The short answer
One owner, and the choice turns on authority rather than interest. An agency engagement stalls at decisions only a partner can make, so the seat needs somebody able to approve spend without calling a meeting and willing to say no to a colleague. In a UK professional services firm that is usually the managing partner, and rarely whoever proposed hiring an agency in the first place.
Key takeaways
- The agency relationship is a seat at the firm, not a task. It exists whether or not anybody has been put in it.
- Every point at which an engagement stalls needs a power rather than an opinion. Enthusiasm for the project supplies none of them.
- The FCA's outsourcing rule says handing a function to a supplier does not hand over senior personnel's responsibility for it, and that holds even where the rule does not apply.
- Company law measures a director against the higher of what the role demands and what that individual actually knows, so the marketing-literate partner is the most exposed candidate, not the safest.
- Where no partner can be given all four powers, appoint nobody yet. The mandate is the thing to fix first.
Search for who should manage the relationship with a marketing agency and the results come mostly from one of two parties. The marketing trade press argues about departments, whether the relationship belongs with marketing or with procurement. The agency side writes about account management, which is the same question answered from the other side of the table.
Both assume something a firm of 10 to 50 people does not have. There is no marketing department to argue with procurement about. The relationship lands on somebody who already has a full week of chargeable work, and in most UK practices it lands on them by accident. The partner who raised the idea keeps it, because nobody else wanted it.
Not whether to hire an agency. Who holds it once you have.
The seat exists whether or not anybody is sitting in it
Outsourcing work does not outsource responsibility for it, and a UK regulator writes that down in unusually plain terms. The Financial Conduct Authority's outsourcing rule, SYSC 8.1, says that a firm outsourcing an important function remains fully responsible for discharging its own obligations, and that the arrangement must not result in the delegation by senior personnel of their responsibility.
Sitting next to it, SYSC 4.4 asks for a clear apportionment of significant responsibilities among a firm's directors and senior managers.
An accountancy practice or a recruitment agency is not an authorised firm, and neither rule binds it. A financial advice firm reading this is already inside them. For everybody else the transferable part is the structure rather than the obligation: a regulator that has thought hard about outsourcing concluded that the arrangement needs a named person on the buying side who keeps enough capability to supervise it.
The negative case is the more useful one. A firm with no named owner has not avoided the responsibility, it has distributed it, and a responsibility spread across four partners is one the agency ends up exercising by default.
Where an engagement actually stalls
An engagement does not stall for want of enthusiasm. It stalls at a small number of specific points, and each one needs a power somebody at the firm either holds or does not.
| The decision | What it needs from the firm | What happens when nobody holds it |
|---|---|---|
| What the practice claims about itself | A settled position on services and results | The copy gets written to the agency's assumptions, then rewritten in month three |
| Which clients the firm wants more of | A commercial preference that excludes work | Targeting spreads across everything the firm does, so nothing ranks for anything |
| Sign-off on a factual claim | Evidence the firm holds, and somebody willing to stand behind it | The claim goes live unevidenced, or never goes live |
| A change of direction mid-quarter | Authority to overrule the firm's own decision from six weeks ago | Both versions of the work continue, each one half-resourced |
| Spend above the agreed retainer | A budget limit one person can use without a partners' meeting | The request queues until its reason has expired |
| Renewing or ending the engagement | Willingness to give bad news to whoever championed the appointment | The engagement renews by default, because nobody owns the alternative |
Not one row asks for interest in marketing. Every row asks for the authority to settle something, which the firm can audit in an afternoon. How many hours the seat then costs is a separate question with its own arithmetic.
The four powers the seat has to carry
A candidate missing any one of the four will hand the decision back up within a quarter.
Spend
What can this person approve without asking anybody?
Failed by the practice manager, who holds an administrative budget rather than a marketing one.
Refusal
Can this person tell another partner that their idea is not going in?
Failed by the most junior person in the room, whatever the job title says.
Commitment
Can this person commit the firm to a claim about its own work?
Failed by anyone who must check with a service line lead first, because that check is where six weeks go.
Continuity
Will this person still hold the seat in twelve months?
