Category Archives: Client Relationships

Are we doing wrong in creating “what the client likes”?

A few years back, when I was working in a 900-person ad agency, a new Copywriter entered our group. As he set up shop in the office next to me, he asked:

“So…this Creative Director. What kind of stuff does he like?”

“Excuse me?”

“You know, what kind of copy does he typically approve? What’s easier to get through and flies with him? Does he have a style he likes to see?”

I was taken aback by the question.What does it matter if it’s a smart idea and the right kind of idea for the brand? If you’re a compelling strategist and presenter, so what if you have to sell a little harder to persuade someone to choose it?

Here are some variations of things I have heard:

“Bob doesn’t like seeing images of people looking directly at him.”

“Can we make sure the copy isn’t so negative-sounding? Janet doesn’t typically approve that.”

“Sam is big on making sure we list all of our services and in bullet point.”

“Laura tends to be more of an Earth-tone color person so our layout should have that. Get rid of these bright colors.”

“I like pink. If you give me anything with pink in the ad, I’ll approve it. Pink, pink, pink.”

“I know what you’re saying, I love it and I think the audience would love it. But it’ll never fly with this client. He doesn’t do humor.”

“Gary’s always been more comfortable with traditional media. Put more of that into your strategy than the online stuff and he’ll like it.”

If you’re in Advertising long enough, you’ll learn that revisions are part of the natural order. Things don’t sail through with ease. They get analyzed. They run through a gauntlet of account and creative people taking hacks at the work. And if emerges unscathed, it goes out the door to a client that – you guessed it – takes more hacks at it. As Luke Sullivan, author of “Hey Whipple, Squeeze This!” calls it, it’s the “Death by A Thousand Tiny Cuts.”

Nature of the beast, I suppose. But that doesn’t mean you take the easy way out to avoid it at all costs. That includes writing for people who aren’t in the target audience. This is why answering the “What kind of work do they like?” question may win the battle but ultimately loses the war on several fronts.

First, it’s created with the endgame of trying to ensure the idea sees the light of day. That’s woefully short-sighted.
If your idea does get through but can’t connect with the audience because all you were concerned with was appeasing internal forces, how does that benefit the agency or client? It doesn’t. It does a disservice to them, even if they can’t automatically grasp why that idea is the right one. And that will only come back to hurt you.

Second, the end buyer is an afterthought with a question like this.
The Creative Director and client are buyers of the idea but they are not buyers of the product. If you’re not thinking about those end buyers, you’re not doing justice to the client’s brand, the agency or yourself. We don’t always reach the goal of creating the kind of amazing ideas we want to, but we always have to try and push as far as we can until then. Even if it’s the harder road to take.

Third, you lose your identity as a writer or designer.
It becomes their message. Their design. Their tone. Their style. You become a clone of them. But your Creative Director or client doesn’t need a clone. If they’re any good at their job at all and not a complete dictator, he or she needs different perspectives other than their own that produce creative surprises, not what they want and expect to see.

Yes, I know this isn’t art and can’t be an expression of whatever we want. That’s selfish because it becomes all about us rather than, again, the target audience. But there is a difference between creating and order taking.

Creating gives meaningful thought to the challenge and considers how to speak to the audience in unexpected ways that resonate with them. Order taking gives no meaningful thought and only considers what your boss or the client wants to say or design. You lose a bit of your soul the more this happens.

Think of how this applies to something else, like music. There will be only one U2. One Coldplay. One Foo Fighters. One Leonard Bernstein. One Stephen Sondheim. One Mozart.  Is it better to emulate someone who has already produced something great or is it worthwhile to create something on our own? Some people are all for the first option and get fulfillment off of that – cover bands, essentially. They can be talented in their own right but they aren’t bringing anything new to the table we didn’t expect. If you play 80’s rock, we’re going to expect 80’s rock. There’s safety in that because people can identify with your music and you may get a great turnout at the local bar.

But if you create something from scratch that you think the end audience may like? The stakes and risks are higher. They don’t know your music because it’s original. It’s new and different to their ears. The road to success is a lot harder, from sleeping in vans to playing in the worst bars imaginable for little money at first. And yet, if you have even a moderate amount of success beyond this level, you surpass any kind of fame the cover band will have. Because you’re giving people the unexpected. They then anticipate that and appreciate that. They tell others. Your fan base grows.

Playing to the immediate crowd is safe. If you’re comfortable with being a cover band in the creative world, good luck and I hope it works out. But if you can stomach the harder road by striving to deliver the unexpected rather than what you know they want, I’ll be raising a lighter high to salute you.

You can’t pay for a taco when you ordered the filet mignon.

It sounds hilarious. Ridiculous. Insane. Because the reason so many of us can relate to this funny but painfully true video is that we have heard such things prospective clients have said in order to get out of paying nearly as much money. In addition to these, I have echoes of phrases like “sweat equity,” and “if you do this for me, I know a lot of people…” embedded in my brain.

