Background:           Advertising agencies are largely understudied in academia. Few studies have probed these organizations on more than a superficial level. For this reason, little research is available on how advertising agencies are organized and how they operate. This study aims at gaining an initial understanding in the specific area of how advertising agencies relate to their clients. The project leaders at advertising agencies often double as account executives. These are therefore the focus of this study.

Purpose:                  By using a sales-oriented framework that focuses on long-term relationships this study aims to find how project leaders handle layers of the client relationship and what benefits are created by this approach. The purpose is thus to explore how project leaders at an advertising agency manage their client relationships in order to create benefit for the client

Method:                   Case study utilizing ethnography and in-depth interviews at a successful mid-sized advertising agency. The ARA-model is used to describe the relationship. Key account management research and digitalization theory add further theoretical depth to the analysis.

Conclusion:             The results show that advertising agency-client relationships must be understood partly through a layer of digitalization in addition to the layers of the ARA-model. It can also be concluded that customization is a crucial benefit for the advertising agency to create benefit for their client. This benefit permeates all layers of the relationships.