Key takeaways
• Taking ownership means carrying the mental load, not taking control away from the client.
• The better an agency understands your world, the less time you should have to spend bringing it up to speed.
• A good agency keeps work moving and keeps thinking, even when you are busy elsewhere.
• If something goes wrong, an accountable agency brings a solution, not just a problem.
There is a particular moment in a great client-agency relationship that is easy to overlook because it feels seamless. You explain what you need, provide the background, and introduce the right people. Then you get on with everything else competing for your attention. You don’t need to keep reminding the agency about the deadline, chasing a colleague for their approval, or remembering which document contains the latest details. You trust that your agency partner has it.
For an in-house marketing or communications director, that peace of mind is invaluable. It’s not simply about the extra capacity; it’s about having someone take responsibility for the work, carry some of the mental load, and care about getting it right. At SE10, that’s what we mean by taking ownership.
Taking ownership doesn’t mean taking control
Clients know their businesses better than any agency could. You understand your internal politics, commercial realities, customers, and product roadmaps. You know which ideas will work internally, and which won’t. We can’t make those decisions for you, but we can understand the brief, make recommendations, and take responsibility for delivering what has been agreed.
That means bringing ideas to the table rather than waiting for instructions, using our judgement, and knowing what is happening inside the market and trade media. But it also means respecting the boundaries of what we can drive independently and when the client needs to decide. Furthermore, taking something off your plate should never mean taking it out of sight. You should have complete visibility of how we’re spending our time and be able to ask where a task or project stands at any time and get a clear answer.
The people doing the work are the people you talk to
We don’t wait for the next brief
If an agency is simply waiting for instructions, its view is limited to whatever lands in its inbox. When you’re invested in a client’s communications, you keep looking beyond the immediate task.
What are trade journalists writing about? What are competitors saying? Is there something happening inside the business that hasn’t yet become a story? Is there a gap in the client’s content? Could existing material work harder across another channel?
That might lead to a press release, a customer magazine idea, a thought leadership opportunity, or a way to develop source material across owned, earned, and shared media. The point isn’t to generate more activity and billable hours, but to notice opportunities the client might not have time to notice themselves and ask whether it’s worth exploring.
If something goes wrong, we bring a plan
Accountability is most visible when things don’t go according to plan. Sometimes information arrives late, approvals take longer than expected, a journalist changes their mind, or an event is rescheduled. The easy response is to flag the problem and put it back on the client’s plate, but the useful response is to flag the problem along with a plan to fix it. If we can solve something independently, we do. If we need client input, we explain what we need and why, while presenting a practical way forward. That’s what taking accountability for the work looks like in practice.
So, what should you reasonably expect from your communications agency?
Once you’ve entrusted an agency with your communications, you shouldn’t have to manage every step of what happens next. You provide the context, connect the agency with the right experts, and make the decisions that absolutely must sit with you. In return, you should expect your agency to understand the detail, keep things moving, spot opportunities, solve problems, make recommendations, keep you informed, and care about the outcome. In other words, you should be able to trust them to treat the work as if it were their own. Because great agency relationships aren’t where your partner takes the work and disappears. They’re where you know it’s fully taken care of.
Hannah Kitchener
Associate Director
About the author
Hannah is an associate director in the UK, leading strategic campaigns for industrial clients across the EMEA region. A professionally qualified journalist (NCTJ), she combines specialist sectoral knowledge in construction, energy, and materials handling with a strong network of trade media contacts to secure valuable coverage. Her expertise in inter-cultural communication, honed by degrees in modern languages and translation, is key to executing campaigns that succeed across diverse European markets.