So if you’re a purchaser of services and believe you’re being slick and savvy in wanting to pay for a taco when you ordered the filet mignon, you’re not. When you’re purposefully trying to screw the other party, that’s crossing a line from good faith negotiation into being less than professional and respectful.

And if you’re a provider of quality services, stand up for yourself. I know you’ve got bills to pay right in front of you. But if you’re striving for better relationships and in turn, greater fulfillment in what you do for a living, you can’t get bullied into someone telling you that you’re worth less.

Because in the end, all you’ll feel is worthless.

12 service questions that might be worth $400 million to answer.

The relationship and chemistry side of our business is routinely undervalued for its role in how companies make decisions to stay with an agency. Here’s the truth: Yes, companies choose agencies and stay with them because they produce results. But also because…they like them.

Oh, but nobody could ever say that. Everyone has to appear emotionally impartial and objective. Anything otherwise wouldn’t be proper.

Of course we know that’s not true. When a winning agency presents, it’s hard if not impossible to show emotion on the client side. A curl of a smile. A chuckle. A gasp or even a tear. This is what we’re going for. It’s the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Because we know if we elicit that response in you, we have an excellent chance of winning that business because it shows a rapport with you, the immediate audience at hand and ultimately, your target audience.

So why isn’t it just as crucial after we win that business to build these types of positive emotional responses in client service? 

In the wake of SC Johnson’s mammoth defection of $400 million in business away from Draft FCB, I believe there’s more to the story here than merely dollars, cents and creative. Here too, it’s about relationships. Internal relationships within the agency that seemed to go haywire, resulting in longtime departures. Around the same time, new blood that came in from the client side. What it sounds like to me from the report in Crain’s is that what occurred was a perfect storm of personalities internally and externally that couldn’t quite mesh. And that makes it very, very challenging for the rest of an agency to overcome.

Relationships matter hugely on the way in and they matter just as much on the way out.

Let’s see. DraftFCB lost its long-time North American President, CFO and Chief of Staff within the last year – rumored to be due to internal politics. So no lack of gigantic transition there. You can put out all the agency memos you want about people seeking new adventures to minimize it, but there’s no mistaking these kinds of changes on one side are huge. And of course, the clients notice. Hello, new Chief Creative Officer.

Then, SC Johnson undergoes a bunch of changes in management too on their side. Big ones at the top. Hello, new Chief Operating Officer.

And it’s not like this new blood comes from within. Much of it came from the outside, which typically means people with their own agendas rather than trying to maintain continuity and cultural status quo. I’m not saying that’s a wrong move, but these types of transitions aren’t always smooth as silk. And when they happen on BOTH sides of the table around the same period of time? Forget about it.

Before we even talk about the quality of brand strategy, creative and results, can you see where this relationship would be behind the 8 Ball?

Let’s say it once and for all. No agency should feel that just because they have a client for 100 years that they should expect to have that client for Year 101 if the business isn’t cared for and nurtured as if it was won yesterday.

With this in mind, here are 12 service questions to ask yourself that are relevant to many in professional services, not just advertising and marketing:
1. Do you keep your contact aware of new trends affecting their industry regularly?
2.  Did you talk to them on the phone today (not e-mail – you have a voice. Use it.)?
3. How many people outside of your daily contact do you know there? How many of those people are outside of the department of your daily contact?
4. Conversely, how many people have they met from your company besides you? Why not?
5. When was the last time you took a tour of your client’s facility and other locations? 
6. When was the last time you just simply thanked them for their business? 
7. Have they ever referred a piece of business to you from another company? Why not?
8. How many other ways can they reach you besides phone and e-mail? Skype? LinkedIn? Twitter? 
9. Do you have regularly scheduled meetings so the both of you put it on your calendars or are you just waiting for them to call you if they need anything?
10. Have they ever invited you to a luncheon/networking event for an association or cause outside of work? Have you done the same for them?
11. Do you understand their goals not only in terms of “ROI in the next 6 months” but what makes them tick personally and professionally? If you offer to take them to a Cubs game, are they going to be put off because they grew up on the South Side and are rabid Sox fans? What music do they like? Do they play golf? Have kids? These aren’t trivial things to know.
12. Outside of what they need for you to provide for them, how well do you understand all the other factors and forces internally that this person needs to navigate to do their job? When you’re not only someone they can confide in but someone they turn to as a person who helps them brainstorm solutions for greater workplace productivity – and that has NOTHING to do with your actual day-to-day job for them – you’ve hit pay dirt.

Some of those may seem like “no brainers” but you would be shocked how many high-ranking management types don’t do them and think they are small in the big picture.

To which my reply is: How many millions would you like to bet on that?

If you have a great example of a way you’ve extended yourself to clients (preferably not just one-time actions, but regular instances that show how you’ve built trust), let’s hear them in your comments so you can inspire others.