Co-creation in Social Media Marketing Strategy: Re-evaluating the Agency-Client Relationship, An Extended Abstract

Abstract

This paper reports results from a study on the formulation, execution and evaluation of social media marketing strategy. Most social media marketing strategies are developed by specialist agencies, on behalf of their clients. Accordingly, at the centre of the strategy formation is an agency-client relationship (ACR). In other marketing contexts, the ACR has been shown to have a significant impact on the outcomes of marketing and brand campaigns (Beard 2010; Gould et al. 1999; Yuksel 2011). This has led to an on-going stream of research, but the body of research into the role of the ACR in the context of social media marketing strategies is very limited. Such research argues for the centrality of co-creation in marketing work whilst also acknowledging the increasing complexity of relationship networks in a social media era (e.g. Novani 2012; Piller et al. 2012). Indeed, given the widespread acknowledgement of the consumers contribution to the co-creation of the brand in social media spaces (Skalen et al. 2015), it would be possible to propose a three-way triad, involving consumer, agency and client, but here the exploration is restricted to the agency-client dyad. The aim of this research is to generate deeper insights into the nature of the ACR in the context of social media marketing and to propose a model of the dynamics of a co-creative ACR. Further, we argue that a co-creative core to the ACR can mitigate issues that arise from some of the other tensions typically recognised to exist in these relationships. Ultimately, our research makes two theoretical contributions relating to the ACR and social media marketing strategy, respectively.