There is a growing trend for clients to draw their agencies together into a team know as a Cross-Agency Team. The idea is that they happily collaborate, work together in perfect harmony and produce amazing 360 campaigns. However, in my experience this is very rarely the case. But if managed correctly, Cross-Agency Teams can and do work very well.

So what if you’re a client and you’ve set up a Cross-Agency Team. And that Cross-Agency team is starting to become a little cross? What do you do?

8 golden rules for making Cross-Agencies less cross

1. Put all your agencies on a retainer and make sure that they know exactly what they’re going to be paid.

2. Be crystal clear which area of work each agency controls. If you’re not, problems will escalate rapidly. For example with a roadshow: is it activated by the PR or Experiential agency?

3. Put your best person in charge of your Cross-Agency Team. It needs a strong manager, someone who is at a high enough level to be a decision maker without recourse to others. Nothing aggravates agencies more that the thought that a junior member of staff is dealing with them and then having to wait weeks for decisions when they get passed up the line. Be commercially aware – time is money for the agencies and for you.

4. Never hand out a brief and tell agencies to coordinate between themselves and respond back. Who takes the lead?  What happens if they disagree over strategy? This is a lazy approach, hardly ever generates clear-sighted thinking and often results in more meetings, more time being wasted and unhappy agencies.

5. Be clear on budget split. Don’t invite agencies who won’t benefit financially – if you wouldn’t work for free, why should they?

6. Know exactly what your objectives are and make sure the team buys in to them right from the start.

7. Insist the team contains the best brains from your agencies and don’t be afraid to support opinions from those outside of the Ad agency planning department.

8. Make sure it’s an equal partnership. The one thing that always sinks Cross-Agency Teams is inequality. Don’t fall into the trap of favouring the Above-The-Line agency.  Make sure you treat everyone equally in terms of decisions, money and time.

Cross-Agency Teams don’t have to be cross. They can work and if you stick to these golden rules you will end up with a team that delivers outstanding results.