Thanks to Neil Perkin for curating another highly topical, highly relevant, highly provocative Firestarters event on behalf of Google. And thanks to Mel Exon, Martin Bailie and James Caig for providing said provocation by way of three alternative views on The New Operating System For Agencies. This is not a summary of the evening. This [...]
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Competitive agency X sent a bespoke new business mailer to Blonde client Y. The creative thrust of said mailer was that Agency X would give its right arm to work on Client Y’s business. And the mailer included a fake arm. Only it wasn’t a right arm. It was a left arm. Client Y invited [...]
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I pay you for your opinion. So said a client of mine way back when. (Maybe it’s just me but I never fail to be pleasantly surprised when someone is explicit in placing value on my point of view.) In this instance it wasn’t any kind of strategic input that said client was seeking. It [...]
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Posted in Client service, Social media on Nov 19th, 2010
This is a harrowing piece of film which reveals the brutal break-them-down-and-build-them-back-up approach being used by some social media agencies and consultants to get traditional advertising clients to lose the message based, paid for interruption mindset and embrace conversation. For “save American lives” read “join the conversation.” For “let go David Webb” read “let [...]
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Most Americans can’t get their heads around cricket. In return, like many British people, I’ve never managed to get my head around American football (NFL). However, I do like one aspect of that otherwise arcane game. I like the bit where one side is attacking (offence) and the defending side does everything it can to [...]
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The first rule of Pitch Club is that you most definitely DO want potential clients to talk about your presentation afterwards. And they’re more likely to do so if they can actually remember what you said. We’ve all been there. You attend a presentation. Someone who didn’t attend asks you to paraphrase later the same [...]
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For dramatic effect in this post I’m going to say that there have been two attitudinal moments of truth in my career to date. The first was learning and embracing the art of delegation. The second was dropping the lead agency mentality that had been instilled in me after 18 years in advertising agencies. These [...]
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A client apologised for the internal politics of their organisation the other day. But it really wasn’t a problem. Because the nature, the source and the implications of those politics were being explained in detail at the outset of a project. Politics are only ever a problem when they are undisclosed, unexpected and appear late [...]
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Three little words. Not those three little words. These three little words. “You’re the experts.” When a client says these words and means them, they might as well have said “I love you”. They might as well have said “I love you” because “you’re the experts” has a powerful emotive effect on a good agency. [...]
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A sure sign of a strong client relationship is if you find yourself being described as a “good listener”. It is an attribute to which clients attach great value. That’s because there’s more to good listening than meets the ear. Good listening is as much about the culture of the organisation as it is about [...]
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