It's not the agency, it's the brief.

What makes an agency relationship actually work?

When I started my last full-time CMO role, before I moved into my fractional journey, one of the first things I discovered was that the marketing team was about to fire the PR agency. The agency, they said, wasn’t delivering.

I sat down with both sides to understand what was actually going on. What I found was that no one had written the agency a proper brief. There were no agreed KPIs. No clear objectives. No defined audience. No framework for what success looked like. No one really on point and fully responsible for managing the relationship to successful outcomes. The agency had been generating activity: pitches, press releases and some coverage off the back of them, but no one had told them specifically what they were meant to achieve or how it would be measured. Then the inevitable question from the CEO came: ‘What have we got for our money?’ It was difficult for the team to find concrete evidence to point to. The conclusion: the agency simply wasn’t delivering.

But in my experience, the agency often isn’t the problem. It’s the brief. Or rather, the absence of a good brief that hampers great agency relationships and outcomes.

I’ve seen this story play out before, especially in companies with junior marketing staff managing the agency, or where the agency is taking direction primarily from the company founder or CEO. Even if the engagement started with good intentions and what seemed like a clear mandate, the agency can end up in an impossible position: doing work without a brief, without agreed success criteria and without an accountable client-side contact who can guide, redirect and hold them to outcomes. In that scenario, it’s not surprising when things don’t land and everyone internally is shrugging their shoulders, looking around and wondering why they’re not seeing results.

It’s all in the brief

Writing a proper agency brief and managing an agency relationship well are genuinely learned skills, and most founders and CEOs have never sat on the agency side of the table. They may not know what a good brief looks like from the agency’s perspective, or what a client needs to provide for an agency to actually do its best work.

Part of that gap also stems from a narrow view of what PR actually is. Often, client briefs ask only for pitches and press releases. But top agencies are doing far more, from message strategy, executive positioning, content, social and analyst relations too. If the brief only asks for tactical output, that’s what you’ll get back.

But it’s not only a knowledge gap. It’s a time gap too. Even a CEO who’s done this before doesn’t have the time to brief and manage an agency properly. And they shouldn’t have to. The challenge is that a marketing manager, or even a head of marketing, may not have had ownership of an agency relationship before either. So the relationship, and the work, are at risk of going off course.

Having worked on both sides, agency and brand, I know first-hand what agencies actually need from their clients, and understand what clients want and expect from their agencies. It’s not rocket science, but things like a clear brief, agreed objectives, an agency partner that’s not afraid to push back, trust and transparency can really be the difference between a successful agency relationship and a failed one. Having someone on your side who understands what the agency is actually being asked to achieve, versus what’s possible, can be really helpful too.

I’m also always looking to work with agencies who come proactively with ideas, pushback where needed and insight that actually moves the engagement forward. If the agency is only ever doing what you asked for last time, that’s worth noticing too.

Of course, this cuts both ways. The best agencies protect themselves too. A good agency will ask hard questions before it starts, push back or even turn down a job when the brief isn’t clear, and they’ll do it to protect their own reputation, and sanity, rather than trying to make do. That instinct to ask the hard questions first is an encouraging early signal of a good agency partner.

Crafting a proper brief

It’s so important to set the agency up for success right from the start. You want this to work. They want this to work. But how do you make that happen? It starts with the brief. At a minimum, a good agency brief contains:

• Clear objectives. Not ‘raise our profile.’ What does success look like, specifically, and by when?

• A defined audience. Who are you trying to reach? What do they care about? Where do they spend their attention?

• Your positioning and key messages. The agency needs to understand what you stand for and what you want to be known for. And it’s worth recognising that your core company messaging isn’t always the same as the PR messaging that’s required.

• A clear scope. What are you actually trying to achieve, and what are you asking the agency to do?

• KPIs that connect to commercial outcomes. Not vanity metrics. Numbers that tell you whether the work is actually helping.

• A named decision-maker and relationship owner. One person with the authority and experience to own, guide and manage the relationship day to day, and sign off on decisions.

• A defined reporting and review cadence. Build accountability in from day one, including a monthly or quarterly priority review, alongside a regular weekly check-in to keep projects and tasks on track.

It’s also worth noting that, increasingly, agencies are the ones pushing for KPIs tied to commercial outcomes, while the client insists on tracking only impressions or coverage volume, because it’s easier to report upward. Getting to the right KPIs is something to work on in partnership with your agency, not something to hand down.

With a good brief in place, agencies can be powerful partners. When it’s not, pitches miss the mark, campaigns don’t deliver and you end up with a growing frustration on both sides.

Sometimes, even with a good brief, agency relationships can still struggle. For example, there may be a marketing manager at the scaleup who is responsible for the agency relationship, but who doesn’t have the experience or gravitas to push back on the agency or, importantly, on the company leadership, when things aren’t working or expectations are misaligned.

Hold the phone

Most agencies that get fired didn’t fail at what they were actually hired to do. They delivered as best they could against what they were vaguely expected to do, and were then punished for not doing it well enough.

If you’ve ever sat there frustrated with an agency’s output, wondering why it isn’t working, ask yourself one question before you send that breakup email: were we actually clear on what we needed?

In my experience, nine times out of ten, the answer is no.

If you don’t have a senior marketing leader on your team who knows how to brief, manage and hold agencies to account, you’re spending money without the infrastructure and skills to make it work. That’s not the agency’s failure. It’s a structural gap on your side, and it’s fixable.

If you’d like a clearer picture of what good agency management looks like, and whether you’ve got what you need to make it work, let’s chat: diane@brandingmatters.uk.