CMOs On What Agencies Need To Know And Do To Be Great Partners.

CMOs On What Agencies Need To Know And Do To Be Great Partners.

"Do or do not. There is no try." Just as no marriage begins with hopes of divorce, no client/agency relationship begins with hopes of divide and discord. So much for the best laid plans. To better understand what factors lead to this client/agency divide and get in the way of the brand and business building work it's in service of, I've asked a group of brilliant marketers, CMOs and Agency executives both, for their points of view. Part 1, considered the agency perspective and Part 2 (below) adds the CMO's. Together, they offer reminders and a roadmap for what it takes to have the best chance of doing the best work, together. The need for this conversation was provoked by Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong's much discussed and derided Twitter thread, wherein he claimed no agency could have done the company's much lauded Super Bowl ad. This, despite that fact that as Martin Agency CEO Kristen Cavallo was the first to point out, an agency had. But it wasn't just Armstrong's factual ignorance and attitudinal arrogance that struck me. It was his implicit us vs. them/client vs. agency framing. Because having spent my career going back and forth between the two