 2% of U.S. respondents rated their clients as excellent.  While 29.5% of Canadian respondents said their clients were weak in compensation-for-value, that percentage is far fewer than the corresponding 50% scoring in the U.S. and 47% in Europe.
• When asked to select the three most important areas for improvement of client performance in relation to their agencies, Canadian agency leaders rated the following: 
• Strategic direction and briefings (71% and the highest of all participating countries);
• Quality of decision-making process and streamlining approval levels (38%);
• Quality of judgement and ability to understand agency’s recommendations (34%);
• Sharing information (33%);
• Expertise, skills, and training for client marketers (25.5%).

The survey of almost 40 questions was conducted online by AgencyLink Inc. in Canada between February 5 and 26, 2009, and simultaneously by SCAN International member companies in the U.S., U.K., The Netherlands, France, Portugal, and Spain. The largest number of the 620 global responses came from agencies that offer integrated services (58%); followed by digital; (49%); advertising (45%); brand and retail design (27%); PR and corporate communications (26%); direct (24%); and media (23%).  Individual country responses were given equal weighting in the global tabulation of data.

Complete details of the Canadian survey with global comparison highlights and AgencyLink’s assessment of the results are available for downloading at

http://www.agencylink.ca/documents/clientqualitysurvey.pdf.

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AgencyLink is a consultancy that specializes in marketing and communications client-agency relationship management in Canada.  It was formed in January 2008 to conduct marketing and communications agency searches, consult on existing agency relationships and deliver workshops to improve client-agency performance. AgencyLink’s team of former agency CEOs and senior corporate marketers work with clients that use agencies in one or multiple marketing and communications disciplines. (www.agencylink.ca) Visit our blog: www.client-agencyrelationships.com.

SCAN International, formed in 2005, operates globally and has partner offices in nine countries.  SCAN International specializes in optimizing client-agency relations, agency searches and compensation (www.scaninternational.com).  Clients include and have included Ford, IBM, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, and Unilever.

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Contact Information:
Sheila Corriveau
sheila@agencylink.ca

647.435.1105

Stan Didzbalis

stan@agencylink.ca

416.546.9447