Agencies fail 25% of UK brands

LONDON: A quarter of advertisers in the UK are not satisfied with the service provided by their agency partners, new figures show.

Grupo Consultores, the agency consultancy, surveyed 207 client-side executives, and revealed 25% of the panel were "dissatisfied" or "indifferent" when asked to rate their current agencies.

The remaining 75% of respondents who were "satisfied" with their agencies awarded them a total of 6.8 points on a ten-point scale when assessing the quality of the service they provided.

More broadly, the analysis showed that marketing directors typically have active relationships with an average of 3.3 advertising agencies.

This can be compared with 3.5 agencies in China, one of the highest totals around the world, but just 1.6 in Mexico, which posts one of the lowest scores on this metric.

One particularly noteworthy feature of the British ad sector was the length of client–agency relationships, standing at 6.1 years, versus 3.4 years in China.

Elsewhere, British brand owners worked with digital agencies for 3.7 years as a norm, and 4.7 years with marketing services providers.

Juliet Blackburn, the managing director at Grupo Consultores UK, told Campaign: "In the UK, industry relationships are longer, there is greater client satisfaction and agencies have stronger digital capabilities."

Creativity was ranked at the most important factor when choosing an agency, ahead of their quality of staff and strategic planning capabilities.

Almost 98% of brand owners choose agencies as a result of an official pitch process, with 90% demanding a strategic and creative presentation as part of this process.

Data sourced from Campaign; additional content by Warc staff, 13 July 2012

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