Ikea and Mother on the agency-client relationship
At this year’s Festival of Marketing: The Year Ahead, Kemi Anthony, marketing communications manager at Ikea, and Katie Mackay-Sinclair, partner at Mother, discussed how nurturing a decade-long relationship has led to an array of successful campaigns
In January 2010, Ikea appointed Mother London to handle its advertising for the UK and Ireland. At the time the brand was keen to work with the agency as a “creative partner” to help “realise its ambitions” and since then they’ve worked hard at finessing not just the work but also the creative relationship between them.
As part of this month’s Festival of Marketing: The Year Ahead event, CR editor Eliza Williams spoke to Kemi Anthony and Katie Mackay-Sinclair to get an insight into this particular client-agency relationship. Over the conversation, they reflected on the importance of nurturing these connections through collaboration and trust, and how that has led to some truly creative and groundbreaking work over the years.
A GOOD CLIENT/AGENCY RELATIONSHIP
Ikea and Mother London first began working together almost 12 years ago and Anthony and Mackay-Sinclair have worked together for the last ten of those. While the agency’s remit has extended beyond the UK and Ireland for different campaigns, the dynamic of how both teams work together has stayed relatively similar, but the road to getting there has been a long one.
