#AdFocus2016: Why The Hardy Boys and client SA Home Loans won 'Partnership of the Year'

This year, the Observatory International sponsored the ‘Partnership of the Year’ category in the Financial Mail AdFocus Awards. That’s because they believe that the best marketer/agency relationships, usually enduring ones, produce the best work and deliver the best business results.

Little says, "There's empirical evidence that great partnerships lead to great work - usually award-winning work – that delivers superior business results and up to twelve times greater return on marketing investment.”

John Little

So sponsoring this award is their way of highlighting the value of great client-agency partnerships.

That’s important to Observatory International as they’re a business consultancy that helps marketers get the most out of their marketing resources. This extends beyond simple search and selection, compensation consulting, and resource optimisation to include:

• Finding the right agency partners.
• Negotiating fair business terms with their partners.
• Measuring the performance of their partners.
• Designing the best external partner architecture models and engagement processes.
• Equipping their people with the necessary skills to work more efficiently and effectively with their external partners.

Little says these services have exposed the secrets of an effective client-agency relationship as follows: “Choosing the right partner, aligning the teams, establishing business terms, measuring performance, uplifting skills and motivating ‘collaboration’.”

Here Little explains Observatory’s involvement in the FM AdFocus Awards and how The Hardy Boys/SA Home Loans partnership, which started with a cheeky, anti-bank stance to differentiate SA Home Loans from the banks but went deeper over the years, came out tops…

1. Talk us through the calibre of shortlisted partnerships for this year’s title, which also included: FCB Johannesburg and Toyota, King James and Santam and M&C Saatchi Abel and Heineken.

Little: All four shortlisted entries had real merit, but I would prefer to focus on the winner. The Hardy Boys/SA Home Loans entry demonstrated:

• A partnership that has stood the test of time
• Work that is memorable (although this is not a creative award)
• Great business results and, perhaps the defining distinction:
• a demonstration of the effort that both teams have, and continue to, put into developing and sustaining a special relationship.

2. Elaborate on the power of partnerships, working together and the benefits to agency and client alike.

Little: A key factor in any great partnership is trust and trust is built over time. It enables brave and sometimes risky work that requires a leap of faith from the client.

3. How can long-standing partnerships like that of The Hardy Boys/SA Home Loans keep things fresh and effective over time?

Little: A sustainable partnership in this industry is founded on ‘soft’ criteria such as shared values, similar ambition, the will to win, work ethic and inter-personal trust and respect as well as common understanding of the goal both are striving for, an agreement on the ‘rules of engagement’, and creative evaluation criteria.

By maintaining a challenger brand mentality and constantly challenging each other to find fresh, new ways to express that mentality. Of course, over time, natural attrition will mean fresh blood will be introduced into the teams and that will also help to keep things fresh and effective.

4. Tell us how you see the trend of collaboration growing and changing as we enter 2017.

Little: We follow global trends and there is no doubt that the marketers are asking for, if not demanding, greater collaboration. That could mean inter-departmental collaboration, inter-company collaboration inside a network [Ogilvy] or even a holding company group [WPP]. In 2017 agencies will need to extend their ‘collaboration’ skills to embrace ‘outliers’ like Facebook, Google and IBM.

Exciting times. Click here for a reminder of this year’s FM AdFocus award winners. Follow The Observatory International on LinkedIn, and keep up with The Hardy Boys and SA Home Loans on Twitter.