Obviously, marketing agency search and selection is what our team does, day in, day out.

But we also help foster relationships and subsequently are asked by agency and client alike, what the secret to healthy, happy and productive partnerships really is.

We were digging about the annuls of WARC recently and found a useful article about assessing client/marketing agency relationships. You can read it immediately, here.

Within, Baskin states that the best marketing agency performance occurs 'when the client is optimal in four areas, namely Approval, Briefing, Timing and Behaviour’.

In other words, it’s important for clients to appreciate and understand that although they are employing an agency for their expertise, they also share ownership of the output and have a responsibility to provide as much feedback and data as possible to make the relationship work.

The client’s involvement and commitment will result in a healthier partnership, which of course cultivates better agency output. Baskin also explains that the agency-client relationship is ‘highly interdependent’ and that ‘good clients result in good agencies’. This is article is nothing new, but 2 years on it still raising some pertinent points.

Baskin continues, ‘if a client has a good approval process and sticks to it, briefs well, behaves well in the sense of being open and responsive to agency needs and information requests, and agrees on and sticks to appropriate timings for work, then this client would be of high quality in the eyes of its agency.’

Conversely it's posed, anonymous 360 degree reviews of both agency and client staff are critical toward ensuring relationship health and a chance at true partnership.

We actually tend to agree.

Open and honest conversations about expectations and performance is as crucial in the more mature stages of a client/agency partnerships as they are in the briefing process.

But what do you think? What role does the client play in ensuring agency success?

As always, we’re all ears! Tweet us on the Twitter @wefindgood or comment below.