Clients' expectations of their advertising agencies: creativity and relationship management

Abstract The importance of relationship management in business-to-business service provision contexts has been acknowledged for several years. This paper examines clients’ expectations of their advertising agencies with regards to agency creativity, and also aspects of long-term business relationships. A qualitative study was undertaken with 15 clients of advertising agencies. The way clients define agency creative varies from creativity of the message to creativity of the media used to deliver the message. Clients who valued the relationship with their agencies alluded to partnerships, alliances and even described the relationship using a marriage analogy. Advertising agencies should effectively evaluate the four key findings that emerged from this study to foster long-term relationships with their clients. Background The directional shift from transaction based relationships towards relationship marketing has been evident since the 1990s (Hennig-Thurau, 2000; Morgan and Hunt, 1994; Payne and Holt, 2001; Sheth and Parvatiyar, 1995). Relationship marketing has three components: attracting customers, developing and then enhancing the relationship with the customer (Berry, 1983). Jackson (1985) describes relationship marketing in an industrial setting as ‘marketing oriented towards strong, lasting relationships with individual accounts’ (p. 2). Patterson and Ward (2000) expand the definition of relationship marketing as ‘the establishment of a long-term relationship between the service supplier and customer to their mutual benefit’ (p. 320). The essence of relationship marketing relates to the establishment but more importantly the maintenance of ongoing business relationships between two parties, namely the buyer and the seller, and consisting of a series of interactions over time involving mutual influence and resulting in mutual benefit. Relationship marketing and relationship management are used interchangeably in the literature, however Patterson and Ward (2000) explain that relationship marketing is ‘offensive’ and refers to attracting new prospects or customers, whilst relationship management is ‘defensive’ and involves maintaining and enhancing relationships between suppliers and their ‘customers through value-added services, development of trust, satisfaction and stronger interpersonal relationships’ (p. 323). This distinction will be adopted in the current study and henceforth relationship management will be used to describe the efforts of the service provider to sustain and augment relationships with existing clients. Relationship management is critical in professional services provision contexts (Crosby, Evans, and Cowles, 1990). The context for the current study is the client-advertising agency relationship. Advertising agencies, whose primary function is to sell concepts, are usually independent organisations that service the communication and promotional needs of businesses, not-for-profits and government agencies using a variety of media including but not limited to print and digital media, newspapers and magazines, billboards and the internet, presence marketing and sponsorship. The industry offers a wide range of services which can be classified into the two broad categories of production and media placement. Production covers the creation of the campaign including strategy and creative design, as well as the physical production activity, whilst media placement involves the booking and purchase of advertising space and time on behalf of clients (Wilson, 2010). The nature of the advertising industry has changed over the last 10 years, although its role of communicating with and influencing clients remains