Why clients and agencies often enter retainers with completely different definitions of success
Ask almost any business leader or marketing manager in Kenya about their experience with agencies, and chances are you’ll hear some version of the same story: “we hired an agency that never delivered.”
I’ve heard versions of this conversation many times over the years. A company hires an agency with high expectations, signs a monthly retainer, approves the first few months of work and then, somewhere along the way, the relationship starts to feel like it isn’t working. The agency is producing, invoices are being paid and reports are being shared, but the client isn’t seeing the change it expected when it signed the contract.
As an agency owner running a strategic communications and public relations firm for half a decade now, I understand why clients get frustrated. There are agencies that underperform. There are agencies that oversell their capabilities. There are agencies that produce work without enough strategic thinking behind it. Those problems are real.
But after seeing enough agency relationships from the other side of the table, I’ve also come to a different conclusion; sometimes the agency didn’t fail to deliver. Most client-agency relationships fails because both parties never agreed on what delivery actually meant.
That distinction matters because the relationship can look very different depending on which side of the table you’re sitting on. The client is thinking about the business outcome they wanted when they signed the retainer. The agency is often thinking about the work it was contracted to produce.
The client thinks, “We need to become more visible in our market, strengthen our reputation and generate more meaningful opportunities.”
The agency thinks, “We need to develop the strategy, create the content, manage the channels, secure media coverage and report on performance.”
Both may be working hard. Both may genuinely believe they’re doing what was agreed. Yet six months later, the client is asking why the business hasn’t moved while the agency is pointing to everything it has delivered.
That isn’t always a capability problem. It’s an accountability gap wearing the costume of a delivery failure.
From my evaluation, the problem starts before the work begins
One of the biggest mistakes I see is that businesses approach agencies with a solution before they’ve properly defined the problem.
“We need social media.”
“We need PR.”
“We need a new website.”
“We need someone to manage our digital marketing.”
Those may be legitimate needs, but they aren’t necessarily the business problem. If a CEO tells me they need social media, one of my first questions should be: why?
What are you actually trying to change? Is the problem visibility? Is it reputation? Is the company poorly positioned? Are customers unclear about what the business does? Is the sales process failing to convert interest? Is the website creating friction? Is the company simply not being seen by the people who matter?
Those are very different problems, even though the initial request might be exactly the same.
This is something I’ve become increasingly conscious of through running Carlstic. Sometimes a client doesn’t need more content. They need clearer positioning. Sometimes they don’t need another campaign. They need a better website or a stronger conversion path. Sometimes the problem isn’t communications at all. An agency should be willing to say that.
The temptation, particularly when a new client is sitting across the table ready to sign a retainer, is to agree with the brief and get to work. But if the brief is solving the wrong problem, delivering it perfectly doesn’t make the engagement successful.
That’s an uncomfortable truth for agencies because challenging the client can feel like risking the business. It’s also an uncomfortable truth for clients because sometimes the solution they’ve already decided they want isn’t the solution their business actually needs.
The best agency relationship I’ve seen isn’t one where the agency simply executes whatever the client asks for. It’s one where both sides can challenge the thinking before the work begins.
An agency can only control so much
There’s another problem that becomes obvious once the engagement starts: the agency can only control so much.
I’ve seen situations where the work was delivered, but the client was unavailable for approvals and reviews. Content couldn’t go live when it needed to. Campaigns were delayed. Opportunities were lost because decisions took too long. Agency time that should have gone into strategy and execution was instead spent chasing approvals.
The agency can be accountable for the quality and effectiveness of what it has been hired to do. It cannot simultaneously be held responsible for decisions, approvals, sales follow up or internal disagreements that sit entirely within the client’s business.
That doesn’t mean the client is at fault either. It means both sides need to understand the difference between what they can influence and what they control.
This becomes even more important when a business expects marketing to compensate for weaknesses elsewhere in the organisation. A company can generate interest and still fail to convert it because nobody follows up properly. It can attract attention and still struggle because its offer is unclear. It can invest heavily in communications and still lose opportunities because different decision makers inside the business are pulling in different directions.
No communications or marketing agency can permanently solve those problems from the outside.
And this is where many retainers begin to break down. The client sees a business problem. The agency sees a communications assignment. Both are technically correct, but they aren’t necessarily solving the same thing.
What should have been agreed before the retainer?
Before signing a retainer, I believe both sides should be able to answer a few basic questions clearly.
First, what exactly are we trying to change?
Not what content are we going to produce. Not how many posts are we going to publish. Not how many media placements are we going to secure. What needs to be different in six months for the client to genuinely say that this investment worked?
Second, what does each side actually control?
If the agency is responsible for communications strategy, messaging, content, PR and digital execution, those responsibilities should be clear. If the client is responsible for approvals, internal decision making, providing information, sales follow up or making key business decisions, making payments on time, those responsibilities should also be clear.
Third, how will we know whether things are moving?
Not every communications engagement should be judged directly by revenue. A strategic PR engagement, for example, may be intended to strengthen credibility, improve positioning, increase visibility among decision makers or create access to conversations the company previously couldn’t enter.
But there should still be something meaningful to look at. There should be indicators that tell both sides whether the work is moving in the right direction before the final business outcome appears.
Most importantly, both sides should be honest about what would indicate that the relationship itself isn’t working. That conversation is often missing.
Instead, the client waits until frustration has accumulated and says, “The agency isn’t delivering.”
The agency waits until the relationship becomes difficult and says, “We’ve delivered everything in the scope.”
Both statements can be true.
That’s the part of the agency relationship that the industry doesn’t talk about enough. A retainer isn’t simply a list of services exchanged for a monthly fee. It’s an agreement between two organisations that are supposed to work together toward a defined change.
If the client measures success through business movement while the agency measures success through completed deliverables, the relationship can remain technically successful on paper while feeling like a failure in reality. And when that happens, the easiest thing to do is blame the agency.
Sometimes that blame is deserved. Sometimes it isn’t.
Before concluding that an agency failed to deliver, I think there’s a more important question to ask: Did both sides ever agree on what delivery actually meant?
Because if they didn’t, the problem may not have started when the agency missed the target.
It may have started when the retainer was signed.
Key Takeaways
- A retainer can fail before the work even begins.
If the client and agency haven’t agreed on the problem they’re solving and what success looks like, good execution can still feel like failure. - Clients and agencies control different parts of the outcome.
Agencies are accountable for the quality and effectiveness of their work, while clients remain responsible for decisions, approvals, internal alignment, sales follow up and other factors within their control. - Business problems shouldn’t automatically become communications assignments.
A request for PR, social media, digital marketing or a website may be a symptom of a deeper problem. Agencies need to challenge the brief when the proposed solution doesn’t address the real issue. - Success needs to be defined before the retainer is signed.
Both sides should agree on what they’re trying to change, who controls what, how progress will be measured and what would indicate that the relationship isn’t working.
The central takeaway: Before asking whether an agency delivered, clients and agencies should first ask whether they ever agreed on what delivery meant.
Kimani Patrick is the Founder & CEO at Carlstic, a Kenyan-based strategic communications & public relations firm.
