We Need to Get Back in Person with Agency Reviews – for Advertising’s Sake

Clients and agencies are short-changing themselves on screen.

The stakes for agency reviews are higher than ever. RFPs and reviews have been on the rise since last fall. They’re costing more to stage, averaging over $1 million in agency and client outlays. And they’re pulling key client executives away from the essential business challenges of the brand—the root causes of the challenges prompting the review—just when their attention is needed most. 

That’s an awful lot of investment and accountability on the line. Yet we’re risking most of it on virtual meetings, which hamper agencies' ability to communicate their offerings and clients' ability to experience agency chemistry and evaluate potential partnerships.

We tell ourselves virtual meetings are more efficient, that we’re saving time and money. But we’re losing the energy exchange of the client–agency dynamic—especially when a senior decision maker joins an agency presentation on their phone in the backseat of an Uber, a technical glitch cuts the cameras for every client participant or ceiling cameras obscure faces. Even when everyone is on camera head-on, a 20-person Teams call puts key people on different screens; you can’t address or see everyone at once. It’s like presenting to a black box—all information, no intimacy—so at best you’ll end up kicking off a relationship from scratch, having forfeited the chance to establish any personal momentum together.

Agency and client leaders need to rethink relationship building before selections are made and contracts are signed.

You’re hiring people, not fitting together puzzle pieces.

On screen, we miss half the nuance that communicates our personalities and feelings. From pitch theater to the basics of being together, team cohesiveness is something you feel. In person, clients experience how connected the agency team truly is, how familiar they are with each other, how they support each other and how they build off each other's ideas.

Go off script.

In person, the best connections and most revealing moments aren’t scripted. When you stop the slideware to acknowledge a great build, eat lunch together in the HQ cafeteria, or talk in the lobby about next steps while the agency team waits for their ride to the airport, you get a real trial run for what working together will be like. This lays the foundation for faster onboarding and more powerful work much sooner in the relationship.

All it takes is commitment.

If chemistry matters to the agency and client (I believe it’s the main qualification), an in-person day only takes calendar matching. Make sure key decision makers from both companies are available, and lock in the schedule. When you’re together in person, close the laptops and pocket the phones; there are breaks for that. Skip the presentations for conversations and put small groups together to workshop ideas. Then go have some laughs and make memories together.

Camaraderie pays big dividends.

Nothing brings an agency team together more than traveling together on a pitch. From the airport to the hotel and client interactions, a sense of adventure swells. The common purpose and big-game excitement make you feel what it’s all for. You care more, and you bring back a resonance to the entire agency. When the right connections spark during client interactions, client teams get the same lift.

Don’t let 5% cost you 100%.

A day of in-person meetings is a small investment in a multi-year relationship. You’d better make sure the teams can hang together. Sure, it might take an extra 5% to put a team on a plane for a two-day trip. Chemistry happens or it doesn’t; the best thing you can do for your agency and prospective client is to get together and see. So, put it in the budget.

We depend on intimate relationships to build our brands and businesses. The foundation is energy exchange. When we default to timed, performative virtual meetings, we skimp on that foundation; and, predictably, the structure ultimately collapses. There’s increasingly more weight on advertising’s shoulders, and we can only bear it when we reinvest in the right start—together in person.