The B2B marketing industry has united to draw up a Code of Conduct for both agencies and clients in an industry-wide collaboration. Omobono MD Susie Clark tells us why it's an important move for the industry.
We’ve all been there and experienced the frustration of a badly run pitch. Equally we’ve delighted at the ones that have been run brilliantly.
It’s definitely the bad ones that stick out though; ones that were clearly a process to put the incumbent under pressure to reduce their costs, or ones that were a way to get free strategic advice, those that never had a budget attached and never will, those that start with a 10 horse race for a budget that is smaller than the cost of putting the work together… it’s all part of agency life.
But it shouldn’t be. Omobono, as a business, has undergone a programme of transformational change. We are changing the agency to create the work environment of the future – for our employees and our clients.
So addressing this “agency lifestyle” was a huge part of why we at Omobono were keen to join discussions with The Magnus Club, an initiative to bring together agencies and clients to create a B2B Code of Conduct.
The initiative aims to highlight best practise and will cover all sorts including pitching, onboarding and communications and in essence that will enable us to strengthen relationships with our clients going forward.
Celebrating the good while highlighting the bad, the code calls for transparency and honesty from both parties and is focused on facilitating growth.
Personally, I encourage further collaboration and openness between clients and agencies; we’re happy to pitch and believe that the best party should win but it’s the fairness that we need to focus on. The industry got behind the now infamous BBH Audi pitch which was a huge step forward and I very much hope the Code of Conduct will help us progress further, faster. We look forward to developing it with the other partners in the future to cover all aspects that affect us now, to cover all the things that we need to get better at, from diversity to payment terms.
I hope the B2B Code of Conduct will shine a light on best practice between clients and agencies. We’re excited to work together towards a shared purpose and hope to extend it over time to cover other important areas such as diversity and inclusivity.
