Ad Agencies: The Buffer?

Here's the deal. You have a great property that is perfect for a specific brand. For example, we rep the hottest Snowboarding show (http://www.shakedown.ca/) in North America. Concurrently, Mr. Big announces that it wants to blanket the 14-25 year old male demo. We have a fit! We all know that sponsorship marketing is the term of the moment in the advertising world and it continues to take market share from traditional advertising. However, Houston, we have a problem. Cadbury's brand manager says speak to my agency and four weeks later the agency says, "I'm not sure this works for us." In that context, the brand uses the agency as a buffer, moving the perfect fit property one step further away from the ultimate decision makers. I get it - experiential marketing needs to fit seemlessly with the overall marketing campaign. However, sometimes, great opportunities get missed when decision makers get buffered.