Risks vs. Risks

Fortunately, risk is usually not a life-or-death matter in advertising. That’s not to say advertising decisions aren’t important. Indeed, some advertising decisions are critically important and can mean – literally – whether a company stays in business or not. Sometimes those decisions are based on a lot of information, and sometimes decisions are based on very little or no information. Sometimes the most important decision is to decide not to do anything at all for a client. We always try to advise the client as if we were advising ourselves.

One of the issues in our industry is that we are not licensed the way CPAs or attorneys are. As an industry, we routinely hand out advice involving client budgets of millions of dollars, and clients routinely take that advice. Almost anyone can hang out an advertising or marketing shingle, but unfortunately not all of them know what they are doing. It is entirely possible that a company could be put out of business by accepting bad advice about a budget, position, direction, or message. Most advertising professionals take the responsibility of helping companies very seriously by giving them sound strategic advice.