The latest findings from the Global Digital Outlook Survey of agency leaders and senior clients have revealed a steep decline in the number of agencies reporting relationship improvements.
After a positive turn in 2015, the client agency dynamic has “hit a roadblock”, with the number of agencies reporting relationship improvements falling from 70% to 53%.
Conducted for The Digital Society by Forrester Research, the study reveals why digital agencies get fired and is based on a poll of 629 marketers across the globe.
“Miscommunication is usually a root cause of any bad relationship; even at the end,” said Sarah Sikowitz, principal analyst serving B2C marketing professionals at Forrester.
“It’s no different with clients and agencies. Clients continue to leave for a myriad of reasons, but agencies continue to blame it on management changes.”
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Although the majority of agencies said changes in management were the number one reason to get fired (56%, up from 33% in 2015), clients reported pricing or value as the primary reason they terminated a contract (37%).
Cost over-runs, which were second in last year’s study, have fallen to eighth (13%), behind: being unhappy with creative (24%), mismatched agency size/ability (24%), unhappy with project management/account management (22%), unhappy with strategy (21%) and understaffed/under-experienced (21%).
“We expect inexperience to be an increasingly prevalent causal factor in agency-client relationships going south, as the percentage of agencies who indicated they are not providing any training to their staff almost tripled in 2016, growing from 5% to 14%,” Sikowitz added.
It’s not all bad news, however, with other parts of the report showing that despite a disconnect between clients and agencies on expectations and satisfaction, the agency model will “thrive in the next 12 months” as the number of clients who plan to take digital in-house has more than halved year on year (13% for 2016, 27% in 2015).
The full report is available on the SoDA website.