Failed by a partner midway through a succession, or anyone taking this on top of a full week.
Why the partner who wants the job is usually the wrong one
Appointing the partner who already understands marketing raises the standard that partner personally is held to. Section 174 of the Companies Act 2006 requires a director to exercise reasonable care, skill and diligence. The measure is not a fixed one. It is the higher of two standards: the general knowledge and skill that may reasonably be expected of somebody carrying out that function, and the actual knowledge and skill the individual happens to have.
Read that against the appointment. A partner who has run marketing before, or who simply reads about it, carries the higher of the two standards into the seat with them. A colleague who knows nothing about the subject is measured against the role alone. So the enthusiast is at once the person doing the most work and the person carrying the most exposure.
Section 174 binds company directors, so a partnership's position depends on its own partnership agreement. Either way, interest in the subject is not a qualification for the seat, and it quietly raises the price of holding it.
Which is why the useful owner is often the partner who says they do not want it. Reluctance is not indifference. Somebody who takes the seat because it needs holding, rather than because the project is theirs, will report a failing engagement in month four instead of month eleven. The exposure is not hypothetical either: the firm, not the agency, is the advertiser whose name sits on a claim when the advertising breaks the rules.
Before the engagement letter
Not sure the seat at your firm is ready to hold an agency?
Free to your firm. The agency pays us, and only if the relationship works, which is why we ask who will be approving the work before we recommend anybody to do it.
Get a recommendationWhen a firm should not appoint an agency yet
Where no partner can be given all four powers, the honest answer is to appoint nobody yet. An engagement without a mandated owner does not fail slowly. It fails at the first factual claim, usually within the first few weeks, and everything after that is negotiation rather than work. Fixing the mandate costs one conversation between partners.
Two situations are worth waiting out rather than working around. A UK practice heading into its busiest filing weeks cannot honestly give the seat the continuity power. And a firm where the marketing decision is genuinely contested between partners has a governance question to settle first, not a supplier to hire.
A third reason to wait is about size rather than timing. Where the fee is small enough that no partner will defend it under pressure, the prior question is whether an agency is worth it for a firm this size, and that is cheaper to answer than a year of an engagement nobody owns. Once the seat is settled, our work with professional services firms starts by asking who will approve the work rather than by taking a brief.
Frequently asked questions
What partners ask once the agency is chosen.
Can the agency relationship sit with our practice manager?
The administrative half can. What cannot move downward is the authority to settle what the firm claims about itself and to approve spend, because both come straight back up to a partner. A practice manager holding the diary alongside a partner who holds the decisions is the arrangement that works.
Should the partner who suggested hiring an agency be the one to run it?
Usually not, and competence is not the reason. Whoever proposed the appointment is the least able to report that it is not working, because the engagement is theirs. Separating the two roles buys an honest fourth month.
What if two partners both want to own it?
Treat that as the thing to settle before an agency is appointed. Two owners means every question the agency asks gets two answers, and the work follows whichever one arrived first. Put one name in the engagement letter and consult the other partner on their own service line.
Does a 12-person firm really need a named owner?
More than a larger one does. A firm with a marketing function has somebody whose job this is by default. A UK practice of 12 people has nobody, so the seat is either assigned deliberately or filled by whoever the agency emails most often.
How much authority over spend does the owner actually need?
Enough to approve the things that go wrong cheaply. A limit covering an unplanned landing page or an extra month of a test is the difference between an engagement that adapts and one that waits.
Sources and useful reading
- Financial Conduct Authority Handbook, SYSC 8.1, general outsourcing requirements, for the rule that outsourcing must not result in the delegation by senior personnel of their responsibility.
- Financial Conduct Authority Handbook, SYSC 4.4, for a clear apportionment of significant responsibilities among named directors and senior managers.
- Companies Act 2006, section 174, for the standard being the higher of what the role demands and what the individual actually knows.
This article is commercial decision support and is not legal advice. The two Financial Conduct Authority rules cited bind authorised firms and are used here as a published structure, not as an obligation on an accountancy practice. This page makes no statistical claims. The three sources above were located on 30 September 2026, and nothing here describes the conduct of any named agency.