Incentivising Agency Performance

Jim Surguy

Examines the possibilities and the problems of agency PBR (Payment By Results) schemes. Unbundling of agencies into various specialisms led to fee-payment; this enabled agencies to charge for services historically never charged for (such as strategic thinking), but required greater openness about how costs are accounted for: it has not led to buying on price.

Incentivising Agency Performanc

Jim Surguy Results Business Consulting

With clients' procurement departments being ever more involved in agency/client financial negotiations, agency remuneration is increasingly used by clients as a tool to modify agency behaviour. It is debatable, however, whether current models of remuneration grasp precisely those issues that make for superior performance. 

Unease among clients with remuneration models goes back quite a long time. The commission system, whose much-predicted demise has yet to occur, still exists, but at much lower levels than historically. Commission has the recognised failing that media inflation inflates agency income, and anyway a payment...

WARC subscribers can sign in to keep reading

Not a subscriber?

Schedule your live demo with our team today

WARC helps you to plan, create and deliver more effective marketing

  • Prove your case and back-up your idea

  • Get expert guidance on strategic challenges

  • Tackle current and emerging marketing themes

We’re long-term subscribers to WARC and it’s a tool we use extensively. We use it to source case studies and best practice for the purposes of internal training, as well as for putting persuasive cases to clients. In compiling a recent case for long-term, sustained investment in brand, we were able to support key marketing principles with numerous case studies sourced from WARC. It helped bring what could have been a relatively dry deck to life with recognisable brand successes from across a broad number of categories. It’s incredibly efficient to have such a wealth of insight in one place.

Insights Team
Bray Leino

You’re in good company

We work with 80% of Forbes' most valuable brands* and 80% of the world's top top-of-the-class agencies.

* Top 10 brands