Will true collaboration ever happen in Advertising agencies?

How many times have this word popped up in the office email, saying the future is about collaboration and yet no one really bothered to act upon it.

I came from a huge-ass MNC advertising agency. A place that typically encouraged insourcing, and collaboration meant working within my office talents. I had a project where knowledge in the tech industry was required and the “right process” was to get three quotes from vendors. This was what “collaboration” meant to some MNCs. I left… naturally.

So what is the ‘C’ word? To me, collaboration depends on a much broader participation, commitment and many rounds of trying and perfecting. It’s about aligned motivations between collaborators. Collaboration is not about affinity. It’s not the comfort level of working with people that often results in having an obligation to “get along”, compelling collaborators to make hard decisions. Therefore the right type of motivation from a project or business perspective needs to be set in place to avoid ending up with groupthink.

Internal and External motivations that play a part in collaboration

Strategic partnerships need to be in place to create relevance for the ever-changing creative and marketing landscape. It is hard for collaboration to gain momentum unless potential parties see the benefit from investing their time, energy and creativity. Here are some factors which matter to me before the alliance is formed.

1. Adaptability and Openness to innovation

“Creation should be inherently collaborative — and must evolve more frequently than typical software upgrade cycles.” Behance. One of the fallbacks of agencies is the lack in the ability to be really open. Insourcing and knowledge limitations often prevent the beauty of strategic partnerships from happening. Getting three quotes from vendors limit the exploration of possibilities. The flexibility of pivoting forces perfection, which really does no justice to the creation.

This openness and willingness of knowledge sharing drive much more value to the collaborators, which in turn reflects on the job creation.

2. Shared Risk comes with Shared Rewards

One of the most important motivations when creating strategic alliance is the different disciplines when coming together in exchange of knowledge and shared learning with each other. In comparison to how traditional agencies work in silo with fear of “integrated departments” stealing the pot of money from each other, strategic alliance can come together to create a common desired outcome and achieve shared ownership of the work, benefitting all parties.

3. Sense of Ownership

Another critical element to enable the success of collaborative efforts is for both parties to develop a sense of ownership, not just in the work, but also the landscape. When partners share a common interest in a landscape, they are more likely to come together to further expand and discuss its future. Many successful collaboration platforms such as GitHub were started for people with shared interest in a particular area to come together and collaborate. Hence this can be borrowed and applied to a collaborative and strategic partnership model.

Now that i am in a leaner and more agile agency, I have started to see how real collaborations can benefit the industries we are innovating in.