2010 ANA Agency / Client Forum

Last week I attended the 2010 ANA Agency/Client Forum in NYC (kindly sponsored by Starcom). For me it was the best Forum I have yet attended.

The reason I say that is because there was a purposeful differentiation between this one day event and it's larger cousin, the Procurement & Financial Management conference (April/May).

The speakers clearly articulated their ideas on the strategic and creative elements of the Client/Agency relationship and there was less emphasis on areas such as contracts & compensation, which are heavily covered in the April event.

Three speakers I particularly enjoyed were Bruno Gralpois from Microsoft, Eve Reiter of American Express and Rob Davis of Starcom.

Sweaty T-shirts

It was amusing to hear from Bruno what "sweaty T-shirts" have to do with agency relationships! He explained that recent research reveals that by smell alone we can detect which potential partner has "complimentary" genes that can help our future kids fight diseases - amazing.

And this really summarizes the key message from the forum. That is, agencies should be complimentary to their clients - and definitely not identical. Agencies are there to challenge, innovate and bring new perspectives, not just to be an extension of the client's culture.

Bruno's new book Agency Mania is finally on sale and having read the first few chapters I'd highly recommend it to you. Bruno adds significant new insights to the agency management discipline, which is now growing strongly. 

Client and Agency Perspectives

Eve was an excellent chair for the conference and provided an on-point discussion around agency relationship management in a complex organization, while Rob provided an interesting counter-point from the agency's perspective. Both had similar themes and it is interesting how much alignment there is in opinion between leaders in this space on the client and agency sides of the fence.

Procurement Taskforce on the move

The Forum concluded on a high note with a report from Jim Akers of Pfizer and Lisa Figel of J&J representing the ANA Procurement Task Force. This group has considered the results of the most recent marketing procurement survey and specifically implemented a mentoring program where companies with a less mature agency management function can get advice and training from the larger more mature organizations.

With thanks to the ANA for another great event and I look forward to the next conference on their calendar, the 2010 Masters of Marketing in Orlando next month - I hope to see you all there!

Author: Richard Benyon (Decideware)