Why collaboration is key: Bridging the gap between clients and agencies

New Delhi: It’s Friday evening. The weekend's excitement is in the air—until your phone rings. It's the all-too-familiar “urgent brief” with a daunting Monday deadline. Suddenly, you're faced with a classic dilemma: a working weekend or a not-so-great Monday morning.

Welcome to the delicate world of client-agency dynamics—an often tricky relationship made messier by mismatched expectations, trigger-happy escalations, and relentless timelines. But strengthening this bond doesn't come from one side—it requires genuine collaboration.

Pitch vs. Reality

One of the most common complaints agencies hear from clients is overpromising and underdelivering. The “BIE” (Big Idea Energy) of a pitch rarely translates into the reality of day-to-day brand work. But who's at fault?

• The exhaustive 360° brief demanding a disruptive digital campaign that never takes off?
• The agency pulling all-nighters during pitch week (and then dragging timelines post-onboarding)?
• Or the system itself, where transparency, honesty, and collaboration are often sidelined

The answer probably lies somewhere in between.

Expectations on both sides

Expectations shape the client-agency relationship more than we’d like to admit. Clients want quick turnarounds, face time with the leaders who wowed them during the pitch, consistent KPI delivery, and a stable team throughout the journey. On the flip side, agencies are hoping for clear, concise briefs, realistic timelines (a big ask in digital), achievable KPIs, and—let’s be honest—a reasonable brand manager or point of contact. More often than not, both sides end up disillusioned.

What should ideally be a collaborative relationship between equals, true allies building an agile partnership, often ends up as a one-sided equation, full of flattery and quick fixes, trying to hold together a fragile, transactional bond.

Where things typically go south

Briefs aren't brief

Even with structured templates, the inputs from client POCs often need trimming, clarification, or a full-blown Q&A round. And that’s assuming the agency team even takes that Q&A seriously, and let’s be honest - many don’t. The result? Confusion during presentations, or worse, sudden, brief changes mid-project. In digital, especially, where multiple briefs fly around daily, this chaos is par for the course. Only clear communication and honest expectations from both ends can bring order to it.

Setting sensible KPIs is a hurdle

While ROI-driven campaigns are the best way to measure the impact of work, the way we set KPIs for different campaigns needs a serious overhaul. Establishing a clear campaign objective can help align both parties on mutually agreed-upon metrics, particularly in brand-building exercises where creative communication requires more nuanced measurement techniques. If there’s no alignment on the campaign’s purpose or how its success will be tracked, even great creative work can feel like a failure.

Too many layers, not enough answers

Knowing who actually makes the final call on both sides can save hours of revisions and delays. Then there's the all-too-familiar issue of new brand managers wanting to reshape the communication based on their personal vision, which may or may not align with the brand's core identity. In these cases, something as simple as a solid brand guideline deck can become your lighthouse. 

A study by Havas Creative found that 80% of respondents ranked an honest relationship as the most important factor in a successful agency-client partnership. The fix isn’t a fancy framework or a new tool. It’s transparency. It’s setting realistic expectations. It’s giving and receiving feedback with respect. It’s remembering that both sides are here to create something worthwhile, not just to check off deliverables.

Agencies and clients aren’t rivals; they’re in this together. When trust meets teamwork, great work isn’t just possible, it’s inevitable.