Marketers and agencies need to improve relationships: ISBA president

Marketers need to work harder on their relationships with agencies to improve the quality of campaigns, according to the president of ISBA.

Mark Hunter
Mark Hunter

Speaking at an IPA event in London, Mark Hunter, also chief executive of Molson Coors UK, says client marketers need to create an environment to enable agencies to offer improved service.

Hunter says he wants marketers and agencies, through ISBA and the IPA, to work together to affect “transformational change” in order to “maximise the opportunity for brilliant and effective work”.

Marketers should take time to make sure agencies understand their company’s plans and how their business runs, Hunter adds.

He also called on marketers to explain the role of the procurement function better in order to address the misperception that “marketers have deferred the gritty part of relationship management to anonymous procurement teams whose focus is unit cost not value”.

“The simple fact is the procurement functions provide real benefit to business and are here to stay and advertisers have to take responsibility for setting out the strategy for their involvement in agency relationships,” he adds.

Hunter says agencies also need to make several changes including: understanding “the changing role of consumers” better, reviewing classifications such as above-the-line and below-the-line and explaining their added value to marketers in order to “distinguish themselves from media owners”.