Speaking on the first day of Brand Republic's Media360 conference, Mendoza also urged advertisers to give their agencies room to manoeuvre, and the "permission to try and fail a little bit" to achieve the right results from a media strategy.
Referring to MPG Media Contacts' relationship as retained agency for EDF Energy, Mendoza said: "If you’re lucky enough to work with a client that’s open minded, you have a good chance of producing work that exceeds expectation."
He said that the pay-off for that open-minded attitude was that media agencies had to raise their game and get much closer to client needs.
"The quid pro quo for that open-mindedness, is that it is our responsibility as an agency now to get close enough to interpret the client's business needs into a communications issue."
Mendoza also said that media agencies needed to get the most from owners of properties. Longer-term partnerships would deliver "much, much greater value" and innovation would be remembered long after the great price that was delivered.
Moving back to his views on the client-agency relationship, Mendoza called for a sense of "British fair play". If media agencies wanted to be treated like a partner, he said, they should "act like one", and that although some wanted to be treated like a trusted business partner, some of them were acting like suppliers.
Mendoza said: "I can almost guarantee that if an agency acts like a partner from the very beginning, they won’t be treated like a supplier, and equally, I can guarantee that if we act like a supplier, we shouldn’t really then be shocked if we’re not then treated like a partner.
"If we want to be the go-to expert, we must continue to do what we do now, and employ very grown-up, very talented people."
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