With many projects requiring multiple channels of communication, marketers are managing many specialist agencies. This requires being able to manage these groups to maximise their collaboration and outputs. Most of the tips below are simply good project management skills, which are often forgotten in marketing and advertising because it is often incorrectly assumed that the agencies will organise this.
1. Clearly articulate the objectives of the project, providing achievable and measurable outcomes and agree methods of measuring these.
2. Clearly define budgets and discuss and agree with all parties the required timelines upfront.
3. Ensure that there are regular reports on progress during the project. This does not necessarily mean meetings but regular reporting.
4. Appoint a project leader, usually the marketing or brand manager commissioning the project and appoint project managers within each agency who are responsible for managing their agency contribution, usually the account management lead.
5. Provide clear roles and responsibilities for each agency. Agencies can go above and beyond these roles in the strategy and concept development at their own initiative, but this will not guarantee a change in their scope in the implementation phase.
6. During strategy and creative development, encourage the various agency strategists and creative leads to meet to share insights and ideas rather than working in isolation.
7. Keep all project managers aware of all decisions made along the project path to avoid misalignment.
8. Consider having a system for providing structured feedback and collaboration evaluation such as evalu8ing.com
9. Ensure there is a formal review process to identify all issues and lessons and to provide praise where warranted.
10. Contact TrinityP3 as we have extensive experience in developing collaborative environments through roster structure, agency remuneration, contract reviews, engagement agreements, process optimisation, training and relationship evaluation.
There is also a free presentation on this topic here.
What other strategies and tips have you found work to foster collaboration between agencies?