Working Well Together: Unpacking the tensions behind The WWT Charter

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. 

Last week, we discussed the background to The WWT Charter. And this week we’re diving into the drivers of the tensions it seeks to address.

In speaking to 14 clientside research teams from an array of sectors and 15 agencies of varied sizes and areas of expertise, AURA identified nine consistent themes from their conversations. These were (full details available in The WWT Launch Report):

• The growth of ghosting

• Moveable briefs

• The proposals process

• The consistent need for urgency

• Onboarding systems

• Relationships with procurement

• Having the right to disconnect

• Collaboration between agencies, their clients, and internal stakeholders

• Working better together to create impactful debriefs

But behind these nine themes sit three key drivers that have the potential to cause tensions to appear in the above areas. All of which The WWT Charter is seeking to resolve. 

A gap in understanding

Agencies and clients are both under pressure. But different kinds of pressure. Agencies face the constant stress of having to win work to stay in business. While clients have to consistently manage corporate processes and politics.

However, most of the time clients and agencies don’t know enough about the unique stresses one another face. Yes, there are instances where people have worked in both agency and clientside roles. But it’s rare that someone has held a senior position in both. However, Nick Bonney is one person who has. And therefore well placed to discuss this:

Misunderstandings probably come from a bit of an empathy gap on both sides. On the clientside you’ve got people who started their career in agencies but not run one. This means they don’t understand the commercial and resourcing pressures agencies face. Equally, you have people who work in agencies, but don’t understand clientside pressures, like how hectic corporate diaries are.”

And while it’s impossible to give agency and clientside researchers the years of the other’s experience, The WWT Charter is seeking to close this gap in understanding by asking those who sign it to commit to proper feedback that’s constructive and educational, and in doing so give agencies and clients a view into their respective working realities.

How projects start off

Client/agency tensions around proposals and work overload are often connected with the need to start projects off in a transparent and honest way.

This starts with the type of proposal clients need. Sometimes, agencies will produce all signing all dancing proposals when one isn’t required. This leads to them investing lots of time in the proposal stage when doing is so is unnecessary. And this is why The WWT Charter asks clients to respect agencies time when asking for a proposal and to tell them what it needs to include.

Agencies can help with this challenge in two ways. Firstly, if a client doesn’t provide information about what type of proposal is needed, it’s something they should ask. And secondly, by not aiming to please by overpromising in the proposal stage. Yes, these overpromises may be the difference between winning and losing a project. But they also lead to delivery challenges later on.

The stakeholder chain of command

The reality of stakeholder management is that it’s complex and takes deliberate energy and effort.. The reasons why are best summarised by Nicola Stevens:

There is no one size fits all approach to stakeholder management. I’ve worked in several clientside teams. And what works for one stakeholder doesn’t work for another. Or what works for one agency doesn’t work for another agency. This means stakeholder management approaches need adjusting on a project-by-project basis.”

Stakeholder management challenges can also stem from the long chain command between a main stakeholder and an agency researcher managing a project. A challenge that Nick Bonney believes research agencies can – in part – solve by looking at how advertising agencies operate.

In an ad agency, people have meetings with CMOs. And yes, these meetings are stressful. But it means the people working on the campaigns have a direct line of communication. But in research projects often questions are passed from a Marketing Director to a Brand Manager, to an Insight Manager, to an agency lead, then to their project team. And by the time it’s passed through this chain, the question has been misinterpreted, or it ends up resulting in spin off requests, which all result in pressure.”

Stakeholder management challenges can lead to shifting briefs and time pressures. This is why clients who sign up to The WWT Charter, are committing to “managing their side of things well.”

But there are also additional steps agencies can take. Firstly, by giving their project teams more access to stakeholders early on in projects. But secondly, and most importantly, thinking about training agency staff in stakeholder management. The status quo is that people learn about stakeholder management on the job over time. Given how important and complex stakeholder management is, perhaps it’s time to start making this something researchers learn from day 1 in the job. 

Coming next week

Next week, we’ll discuss how the solutions to these challenges lie in researchers (agency and clientside) doing the fundamentals of their respective roles brilliantly.

You can read more about WWT here.

Vue Cinema, The AA, and Lovebrands will be discussing WWT at Quirks London 3:15pm – 3:45pm on Wednesday, May 6, 2026