In the buoyant world of agency reviews, there’s an industry that’s quietly flourishing. Some call it agency search consulting. Others prefer softer euphemisms—relationship management, agency optimisation, marketing transformation. Tomato, tomahto.
Whether you call them matchmakers or marriage counsellors, they all make money from the friction between brands and agencies.
Let’s be clear: the value of the divorce market dwarfs that of couples therapy. In the U.S. alone, the average divorce costs around $15,000. Couples therapy? About $150 an hour. There’s a reason lawyers drive nicer cars than therapists.
So it's no surprise that many consultants opt to play both sides: help fix the relationship, but be ready to help find someone new when the therapy fails.
Still, some search consultants should be applauded for urging clients to pause and listen before pulling the pitch trigger.
Take Stephan Argent, founder of the cleverly named Listenmore, a consultancy that specialises in agency search management, marketing transformation, and AI consulting.
Argent recently introduced a welcome twist on the traditional RFP: the Request for Transformation.
He described it as “a strategic alternative designed to revitalise your incumbent agency relationships,” and it nails the diagnosis: most client-agency relationships fall apart not from catastrophic failure, but from neglect. Misaligned expectations. Poor communication. Lack of feedback loops. As Argent puts it, many agencies “never get the opportunity to address shortcomings outside a search process.”
No argument there. But here’s the rub: this “Request for Transformation” is typically initiated—and paid for—by the client. Which creates a not-so-subtle power imbalance. It’s like a spouse hiring the therapist and expecting the other partner to show up, be open, and possibly grovel, while fully aware that a new spouse may already be waiting in the lobby.
Agency therapy, however well-meaning, can become a prelude to agency divorce.
That said, it still beats the alternative. When done in good faith, this kind of reset can spare everyone the resource drain and morale hit of an unnecessary pitch.
So here’s my unsolicited advice to agencies feeling vulnerable: flip the script.
Hire the therapist.
Pay the invoice yourself.
Invite your client into the process—not to defend your work, but to improve the relationship.
Because imagine if the diagnostic report didn’t just highlight agency shortfalls, but also held up a mirror to the client’s role in the dysfunction. The shifting briefs. The indecisive stakeholders. The CMO who arrives with a change-the-agency agenda baked into their onboarding. The impatience that comes from chasing quarterly performance metrics instead of long-term brand growth.
In my day, even the most transactional packaged goods marketers would test backup campaigns in case the lead campaign wore out. That kind of contingency thinking helped stabilise agency relationships and made them genuinely collaborative.
Today, some marketers seem to believe that if you can swap out a campaign every quarter, why not swap out an agency every year?
Call it a Request for Transformation. Call it couples therapy. Call it what you like.
But when agencies take the initiative to improve the relationship—rather than wait for the RFP—they just might shift the dynamic. Not to mention save their jobs, their teams, and their sanity.
Because in the end, while search consultants may promise the perfect match, strong relationships are rarely found. They're built.
Éric Blais is president of Headspace Marketing, a consultancy that helps marketers build brands in Quebec.
