What left town first, the integrity or the trust?
Back in the day, some of London’s agencies only offered clients a single answer to their brief. I only have proof that this was the case at Lowe, where Frank made it well-known, and AMV, where I worked.
That might seem like a strange idea to some of you. I mean, how many of you work in an agency that does that today? None, I’ll wager. The current situation is typified by a client I worked on who had a clause in his contract saying that he would be offered three solutions to any brief. However, if he didn’t like any of the solutions he could (and usually would) then demand a further three routes and so on until the number was closer to twelve.
Now, you might think that there’s nothing really unreasonable about this, after all if you were buying a coat and didn’t like the one the man at the shop offered you then you would feel entitled to check through the rest. But then advertising isn’t clothes shopping. The client agency relationship ought to be one established on the basis of trust, where the client will believe in the the agency’s ability to choose and provide the best solution (and why anything else?) and see it through to reach the optimum conclusion. To go back to the clothes analogy, it would only apply if you had three prior meetings with Miuccia Prada, Mr Reiss and Mr Byrite, chose the designer most sympatico with your coat vision, gave them several months of back and forth about exactly what you wanted out of this particular coat at this particular time, then a further month to make it with constant contact throughout the process. I’d guess that by then you would know what you were getting and would be quite pleased with the result.
So there’s no more trust. Not real trust. Clients will say there’s trust because to say anything else would be a bit insulting, but let me repeat: CLIENTS DO NOT TRULY TRUST THEIR AGENCIES.
Why? Well, we could come up with lots of reasons for that but pretty much all the fault lies with agencies. Over the years some of them may have acted in a high-handed manner that they couldn’t possibly justify (those ridiculously over the top parties may not have helped. Clients might well have wondered how agencies could afford them then adjusted their terms of remuneration accordingly). Now we also have the brain drain, where worse pay and conditions (still very cushy compared to a nurse, but all adjectives are relative, aren’t they?) have led to the very best leaving the industry to be replaced by, well, not the very best. So clients look at what they are offered and might not think that much of it, so they ask for more work and that suggests even less trust.
So clients don’t trust agencies for some pretty good reasons. But this situation then gets exacerbated by the agencies’ collusion in the lack of trust. If an agency gives several routes then they do not have integrity. They are not spending their time doing their very best work because they are spending a lot of time on routes which will they know will die (not their very best work). They are showing ads in the hope that the client will chose one, pay them and move on to the next one. They also know that there are few measurable consequences of this: ads rarely increase sales on their own, so unless you have laid a real turd, no one can really take issue. Keep your head down, do something adequate and hope no one notices.
If an agency genuinely offered only its best stuff then the client would be able to trust in the fact that this was the case. What we have instead is agencies implicity saying: ‘I Dunno what’s any good. You choose.’ How can you trust someone who does that? You can’t. The client then has to do the choosing, make the decisions and erode the trust still further.
So clients do not trust agencies, but agencies do not act with integrity.
Which came first? No idea, but until one side starts acting with trust or integrity, this will never improve or end.
UPDATE: check this from about 2:50 (thanks, Anon):
Great post.
Whole heartily agree without trust or integrity nothing will improve.
Totally agree. Agencies are their own worst enemies. Insecure, underhand, poorly-run shambles in the main.
Multiple routes sound the death knell for creativity.
The nurse option is increasingly appealing. I’d rather mop up shit than be fed it in all-staff meetings.
In other news, this is ruuuuubish:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jn9oMA1GQ5Q
That really is ruuuuuuuuuubish. It made me puke in my mouth.
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Giles Phelps, Ben Kay. Ben Kay said: New Post: what left town first, integrity or trust? http://ow.ly/3JIqk […]
people who are afraid to lose their jobs is what makes any industry shit.
creatives, clients, we are all responsible.
fear has fucked us all.
yet employed thousands who work in research.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xb8idEf-Iak&playnext=1&list=PL68E806905C0B69B1&index=4
from about 2:50
It’s a fascinating thing this “how many ideas do you need” caper. The notion that one idea can do it all makes me feel uncomfortable. It seems undynamic with how ideas travel now. Although it’s simpler to plan how and where it should appear.
I have seen people riding the one idea pony and hang and hang onto it even if it starts to become the undoing of the relationship. Equally I have seen it happen where the idea becomes the great point from which everything else follows on, it won the pitch, it shaped the media and it ultimately worked and gave the client Market leadership. Even when the work is out there now though, and it’s polarising people and making either good and even more scarily bad noise….clients get super twitchy. To get an idea to work now there is that aspect now. A totally unpredictable thing, which can erode trust. But it seems bad even when the work is out there and it’s polarising people and making good and even more scarily bad noise…. word or criticism travels far faster especially online… interesting bi function for sensitive brands or weak clients. A debate is better than silence.
Some creatives will come up with one solution whilst others will come up with loads. It all depends on how your brain’s hard wired – are you a convergent thinker or a divergent thinker. But that’s not the point. Whilst it’s true that there’s never only one answer to a creative question, the amount of work needed to turn a good idea into a great campaign is all consuming. It is the job of a good creative director (one whose talent is for spotting and nurturing great work, rather than knowing about business solutions and presentation skills) to decide on a route and focus all the brain power at his disposal into making it the best it can possibly be. If you need to develop 3 routes before you know which one to choose then you are shit at your job, and the chances are you won’t have pushed your idea far enough. Which is bad for everyone, right?
