The IPA has today published an industry blueprint to help agencies and clients achieve stronger and longer working relationships. The blueprint includes templates for a 100 Day Charter and a Relationship Contract, underpinned by quantitative evidence that proves the correlation between better relationships and better work.
Last October, Ian Priest, president of the IPA, called for a rethink of the pitching process as he addressed advertisers and clients at the first ‘Adaptathon’.
Produced and developed from ideas generated at the event, the 100 Day Charter has been designed to help clients and agencies manage the transition to a new contractual working relationship, setting parameters for “an open and honest long-term partnership”.
It offers the opportunity to establish rules of engagement, such as how, when and how often to communicate, the use of technology and when face-to-face communication is required.
The Relationship Contract provides a psychological framework for agencies and clients to conduct their relationship in terms of “the social and psychological dynamics and the supporting procedures”. It has been designed to provide a useful outline for discussion between the two parties in order to help them establish respectful and transparent relationships.
“It makes complete business sense to establish all aspects of a new relationship from the beginning and avoid it becoming too transactional too quickly,” said Priest.
“I’m keen that as an industry we can move towards a culture of less pitches and longer partnerships.”
Priest explained that it can take up to a year to fully integrate a new agency into the client way of thinking, but hopes that by following the 100 Day Charter and Relationship Contract, clients and agencies will be able to speed up this process “with the least amount of waste”.
