I just had a mini-relevalation: Clients don’t want to kill ads. Okay, maybe there are a few evil, sadistic ones out there who do. But rational, everyday marketing managers? Nuh-uh.
Think about it. Does a client who went to B-school feel comfortable arguing headlines and type treatments and script dialogue? Probably not. They just want work that pays off on a clear, agreed-upon strategy. Problem is, most times, you start making work before agreement is ever reached.
Our creative team just spent about six months selling through a new brand positioning to our biggest client, Dunkin’ Donuts. It was like being on tour with Bon Jovi: From Vegas, to Ft. Meyers, to Boston with the franchisees, and from Charlotte to Maine with the marketing folks.
We got sign off from ABSOLUTELY EVERYBODY. It was a lot of work, but the process had an unexpected result: We got all the selling done before the ads were ever shown.
Too often we use the creative to try to agree on a strategy. I’ve been guilty of it a million times. “C’mon, c’mon. Let’s just make some freakin’ ads, and see where we land” I’d groan. And how many times have you heard “I don’t know what I want, but I’ll know it when I see it” from a flustered client?
By having all the hard talks upfront and getting buy-off on a concise direction, we were able to sell and execute a breakout campaign about 40 executions deep. The agency’s happy. The client’s happy. The relationship’s never been better. And we both have work to be proud of.
Weird, huh?
Tim (SVP, Group Creative Director) is one of the top 10 writers in America today, as cited by Archive Magazine. He writes and oversees campaigns for Dunkin' Donuts, Liberty Mutual, Procter & Gamble, and Gather.com. He was a key figure in the creation and launch of Dunkin's very successful campaign platform, "America Runs on Dunkin'," and he conceived and produced the popular Miller Lite "Epidemic" effort that coined the phrase, "I can't taste my beer!" To date, more than 100 of Tim's ads have garnered national recognition and awards. Tim lives near Boston "with my wife, two children, and a 100-pound Bernese mountain dog named Otis." In his free time, Tim enjoys "songwriting and performing; writing and directing films; and not-so-long-distance running. I'm also an unrepentant NFL addict." 
Whoa. You must have some pretty great clients. I have about ten accounts where the clients refer to a presentation as “the first run-through.” As in, “there’s no friggin’ way any of this is going to survive because we never approve a first run-through no matter how on-strategy or great the creative is.”
Yet we still put all of our energy into work we know will die a terrible death the first time out. And not just die occasionally. 100% of the time. Thankfully, I also have a couple of clients who are looking for great work from the start. They’re the ones that keep me going.
As Woody used to tell us, clients get the work they deserve. (Of course, he was one of the few agency owners who had the balls to fire the client.)
bon jovi rocks! i’d rather tour with them then dunkin donuts anyday! although, i do love a good donut, i don’t think donuts can rock out like jon bon.
slippery when wet, yeaa.
phil duddle
new jersey
dear Mr. Cawley,
if that’s how it is at Hill Holliday these days, any chance you can help get the powers that be at the Boston office to hire me again?
sincerely,
Pope Carlos
Bob, that’s horrible that your client refers to a presentation as a first run-through. It sounds like someone’s not doing their job on both the account/managing and creative sides. How are you actually expected to produce great work if the entire team is expecting 100% rejection from the start?
Clients do the strangest things.
Sure, poorly managed clients do the strangest things.
Look, most of these clients spend their days cooped up in cubey-space offices where the most creative thing they have to think about is what font to use in their next powerpoint presentation. Suddenly they find themselves in the ad agency boardroom, faced with a black-turtlenecked art director channelling Sprockets, an Oscar-Wilde-referencing copywriter, and a couple of account execs buzzing about their first invite to a CD-release party.
Plus someone has probably decided that serving the client sushi for lunch would be super-cool.
It’s no wonder the clients freak out, especially when their idea of a ’strategy’ is “The fastest way to put 20% more revenue on our bottom line” rather than “Let’s reposition ourselves as the Burberry of doughnuts”.
It’s a long journey from the cubey office to groundbreaking creative. You have to take the client by the hand and encourage them to join you on the journey, not try to guilt them into it by implying you’re cooler than they are.
As one of the those corporate “cubey office” executives as Sarah calls paying clients, I must admit the Dunkin Donuts new marketing campaign is brilliant. However, it must be pointed out given the comments on this post and referring to “B School” management types doesn’t do much for holding a creative agency up high and worshipping its “coolness”.
So pardon me the next time I come to your offices and snicker at all the Starbucks drinkers.
I laughed as I read John O’s post: my first job in advertising was with Lowe where our clients were Mercedes and diet Coke; now I’m in a cubey office, client-side, and I never get invited to CD release parties any more.
But the whole concept of self-congratulatory “Wow we did breakthrough creative, 40 executions deep, and the client still loved us!” seems a little old…boomer generation, the-suits-against-the-creatives, old-school advertising
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– in other words, a little dated in a world where every 12-year-old can tell you what a ‘brand’ is, and the under-30 crowd has an instinctive understanding of semiotic theory from years of media bombardment, and an understanding of ‘value proposition’ that’s been fine-tuned by having to decide whether to buy real Louis Vuitton handbags at the store or high-quality fakes on ebay.
In a world like this, John’s quite correct in wondering whether it’s really the B-school bores against the agency geniuses any more.
Sarah, you are right to a large degree and surely you can appreciate the spends required to launch a new campaign (in this instance with DD USA domestic only – no global) I think clients should be entitled to more.
