Navigating the new client-agency relationship
News flash. The world of agency is changing. As is just about everything else. In an era spilling with automation, new technologies, and ideas that reshape how we all work, it can often feel like we’re all on different boats. Agencies and clients drift. Priorities clash. And trust whittles away quietly before anyone calls it out.
The real winners are the ones who weather the storm together and who build stronger relationships because of it.
Having led Client Services at Shaped By for over 15 years, Wei Kee knows this better than anyone. In this interview, Wei sits down to talk through what brand and creative leaders are dealing with right now, what they need from agencies, and how to build partnerships that thrive.
Authors:
Wei Kee, Client Services Director, Shaped By
Sarah Healey, Content Editor, Shaped By
The pressures reshaping the way clients work
What are the biggest pressures brand and creative leaders are dealing with right now?
Brand and creative leaders face increasing pressure to do more with less. They’re often stuck in a cycle of convincing leadership teams that investing in brand is a “need-to-have” rather than a “nice-to-have.”
Internally, it’s a battle on two fronts. First, they’re navigating stakeholders who don’t always understand the creative process but want everything delivered yesterday. Second, their own teams are leaner than ever, inundated with day-to-day asks, leaving very little room for high-level craft. When you add a mandate to suddenly “do something with AI” while avoiding the slop, it’s no wonder brand drift starts to creep in.
What do today’s brand and creative leaders need from agency partners that they didn’t need five years ago? And what do they need less of?
Five years ago, a big reveal was standard. Nowadays, clients want a more agile, iterative approach. They need agencies to act as a genuine extension of their team, to be their eyes and ears when they’re time poor. They want help navigating internal stakeholders and practical guidance on AI – not just what tools exist, but how to actually embed them into a workflow.
What do they need less of? Agencies telling them what they already know. They don’t need best practice lectures; they need solutions that work in the real world they’re navigating.
Has AI changed what clients need from an agency?
Completely. From a time and cost perspective, clients no longer need creative agencies for the bulk of the production work.
What they need instead is a strategic partner to augment their team, plug gaps in skillsets, and provide creative direction. That increasingly means helping them embed AI into their workflows – not just pointing to tools, but figuring out where AI genuinely speeds things up, where it should stay out of the process entirely, and how to keep quality control tight. The job now is helping clients self-serve smarter, while we focus on the high-level thinking a prompt can’t replace.
What strong partnerships do differently
What do the best client-agency relationships you’ve been part of have in common and what’s the earliest sign they’ll fail?
Not unlike any other relationships in life, clients who put their trust in us, trust in the process, and the ones who let us into their world enable the best client-agency relationships. There’s a “we’re in this together” mentality, an openness to go beyond the transactional and build something long-term. It comes down to candid communication, a genuine appreciation for the craft, and staying open minded when the work doesn’t quite land the first time round. Accountability runs both ways too, because as I always say, it’s the sound of one hand clapping if only one side shows up.
The earliest sign that they’ll fail is when there’s a sense of rising panic and clients start putting contingency plans in place, like getting an in-house designer to duplicate efforts as a back up plan. This is a breakdown in trust – in the agency, and in the process.
When you see something differently than your client does, how do you raise it? Who do you go to, and how do you do it without blowing trust?
Trust needs to be earned throughout the process of collaboration. That’s why first projects can be tricky as the agency and client get to know each other, and also why long-term partnerships pay dividends.
When I think a client is off track, it’s all about having honest conversations with a healthy appreciation for the challenging landscape the client is navigating. I try to see it from their side – is there a middle ground? We lean on rationale to take subjectivity out of it and bring the conversation back to the business goal. Getting the most senior decision-maker aligned early is often the difference between an effective course correction and a slow drift.
How can agencies help client brand teams succeed internally?
We succeed when our clients succeed internally. That means being genuinely empathetic to their challenges and checking the ego at the door. It should never be an “us vs. them” scenario.
Regular check-ins with client teams help too. They let us connect on a more human level and build deeper relationships beyond the brief. And clear swim lanes matter just as much: knowing who owns what means we’re not treading on each other’s toes or duplicating effort.
Agencies should be an extension of the client team, using shared environments like Figma so that there’s full transparency, and building design systems that enable them to work independently. We also plug the specific gaps they don’t have in-house – motion, strategy, whatever it might be – without making them feel like they’re lacking.
What does it actually mean to feel like you’re in the same boat as your client?
It means being mindful of their day-to-day reality: the aggressive timelines, heavy workloads, tricky stakeholders who don’t understand the creative process, and the politics underneath all of it. Ultimately, it’s about working alongside them to effectively navigate it.
Weathering the storm – as a team
In the end, the strongest client–agency relationships are not defined by perfect conditions, but by how well both sides collaborate to respond to the pressure.
When there’s trust, candour, and a shared goal, the partnership becomes more than a service arrangement; it becomes a way to move faster, think sharper, and create better business outcomes together.
If you’d like to hear Wei talk about what getting more from your agency looked like just a few years back, listen to our Changemaker podcast: Getting the Most Out of Your Agency.
