Working Well Together: Doubling down on the fundamentals

AURA is a membership organisation for clientside researchers in the UK. AURA’s aim is to allow their members to grow their expertise and impact that they have in the organisations they work for.

In 2024, AURA launched an initiative called The Working Well Together (WWT) Charter. This Charter lists six principles to guide how clients and agencies work together.

The six principles of The WWT Charter are:

• We'll respect your time

• We’ll commit to open and honest conversations at all times

• We’ll leave you to do your best work by managing our side of things well

• We’ll treat you as an extended part of our team

• We’ll respect your right to disconnect

• We’ll commit to proper feedback 

All of The WWT Charter’s principles are united by a common trait. They all emphasise the importance of doubling down on fundamental relationship management skills. Many of which revolve around how agencies and clients communicate with one other. 

WWT or CSC?

Suzanne Lugthart summarises The WWT Charter as “a common sense charter.” But is also quick to reinforce that while The WWT Charter reinforces fundamental soft skills, a) you can never be good enough at them. And b) it’s always worth reminding yourself of the fundamentals.

These fundamental skills include writing clear and accurate briefs. Well managed chains of command. Being able to have open and honest conversations. And often, sticking to the ingredients of what makes good, effective communication. All of which are reflected in The WWT Charter’s principles.

“The single biggest problem with communication is…

… the illusion it has taken place”. This quote from George Bernard Shaw was true over 76 years ago. It’s still true today. But there are other communications challenges agencies and clients are grappling with.

Anna Cliffe believes that often the main communications challenges agencies and clients face can often be boiled down to: 

People being in different organizations and not having access to the same information as each other.”

However, as Anna notes, this reflects one of the main reasons clients work with agencies – to be able to work with people outside of their organisation. 

It’s also worth noting that such communication challenges aren’t unique to the research sector. Look no further than The Institute for Practitioners of Advertising’s ‘Better Briefs’ initiative for an example of where another sector is looking to improve how agencies and clients communicate.  

Good communication: the start, the middle and the end

In an insight project, what constitutes effective communication differs based on where you are in the project cycle.

At the start of a project, effective agency/client communication centres around laying the foundations for a good working relationship. This includes establishing what’s expected within the project parameters, but also what hours it’s reasonable to contact people. How emails should be titled. And an agreement on how to handle any challenges later on.

During projects, good agency/client communications are based on openness and honesty. Especially when challenges arise. And in doing so, using The WWT Charter as a prompt to have the right conversations rather than avoid them.

And as projects wind down, there are two main communications touchpoints.

Firstly, the debrief. Here, agency/client communications are important in both shaping the debrief content and collaborating on how clients will support their agency in a debrief where needed. Both of which build into The WWT Charter’s pledge for clients to ‘treat agencies as an extended part of their team.’ 

Secondly, The WWT Charter asks those who sign it to commit to post-project wash-ups and feedback sharing. Suzanne Lugthart explains the importance of this as follows: 

Feedback at the end of a project is valuable to assess where you worked well together. Where there were challenges. But most importantly, identifying how you can make your working relationship better in the future.” 

Future proofing the fundamentals

As AI changes – and promises to continue changing – the way we do research, we need to consider the impact this will have on how agencies and clients manage their relationships. Especially how they communicate with each other.

Nick Bonney makes several observations on this topic: 

What’s worrying is the prospect that people use LLMs for writing briefs and giving questionnaire feedback under the endorsement that doing so is more efficient. Which may be true. But doing so could remove the sense of ownership over some of these key building blocks and create even greater distance between agencies and clients."

This isn’t to say that AI can’t be a useful tool in helping agencies and clients work together. But what matters is that those using it – agency or clientside – do so in a way that doesn’t remove the human elements of working together.

This is a point which that’s reassuringly backed-up by the Market Research Institute International’s recent ‘State of the Industry’ survey. This research identifies that soft skills – like communication and collaboration – were the training areas that saw the largest increased in priority between 2025 and 2026.

Next week

We’ll discuss some of the success stories from clients and agencies who have committed to the WWT Charter.  You can read more about WWT here.