I blame the planners. They believe that their ‘single thought’ is so pure, that it should produce a whole stream of brilliant ideas.
Everyone is quick to jump when they don’t think the creative is right, but how many times are we allowed to question a planners brief before we’re deemed difficult?
More routes devalues the process. If it’s that easy to come up with three routes, six, twelve. Why should anyone believe that any of them are right?
Sorry, I might have made this too much about the one route thing. The point was meant to be about trust. There is none and that ruins the process at both ends.
As far as single routes go, of course creatives come up with many. Of course they show more than one to their CD, but the agency should be able to agree on the route that is best best on the requirements of the brief. But that never happens these days.
And Sophie, yes, criticising a brief is almost verboten. You are instantly seen as a difficult troublemaker because you are attacking something a lot of people have spent a lot of time on and do not wish to redo. It’s just another way in which the process is set up to hamper the creation of the very best work.
I knew a CD who was proud as punch to be taking nine routes to a presentation – in other words, ‘we’ve cut this fucker every way imaginable, now pick one’. How could a client believe that any real attempt had been made to solve their brief faced with a complete chancer?
As for what came first, I can only guess that fear on the agency’s side had a smelly hand in it.
Whether desperate to win – or not lose a client – some agencies try to a) show they’d ‘do more’ than anyone else for the money, leading to quantity over quality. And b) keep their relationship as smooth as possible, resulting in them servicing the client’s briefs rather than challenging them.
Case in point. Recently, a CD said to a director friend of mine, ‘let’s just make sure we give the client exactly what they want’. Sure, you aim to keep everybody happy, but if that means you’re too scared to add anything to the process how could any client value your ability?
To be fair, I don’t think all clients have trouble trusting their agencies.
I’ve personally worked with at least three who’ve trusted us implicitly (not all at the same agency either).
For example, I shared some work with one of these clients last week. Presented three routes, and they bought all three. One for the actual brief and the two others for upcoming similar briefs we hadn’t even heard about.
Such a shame this is the exception to the rule.
Does anybody else have any clients that trust their agency?
i am working in an agency that has no integrity.
but it doesn’t know it.
maybe that means i don’t.
it’s a bit like cunts – as in not very nice people.
does anyone think of themselves as a cunt?
no.
everyone goes around saying the other person is a cunt. not themselves.
i think a lack of integrity suffers a similar… can’t think of the word.
Screw trust, I still blame the planners.
Hey Ben! Why not do a post on what a useless shower of cunts they are? I know you’ve already covered that once, but there’s nothing wrong with a bit a planner bashing every so often.
I agree that planners have their part to play but I also think that creatives are far from blameless.
In fact, I’m not sure anyone involved is really blameless.
This is actually fucking true:
I worked on a pitch at RKCR. They presented 12 fucking routes.
To the client’s credit, the response was “I don’t know what to say or think about this”.
Didn’t stop them from feeling sufficiently flattered to award the agency the account though.
And when something as good as “Lenny Henry has a weekend away in a shit hotel with a rubber duck” comes out of it, who are we to argue the case for singlemindedness?
You know that party trick, when one person stands with their hands behind their back, and someone else puts their arms through, giving the illusion of someone without any control of their arms? Now watch Steve Jobs from 2m 50s again.
When it became the norm to present three routes, it was always broken down into:
1) Something they’ll never buy
2) Something you hope they’ll buy
3) Something they’ll always buy
Maybe creatives are guilty for producing and presenting that third route. But if it didn’t exist, then the more work was required until it was.
What Sophie Frost said. Mainly because she sounds like a sexy villain from a Bond film.
I worked on a pitch for a beer brand not so long ago. An American beer; pissy, gassy, not the Czech one it tried to copy. First of all, the trust spilling over like a pint poured by a antipodean barman with delirium tremens, the agency had to sign away all intellectual property rights (you know what that meant…) and then, having sunk to its scabby knees before the brief was even agreed, the agency slithered into the foetal position and produced 15 routes, including 5 ‘mini-routes’ on the one that was most liked by the research groups the agency paid for without any likelihood of compensation. The agency won. The foundations for a totally servile, pride-swallowing, low-income future having been cemented in shit. You’ll love this bit… they had celebration drinks and guess what they drank?
That’s right, they drank the clients’ spunk.
How’s this for trust? As a junior suit I was dragged along to the annual meeting where the agency presented all of next year’s creative work to the client. Massively important meeting. Full up with the most senior people on both sides (I was there to carry the bags).
After showing the client all the work that the agency had seen and approved internally, the Creative Director reached into a different bag….and presented a completely different set of ads. No-one from the agency had set eyes on them. Not even the most senior management. The CD never batted an eyelid.
Needless to say no-one at the agency ever trusted him again…..
Yes but mr gash did they buy the work and was it better than the other stuff?
A stack of highly finished boards about three feet high. All subbed out to a studio outside the agency so no-one could see it coming.
The ads were poor. An ego trip by the CD who thought he understood the brand better than anyone.
The client didn’t buy them. And their very existence eroded the client’s confidence in the ‘approved’ work. I was far too junior to be involved in the post mortem. But it wasn’t pretty.
Wow! Who was the CD?