What’s the One Thing? Top Expectations Driving Modern Client-Agency Partnerships

In an industry built on collaboration, mutual understanding between clients and agencies is everything. But what does that really look like in 2025? At Cannes Lions, we asked a deceptively simple question to adland leaders: What’s the number one thing you agencies expect of their clients, and vice versa?

Read on to find out what they said.

Judy John

Global chief creative officer at Edelman​
​Titanium jury president​

It's not surprising that it [Titanium Grand Prix winner AXA’s ‘Three Words’] won across so many different categories, because it fits in different categories in how they solved the problem and all the pieces they put together. That is creativity at its best – when you see these different tools and you need to bring them together.

I think that already, it has started to change clients. We had [Rocket CMO] Jonathan Mildenhall on the jury, and he said, "Oh my god, this will change the entire industry." And when you know he works in the mortgage industry, he's thinking, how do I transform that industry?

So we've already started to see the first domino. That's one thing we talked about as a jury – what are the cases we're going to show our clients to inspire them to do something different, meaningful, and impactful? This was a case we showed to one of our clients, saying, look at one of the competitors and what they're doing. We need to step up and try to do more.

And that's why it's winning. It's already having an impact – even before we awarded it here. It exists in the real world.

Ronald Ng

Global CCO at MRM​

What do I expect? Shared ambition, shared risk, and the belief that bold ideas deserve a client-agency team brave enough to break down barriers and see them through in their purest form.

Bravery in this business doesn’t happen in isolation – it happens when there’s real trust between the client and agency. When agency and client teams are both all in and just a text away. When we’re building the unknown together. That kind of trust unlocks honest conversations, bolder decisions, and work that actually moves people.

I often tell my clients that the best ideas are our babies. We need to protect, nurture, and give them the confidence to grow and make mistakes. I don’t expect perfection. I expect fluidity and commitment – to the idea, to the process, and to each other. That’s when creativity stops being a service and starts becoming a shared mission.

Eugene Park

Global Marketing Lead for IMX, Creative & Design at CJ CheilJedang​
Health & Wellness Jury

From clients, I expect clarity – with courage. Know what you want to achieve, but also be open to unexpected paths to get there.

From agencies, I expect obsession. Not with awards, but with solving the real problem in a way no one else could. That’s where the magic happens.

Tarek Miknas

Chief executive officer at FP7/MENA​

The relationships that work best are those that are the most balanced – where the partnership is valued and respected on both sides, and where both feel they need the other. Like any relationship, the minute one is stronger than the other, there's an imbalance.

We've worked with both examples. We have superstars on this side and really bad offenders on that side. And with the offenders, it just never works. You can't fix it by just going to another agency, because it's not going to work there either. It's not going to work in a third place. And if it does, you'll probably be losing your best people again and again.

At some point, it's not worth it anymore – because you lose your best people, and you lose other clients.

We're very lucky. We're in a part of the world – specifically Dubai – that is very transient. So results are incredibly important. They want to show that between this period and that period, the brand grew. The financial results grew.

But even with that, it's comforting to see that we have relationships that have lasted 30 years, 40 years, 10, 12, 20. A lot of our big clients are long-time clients. In these relationships, there is this incredible amount of trust and respect for one another.

We really, really want to help them. When they're good to you, you want to do everything to make them succeed. You work at night – not because you care to charge an extra dollar – but because you want that brand to kill the other brand. You become part of them.

It's that mutual trust and respect between both parties.

Dimi Albers

Global CEO at DEPT​

I think the number one thing I would expect – which a lot of clients are not doing – is rethinking the structure of their teams. If I look at who I'm meeting this week, I think in two or three years' time, the marketing team, or the CMO’s team in any business, will need to look fundamentally different, act fundamentally different, and be organised fundamentally differently.

Everybody is massively preoccupied with: What should I do with AI? How can I pilot it? How can I scale it? But they’re not understanding that, if you really want to achieve acceleration, you need to rethink who those people are on your team and how they work together.

You cannot imagine how many people on our clients’ teams are still making PowerPoint decks every day and talking about how they look, what the next flight of the campaign calendar is, and all that jazz. That’s still relevant – but if you don’t also have people changing the organisation to adopt new ways of working and new technology, then you’re going to be screwed.

For me, that’s a big thing – especially because this is the third year running where, in basically every speech you attend, everyone’s talking about AI. But it’s also the third year that nobody has fundamentally changed how their team is working.

And it's not about losing jobs. It's about understanding that in two or three years, things will be fundamentally different. It's like if you're playing in the Premier League and you're mid-table, but you want to play in the Champions League – you need different players, a different system, and potentially a different culture.

That’s the thing I see lacking. And that’s what I would expect to be addressed.
Hire a bunch of non-marketers. That’s the answer. I don’t care who they are. Some of them might be technologists, some might be architects, some might be artists. But that’s what I really believe.

It’s the faster version of what happened over the last 10 years. Back then, most marketing leadership teams were 80–90% advertising people, maybe 10% doing search or digital. Then it shifted to 50/50, and now you have many CMOs with digital backgrounds.

This next iteration needs to happen twice – or three times – as fast.

Read more about Cannes Lions here.