Polish agency body SAR publishes seven standards for working with clients

SAR, the Polish association of marketing communication agencies, launched a project called Ways of Working in September 2026. It sets out seven standards for daily work between an agency and its client. The Polish Advertisers Organization and IAA Polska back it. The materials sit on waysofworking.pl and cost nothing.

Seven standards cover briefs, budgets and who decides

The list starts with an agreed model of cooperation and the level of involvement each side commits to. Then come a shared definition of goals and success, a clear brief with a scope of work and a written way to handle changes, and realistic planning of time, budget and people.

The last three are about behaviour. Somebody has to own the decision. Communication and feedback run both ways. Work rests on data and business context, not on taste.

Starter Rozmowy is a 45-minute meeting for a stuck account

SAR also published a tool it calls Starter Rozmowy, or conversation starter. It is a 45-minute meeting with a checklist and a set of questions. Either side can call it when the process stops working or the talking gets hard. That is the practical part of the project, and the part a client can use next week.

TBWA Warsaw, Publicis and Henkel marketers wrote it together

About fifteen agencies and companies took part. Among the agencies are More is More, TBWA Warsaw and Publicis Worldwide. Marketers came from Henkel, McDonald’s, L’Oreal and Samsung. Katarzyna Chodacka, strategy and operations director at SAR, led the project. The working team also included Pawel Tyszkiewicz, Magdalena Spisak and Joanna Dokudowicz, with Antoni Trela of CPC Brand Consultants advising.

Poland’s ad industry has been writing its own rules more often lately. It recently settled who labels AI content under the AI Act, the European Union’s rules on artificial intelligence.

Marcin Gaworski links the standards to conditions inside agencies

Marcin Gaworski, SAR president and chief executive of 180heartbeats + Jung v Matt, framed the project as a matter of organisational health and working conditions, not only process. That is a different argument from the usual one about efficiency. It also lands in a year when large advertisers keep moving media budgets between holding companies.

The standards are available from September 2026 on waysofworking.pl, free to download. The next real test is the pitch season that starts after the summer break: whether a Polish client writes the brief and the change procedure into the contract, or the document stays a conference handout.