Clients never do any work (and other fibbish tales)

Before I moved to the UK and started working at Topshop I was at an ad agency. Tomorrow I’m going back in to say hi and give a talk. The brief for this was fairly open. “Just stuff about London, Topshop, Digital.. Anything you want really”.

When you’re asked to do something like ‘give a talk’ you feel a fair bit of pressure to sound like you know what you’re on about. And while ‘knowing stuff’ is a crucial part of my job, digital marketers are pretty bad when it comes to agreeing what is right and wrong. The fact is, we are winging a lot of it.

Plus, talking about digital trends and what not can get a bit same-same after a while.

So I ditched that and decided to instead talk about the switch from agency to client side. A move that has unexpectedly been one of the most eye opening experiences of my career.

As I discussed in a recent post, when you’re at an agency, you often think the client is up to sweet Fanny Adams. And when you’re the client, you pretty much think the same thing about the agency — plus they’re charging you a fortune for it. It’s such a misunderstood dynamic considering how co-dependant one is on the other.

However, having spent the last year and half in the client trenches there’s a handful of things that constantly get thrown about by most agency folk which simply aren’t true.

And this is what I’ve decided to base my talk on: debunking all the myths about what really goes on in the client corner.

After bouncing this idea around with a few industry friends I genuinely think someone could write a book on it. But for the purposes of a quick morning talk over coffee I thought I’d keep it to five.

Let’s debunk.

Clients never do any work

This is categorically not true. Most ad agencies deal with people in the marketing department, the function of which is vast. In most instances, marketing covers communications, physical activations, events, sponsorship, direct response, CRM, franchise relationships and ambassador programs, to just rattle off a few. In some businesses PR will even fall within the marketing remit.

Of this mix, advertising makes up a slither. It’s not an insignificant slither, but it is not the sole focus of any one individual’s job.

If it seems like your client is being slack, they are very likely working on another part of the business, which internally demands just as much attention as that which you are servicing. It’s not that we aren’t doing any work; it’s just that we don’t have the ability to dedicate 100% of it to the advertising component.

Oh, we can also tell when agencies have used a generic presentation which usually results in comments such as “they reskinned a presentation, they never do any work” — so it goes both ways.

Being a client isn’t stressful

Working at an ad agency is stressful. In fact, I’d go as far as saying it’s one of the most stressful careers you could choose. Pitching is exhausting, retention is hard, and being innovative isn’t something that just happens. It’s easy to think clients have it easy.

But for us it’s a different kind of stress.

When you enter a corporate organisation, particularly a large one, your role exists because it has met the certain requirements of a business case. I’ve seen these and I’ve written them. “By creating role A we will be sufficiently resourced to do B which we have forecast the output of to bring in an incremental revenue of C% and at a cost of D this equates to an ROI of E”.

(They never actually read like that, but that’s the gist).

You exist within the organisation against robust and measurable KPIs so there is huge individual accountability. If something you are responsible for doesn’t work out this has a direct impact on your performance review and ultimately your promotion opportunities.

On top of this, a common challenge with large organisations is that you very rarely (and frustratingly) will have autonomy over the decisions that affect the success of your KPIs.

Working for a brand can be immensely stressful, it’s just a different kind of stress.

Clients enjoy giving agencies the run around

Cross my heart, we don’t.

As clients we aren’t looking for opportunities to fire you and get another agency on board. Doing a complete review drains resource and disrupts market activity. We’d much rather take remedial action.

Pitches aren’t fun for us either.

Clients always think they are right

Usually if a client is criticising work when you are convinced the agency’s idea is bang on, there’s more than ego at play.

What’s important to remember is that the depth of knowledge the client has is huge. It would be rare for an agency to ever be on the same page completely.

If something within your idea isn’t quite right it is likely because the client is processing it against a factor you may not have even considered or know to exist.

Some of the onus here has to fall on the client; it’s where detailed feedback and proper discovery sessions are crucial. However, the assumption that your clients are conceited is the wrong way of looking at it (and just comes off quite defensive).

On a similar note, if an agency sees something within an organisation that they think is wrong it’s common to assume the client has seen it either. What’s far more likely is that the client is acutely aware of this problem too, but simply isn’t in the position to change it.

There’s always more money

Lol.

Within organisations, budgets rule everything. Head counts, equipment, travel, activity, media — everything. They’ll often sit in silos too. A lot of companies still have a divide between brand marketing and digital marketing, each with different pots of money to play with. Your idea might require spend from both, but pooling these together is more complicated owing to different department P&Ls.

In most organisations, budget is signed off at the start of a financial year against an agreed plan of activity. In some more tightly run organisations, this budget is then broken down by quarter and resubmitted against an activity plan to ensure the money is being spent wisely. It’s as if your parents agree to give you $40 per month as pocket money but each Thursday you need to tell them exactly what you plan to spend it on that weekend, and they have the right to take it back if they don’t agree with your plans.

However, unlike your pocket money, an organisation’s spend will be agreed based on a forecast of what it will return. From quarter to quarter, these forecasts are either met or missed which plays a big part in the agreement of what is spent going forward.

The knock on effect of this is huge and most noticeable in sign off and approval processes.

No one likes to admit they aren’t the one calling the shots. But chances are the client contact you’re dealing with isn’t able to sign things off without internal consult. All this slows things down.

There is absolutely such a thing as incremental budget. However, when spend sits outside an agreement, it’s a total rigmarole getting it signed off. The people who do this usually aren’t marketers either. They’re the ones who are responsible for bringing in the money. Demonstrable ROI is everything in this instance, which unfortunately is still something most companies struggle to prove against advertising activity.

It’s not impossible, but even the most sophisticated, data-driven, cross device-proof attribution models aren’t perfect. So getting additional spend signed off which has a hazy line to return is an uphill battle.

In short, if a client comes to you with how much they can spend, it’s better to work within the realities of what this can do.

Assuming there’s more money isn’t necessarily wrong, but 9 times out of 10 you’ve got a snowball’s chance in hell of getting the project complete within the original time frame if it’s dependent on ‘finding more budget’.