Compounding Model

Camille, Client Partner at a media and communications agency, has managed one of her firm's most stable accounts for four years. The client is a consumer goods company with a significant annual media budget. The relationship is warm. Her main contact, the Head of Brand Communications, trusts her. Reviews go smoothly. The account renews without drama. By most measures, the relationship is healthy.

Camille is nonetheless aware of a problem she cannot quite name. She knows that major strategic conversations at the client are happening without her. A brand repositioning project ran for eight months before she heard about it in passing. A new product launch was briefed to a strategy consultancy rather than the agency. When the consumer goods company hired a new Chief Marketing Officer, Camille was not introduced for six weeks.

She is delivering well against the briefs she receives. She is not in the room where the briefs are written.

The issue is not trust. The Head of Brand Communications genuinely values the relationship. The issue is that the trust has never been converted into access at the level where strategy is made. Camille knows a great deal about media execution. She brings good market data to quarterly reviews. But she has not brought the client an insight in the past eighteen months that changed how they thought about something. The work is competent. It is not distinctive. And without distinctive insight, there is no reason for the Chief Marketing Officer to pull her into the room.

The flywheel has not broken. It has simply stopped turning.

Insight generates Value. Value builds Trust. Trust, if it is the right kind, opens Access. Access is what allows you to generate deeper Insight than anyone else has. Camille reached Trust and stopped. She has been maintaining the relationship rather than compounding it. The account is safe for now. The account is also flat. Any agency that brings one genuinely useful insight to the new Chief Marketing Officer will immediately have more strategic relevance than four years of good execution has given Camille.