Tim writes about securing agreements and achieving buy-in. With a customer like DD eager to expand that’s an easy sell. However, more established clients will demand AND expect more. It’s the sad face of business these days. Throw in a changing of the guard to the money gate, e.g. tech savvy, plugged in etc. vs. staid old executive) my sympathies go out. Just not that much.
Sorry Tim.
I’m pleased with the number of responses my initail post has generated. And I’ve noticed a recurring theme: In my initial writing, I mentioned clients with a “B School” background. Most people’s responses added a level of “us vs. them” which (after I looked back at what I wrote) never existed in my piece. Funny how people automatically color the remarks of any creative with that tone. In fact, the idea (and actual content) of the posting was quite the opposite. Clients have a skill set that, oftentimes, isn’t exactly aligned with the minutae of advertising production. They want big picture stuff. And it’s time the creatives rose to the task of bridging the gap.
In my experience, the turtle-necked/Oscar Wilde/sushi-obsessed ADs, CWs and CDs of the world are rarely the people with the best creative chops – and clients are right to be leery. Just like our clientside counterparts, most creative folks worth their salt can’t stand those types either. (Actually, do those “types” even still exist? I’ve only worked in Mpls, Chicago and Boston where turtlenecks are generally used to avoid frostbite while waiting for the train.)
A couple of caveats/FYIs just so my ‘biases’ are out there:
- I’m in my mid-30s and was a ’suit’ at ‘big agencies’ like DDB, Lowe, Bozell/FCB and Bates
- I left to start my own shop in the early 2000s, and got ’sucked in’ by one of my clients, so I’m now primarily working client-side as their Director, User Experience
By the time I left the agency world, it had been made clear to me that I would never make President (or even Group AD) because (a) I thought ’suits’ should be polymathic and stop thinking of broadcast advertising as the Holy Grail; and (b) I was rather too much of the opinion that advertising’s ultimate goal was simply to ’sell more stuff’.
That is not to say that ’selling more stuff’ is incompatible with creating world-changing ‘art’. Heck, I’ve purchased ‘artwork’ from Sotheby’s that started out as advertising posters! But clients are paying us to help them sell more stuff, so it’s our responsibility, not theirs, to insert the ‘art’ into the strategy and execution.
Tim, I have to say that the black turtlenecked types are still prevalent up here (in Toronto, anyway), and quite a few of them are, in fact, doing great creative. The problem seems to lie with the account management side: agencies seem to want to hire junior account execs for such dismal wages that they don’t get good business thinkers; then they don’t train them properly.
I cannot even tell you how many Account Directors I’ve met who couldn’t read a balance sheet to save their lives; who don’t really have a clue about how buying decisions are made by actual customers; don’t understand the concept of relationship-building; and don’t know that building relationships is a complex equation combining a wide variety of touchpoints from tv to online to CRM to word-of-mouth.
ADs then aren’t able to bridge the gap between the creatives and the clients. Agencies foster this myth that broadcast advertising is somehow superior to other marketing tactics like direct mail, internet, promotions, store-level activities, CRM, etc. etc., and with their ridiculous separate P&Ls for ‘interactive’, ‘promo’, ‘PR’, ‘direct mail’, etc. departments, the poor clients end up without anyone on the agency side who can coordinate all these groups.
Do you know that less than 12 months ago I was asked to present a seminar on ‘non traditional advertising’ to the Toronto office of an international ad agency and out of 25 audience members, only ONE – a junior ween in media – knew what a blog was?
Yes, it can still be hard to convince clients of the value of the Big Idea that can unify all their marketing and CRM efforts – but they are, in my experience, now WAY smarter than agencies in terms of understanding how all the pieces fit together in terms of ‘integrated advertising’.
The proof of this is that my largest current client has made me the Director of User Experience rather than Director of Marketing. They are 100% behind the idea that it’s about ensuring positive experiences every time someone interacts with their brand – whether this means good CRM, compelling direct mail, intensive employee training, or a super-cool commercial.
If the ’suits’ not only write good strategies, but also understand – and communicate – how these strategies can work across all communication channels, the black-turtlenecked crowd can be surprisingly effective at coming up with the Big Ideas that not only qualify as ‘ground-breaking creative’ but into which clients can buy-into whole-heartedly, with much less hair-pulling than normal.
So I guess this is where I differ: I don’t think of it as the creatives who need to bridge the gap, but the account people – they’re the ones who’re supposed to be right-brained enough to manage the creatives, and left-brained enough to manage the clients.
Just a quick two cents. Tim, you expound on the fact you never did create an us vs. them attitude. Fair enough although the B-School comment was no matter how spun into something different belies a deeper held belief. Sarah points out – its not the creatives but the account managers who don’t quite get the jist of bridging the gap between client and agency creating the stereotype. I agree.
Lamenting on about the hard life of the creative in front of customers who have different objectives isn’t productive. Nor does it foster support for what is one of the most important decisions your existing and new clients will take. All the hard work put into understanding your customer and securing buy-in through meeting the people is standard practice for most of us. Sometimes the creative forgets the realities.
Sorry forgot to proof my comments and aplogise if they come across a bit harsh. Tim, your agency does great work – that is a fact.
Stumbled upon this discussion thread randomly but it really says a lot about the state of advertising. Original article:
“Signoff from ABOSOLUTELY EVERYBODY”
Signoff on what? A sentence on a piece of paper? A mood board? Who cares? The general public will interact with none of this. Therefore, spending six months on such activity is a complete waste of time and money. Shoot a couple campaigns and test them for the same effort.
Is this really what this business has come to where we can’t do the work we’re paid to do until we’ve asked permission from every janitor in every Dunkin Donuts?