We’re not firefighters or soldiers, but if our clients are sticking their necks out on the line, then shouldn’t we extend them the same courtesy? In other words, “get comfortable being uncomfortable”-the outcome being to bring original thinking that gets our clients noticed. Accountability and transparency are the ingredients for real, earned trust and it pushes us to consistently do better and learn.Īs for courage, we all must be courageous in our own context. If your agency is anything like my own, you probably talk about clients all day long, so much so, that you barely talk about yourselves. Accountability means sharing our clients’ problems as if they were our own, because they are our own-until the project closes and sometimes even beyond then. I’d say we need to model the same behavior we want in them: Have courage, but also be committed, highly collaborative, transparent and accountable.Ĭourage is where it starts and accountability is where it ends. So knowing what our clients are up against, how should agencies shift their approach? It’s a circle of life, so-to-speak, based on symbiotic relationships. Equal empathy and respect for the agency process ultimately creates a better partnership for the client, which leads to a better product. Partnership can only be built on a spirit of shared understanding and shared values and a desire to live them on both sides.
So how do we make sense of all this “fresh” understanding?īecause-you guessed it-it’s hard being agency side too. Not every company will actually have the money to invest during a downturn, even if they’d like to. Our clients are typically beholden to these-and we should be thankful that we aren’t.įinally, while everyone knows that investing in marketing during a recession is good for business in the long run, that comes from a privileged place of perspective. The stakes are ever higher, and what may have once been an easy decision may now feel like a big bet.Īnd let’s not forget corporate structures that require endless stakeholder management, procedure, and politicking, making it harder and harder to find space in your mind for the most important perspective – the customers’. If you have clients in tech, then you may appreciate that entire business models have been built upon huge leaps of faith that “this might just work.” And now, LinkedIn feeds are filled with layoffs.
And yet we still expect clients to confidently put their neck on the line and say, “well let’s give it a shot, shall we?” And we’re not always all that patient (I count myself among this group) when building that trust takes time.īut believe me when I say that big and bold original thinking has zero proof that it will work. Trust us, a team of people that they don’t know and haven’t worked with before, and not to mention have a different way of working and which don’t know their business yet.
We also expect clients to do big, bold work from day one-and we expect them to trust us, an outside agency, to come up with those ideas and help them buy in.
That takes courage, and it means making commitments, because if those commitments don’t pay off, then what? They’re left holding the bag.
Day one agency series#
That usually involves a series of negotiations with a CFO and plenty of reassurances that the investment will pay off and to what extent. But perhaps now is the time we walked a mile or more in our client’s shoes to get a sense of what they’re grappling with, too.įirstly, and perhaps fundamentally, our clients are the ones who have to secure the budget-Not us. Equally well-worn and likely no surprise as we’ve all heard the tales of frustrating clients: “They don’t know a good idea when it hits them in the face,” “how can they possibly take this long to make a decision,” “they say they want bold and irreverent thinking but then they give us feedback like this?!”, “it’s good, just make the logo bigger”…įodder for memes, yes. Traditional 9-to-5 hours, better pay, more perks, bigger benefits, and so on. In agency world, there’s a well-worn narrative that life is easier on the client side. By Oli Bealby, Managing Director, Iris San Francisco
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