Clients Need a Little Respect

Too often, those of us on the agency side seem to brush aside the client’s wishes in our quest for breakthrough creative. That old joke “advertising would be a great business if it weren’t for the clients” belies an underlying elitism that allows us to be less receptive to valuable client input. That’s certainly putting the worst spin on it, but even the slightest bit of “agency attitude” is a tremendous mistake. A better alternative is to assume that a client who has been successful in business has some valuable insights on marketing his or her product. The creative team that goes into a project prepared to listen closely to the feelings and desires of the client and his customers will actually produce a better creative product.

Only when the creative team understands a client’s desires can they begin to deal with the client’s needs. Otherwise the result may be jaw-dropping but irrelevant. Worse, the resulting campaign will be scorned by the client’s own employees.

There was a recent campaign for a national oil heat association whose purpose was to keep oil heat customers from converting to gas heat. The client wanted creative that would make a big impression. What they needed was a campaign based on some solid grass-roots knowledge of how homeowners choose to heat their homes and their relationships with their local oil dealers. The agency produced a spot that depicted a family dressed in clear protective plastic garments, sitting on furniture wrapped in clear protective plastic. This was intended to show that oil heat is clean enough for even the most compulsive homeowners. It was quirky and funny, but it left viewers with the impression that having oil heat means homeowners should wear protective garb in their own homes. The oil heat dealers hated it. More importantly, the message was so poorly conceived that homeowners didn’t get it. Needless to say, the account went into review immediately.