Being a client is hard
12 months after leaving the industry, former agency creative, Jason Rose (left), wonders if in hindsight he should have been more understanding of his clients and their challenges:
I spent nearly 10 years as a copywriter and I have a confession to make: looking back now, my attitude towards clients was often misguided.
During my decade as a creative, I strode into countless client meetings convinced I knew more about the client’s business and customers than they did. My job was to convince them, not to listen to them. And if, in the end, I just couldn’t get them to buy an idea, my job was to spend the entire cab ride back to the agency deriding them.
I’ve now changed sides. I’m now the client, running my own business, adboss.com.au. They’re now my dollars (and balls) on the line and the decisions that used to be so easy have become much, much harder. Bottom line? I have developed a whole new world of respect for clients.
As a copywriter, I spent countless nights at my desk trying to create that killer idea – the one that would clean up at award shows and, finally, take my career to a whole new level. Cannes, D&AD, One Show. That was pressure. But it’s not a fraction of the pressure I now feel sitting in my office asking myself the real question: will it work? Will it build my business?
I used to believe that effective work had to be edgy, original and innovative. It had to make you feel uneasy, move you out of your comfort zone and be the result of smashing your head against the brick wall of cliché. I still believe that, sort of.
Since going out on my own, I have executed countless ideas to market my business. Some of them have been edgy and ‘creative’ and others have been super boring, conservative and safe. Scarily, there has been little to no correlation between edginess and effectiveness. Some of the dullest things we have done have produced the best results and certainly vice versa.
I don’t believe creativity does not work. Engaging consumers, catching them in unexpected ways, helping them to like you, showing that you really understand them and their needs have to be worthy strategies. However, I look back now at the countless passionate, and often heated, arguments that I had with clients over the years and wonder if I was always right.
Was that battle I once had with an FMCG client over the size of their logo intelligent? Was my intransigent view that the logo had to be microscopic right?
I know I was told in AWARD school that making the logo smaller encouraged people to engage with the idea. And it’s been deified in every Cannes annual since the early ’90s. But I now think that the client may have been right. Why bury a logo? Where’s the evidence that’s more effective?
Another client – a property website – once briefed us for a campaign to increase visitors. We came up with a concept that we thought rocked. The client loved it (at least, initially). A few days later the suit sat us down with that grim look. The senior client who was not in the meeting – they never are – decided our idea could alienate real estate agents. They still loved it, but…
Fools! It’s a great campaign, I thought. Punters will love it. Punters and award juries.
The funny thing is I now make those kinds of balanced judgements every day without a second’s thought. I now realise that ads – the currency that I worshipped in agency land – are merely a bit-player in a far larger marketing matrix, which itself is merely one part of a business. So many times I would push a concept to the death with a client, and sometimes even beyond it, when it was plain to the client that it was just not right for the business. It was a good ad but not the right ad for them at that time.
I’m not saying clients are always right. Far from it. They make mistakes. They are often timid and desperately confused.
What I am saying is that I now understand why that is so often the case. It’s a tough gig. Commissioning work is a difficult, high stakes game. Clients have to live with the consequences – both internally and externally – far after the ad has run.
I guess if I had my time again, I would still be as passionate as I was in trying to sell my ideas. I’d just do so with a lot more humility and generosity towards the people I was trying to sell them to.
9 Comments
You’ve gone soft, Rose.
What an amazing article… all you in the advertising land should be listening to this!!
I will never forget what my first GM said – ‘Award winning campaigns don’t translate into revenue’
I hope you all take something from this article cause it is 100% truthful!
Post a campaign agency x just launched….30 anon responses shit canning it.
Post a breakup between client x and agency y….20 anon responses taking pot shots at one another.
Post the results of the latest award show….40 anon responses pissed off with the food, music and winners….
Post a mirror to the advertising industry…..the lack of response is deafening.
This was a fantastic insight. Having grown up from a client side, starting entry level into the agency side and moving back to the client side it is all a very different boat. The agency moans and groans of “they just don’t get the creative process” isn’t true – they (mostly) get it, it just isn’t worth being cutting edge when the tried and true formula “still works” with a less dramatic impact on money/time/nerves. Definitely makes trying new and innovative things a hard process, but if you look at it with the “suits” in terms of the entire business rather than the awards it is definitely worth the battle. The client just wants to believe you are looking out for their company first and foremost, rather than the trophies on your mantle.
Really good article. I think we forget how hard it is for clients to manage the buy in to an idea once we leave the room. Good food for thought.
This isn’t a ‘mirror’ into advertising – it’s one man’s opinion.
