Fire The Client
A painful reminder that doing the right thing doesn’t always end the way it ought to end.
This is part of a series on the state of Struck and the ad/creative industry. Read the other installments:
Two Years In
The End of Creativity As A Service
Not Great, Bob
My Five Favorite Days
To The Moon, To The Stars
I found the post-it on the wall in an empty office (just the way you see it above). It was nearly hidden by the open door, but as I cleaned the few remaining items from the workspace of an employee (a friend, a comrade, a rascal) whose employment I had ended a few days before, there it was. Three words. Fire the client. An intentional reassurance, a clever reminder that we had done the right thing—even if the results had been mostly terrible.
Earlier this year, we faced a crossroads with one of our largest clients. The relationship had shifted dramatically in the previous 18 months. The type of work had changed. The connections between us and them had changed. The finances had changed. In the middle of all this change, the creative director (as well as the account director) on the account recommended that we proactively end the relationship. I dismissed the idea. There’s too much money at stake. We can keep doing the work. Maybe next year.
I was afraid. With just over a year under my belt as Struck’s CEO, it felt impossible to take such a gamble. I hid my fear under a common shield for executives and leaders: I care too much about our people.
That logic makes sense when you’re afraid. I care about our people, so I won’t do anything to jeopardize their wellbeing. But it’s flawed, broken, incomplete logic. If we care about our people, we don’t just protect them. We help them do their best work. We put them in positions to succeed. We bet on a bright future, not a complacent present. As these voices got louder—and as I started to listen to the people I cared about—it became clear. We had to fire the client.
It happened quickly. We talked a little. We played out some scenarios. We made some plans and then we got on the phone. Instead of re-working our current contract, we recommended ending the relationship. The client agreed. We determined the best way to complete any remaining work and a process to provide support through the transition—and then it was over. We felt good about the decision. I felt good about the decision. I mean, I felt really good about it. We had put our hearts on our sleeves. We had taken a stand. We cared about relationships and quality of work and quality of life. We weren’t just in this business for the money.
The fairy-tale version of this story ends with a new client showing up 30 days later with a bigger budget and the challenge to spark a revolution. But this is not a fairy tale. It’s advertising. It’s advertising in 2016—hard, unpredictable and sometimes terrifying. A new client didn’t materialize. We stumbled and revenue slowed. About a month ago, we laid off five very smart, very capable, very wonderful people. The creative director I mentioned above was one of them. That day was one of the worst of my career. It was my fault. We should’ve kept the client.
That’s the temptation, isn’t it? To subject our values and our decisions to hindsight and Monday-morning quarterbacking? To wait for the aftermath and then flog ourselves for making a bad decision—even when we know the decision was (and always will be) the right one? That’s human nature. And it’s wrong. It’s wrong because it strips our world of possibility, of duality. Doing what’s right doesn’t guarantee success any more than doing evil guarantees failure.
It’s possible to do the right thing and have it end terribly. It’s possible to tell a friend that they no longer have a job… And then walk into their empty office a week later to find a post-it on the wall that means you’ve done the right thing, that you should do it again even knowing the outcome, and that (probably?) everything is going to be okay. It’s possible to fire the client, fall in a hole and then dig your way back out again. Anything is possible.
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