Seems to me he feels a bit guilty for being arrogant and not thinking hard enough about the real reasons for creating the ads he was asked to work on.
Some of us already carefully consider our client’s needs and are thoughtful about whether it’s right for their brand.
Talking about ‘safe’ versus ‘edgy’ ads without showing us examples is kinda lazy. You can’t really make the point without showing us what you call ‘safe’ or ‘edgy’.
If you have a great offer and don’t need ‘great creative’ to sell it, of course a safe ad will do the job. No amount of creativity is going to make people buy into a crappy offer. Just look at Harvey Norman and Bunnings etc. – no creative required there people.
Maybe the reason no creatives weighed-in here is because we’ve read it all before. It’s become quite the trend to admit where you went wrong. It almost seems like a way of advertising yourself (yes, I’m being sarcastic).
I’m sick of creatives being labeled as award-hungry and self-serving. Sure, some of us do push a little too hard occasionally for award type work (usually out of desperation) but overall I think most of us have our client’s interests at heart and genuinely care about producing effective ads.
So get off your high horse and go write a decent brief for a change.
12:57 = creative wanker. If you have not worked on both sides of the fence then hold back throwing rocks. The irony of the comment ‘get off your high horse and go write a decent brief for a change’ just highlights the lack of understanding that creatives have over the client side process. With the politics that run rampant in the advertising industry you would think that you would be smarter at playing the game. Never tell a client that you know what is better for their brand then them and remember that everyone is creative it just shows in different ways. The industry as a whole is creative. Maybe that’s the problem we should just call art directors, art directors and copy writers, copy writers because true creative has the involvement of all agency areas and this needs to extend to the client side. The people who concept the ad show no more creativity then the decisions account service people make everyday to keep the agency the account and the work that the client does to get the work approved and pay your bills.
The ‘solution’ for marketing a clients business, service or product is so much more clearly understood when you FULLY understand the business and its issues.
The cost is considered to be proportional to the skill required to fully understand the issues and provide the solution.
How sensational the solution is going to look or what award it is going to win (that often judged by other creatives) and what a creative would like to see in their portfolios does NOT enter in the equation.
Clients are not always right and cannot often see the wood for the trees as they are to close to the coal face. Creatives are not always right either and that is why it is imperative that everyone works as a team for the best possible outcome… not as a means to an end for an individual.
Example: I don’t think I would like a Doctor to do open heart surgery on me, no matter how awarded he has been by his peers, without fully understanding my aliment and medical history.
Often the knowledge required to provide this level of service only comes from years of experience and the ability to have an open mind, as has happen for Jason, who is now much better placed to leap in and do open heart surgery on his clients!
Written by a creative not a client but understanding of what it is like to be on both sides of the fence ! : )
A lot of people on the client side have made an error in believing that just because Jason tried to sell in Award winning work meant that it was indeed award winning work.
I’ve lectured and tutored at award school multiple times and I have preached not to write ads for award juries but to the audience. To put themselves in the audience’s shoes and to think long and hard about what’s going to convince them to change their mind or influence a buying decision. I’ve won piles of awards. I only have 5 at home sitting on my desk. The ones that I was given. I didn’t see the point in paying for trophies.the agency kept most and so they should, they paid the entry fee.
Awards are the bi product of brilliant thinking. Anyone that sets out to write an ad to win awards has got it all wrong. They get the thinking right first then the craft. They do it with a very good idea in mind of who they are talking to.
If you want to know just how good your creative person is, ask them which strategy books they’ve read.
The most depressing thing for a great creative person to go through is making something they’ve been forced to do that they know isnt going to work.
To all the clients out there, ask to see the portfolios of the people that are writing your ads and then ask them to take you through their thinking and then the results. If you haven’t done this you’re doing yourself a disservice. Align yourselves with creatives that you respect and build a relationship with them, they’re the game changers. Account people are only interested in your money and them keeping you happy is a means of getting that. They only time they care if it works is if you tell them it didn’t work. Be ambitious, set an unreachable target and then ask a great creative to get you there. I’d be surprised if you didn’t. And you’ll probably pick up a few trophies along the way. I didn’t intentionally mean to leave out the planners in this response but note the best creative minds tend to hang out in a planners office. Or vice versa.
Apologies for any typos, I’m on my iPhone.
Any great creative will have all of these things featured along with the work. And they know the results because they cared enough to find out.
Jason, sorry mate, but I just think you were completely misguided as a creative and you along with other creatives that the work you spoke of wasnt as great as you think it was.