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A Client Services girl has just come in and said to a very senior Art Director in the office I’m working in - ‘The clients don’t really know what they want but they’ll know it when they see it’. I want to kill her.

Isn’t the job of the Account Management to interpret the client’s marketing problem, write the brief, come up with the proposition and get it signed off by the client? This way, the client has bought the work before they’ve even seen it so long as the creative matches the brief… Simple, isn’t it?

Tell you what love, we’ll do 100,000 ideas so your client can pick the one that tickles his fancy.

Give me strength.

Is there less work or is it just moving around? Are the nature of projects changing? What’s your experience of direct marketing and creative in a recession?

So, there’s now a stack of senior people on the market. Brilliant, uber-creative, award-winning, hugely experienced, super-professional, multi-skilled, immensely talented people – you get the idea – but out of a job. The dirty part of this is that you can now pick these folk up in the bargain basement Sale called freelance. With daily rates unchanged in 10 years, £350 a day if you twist arms, agency bosses are laughing all the way to the bank. Even at £350, they’ll barely be earning the wages they were used to without any security whatsoever or holiday pay.

But look at it from an agency’s point of view. Get rid of your heavy hitters through redundancy then call them back in freelance on less money and you can lose them at the drop of a hat if things go quiet.

Now look at the bigger picture. Every agency is hungry as hell. Clients can pitch any project they like these days for free. Why pay for work when you can call on as many agencies as you like and they’ll willingly pitch stacks of brilliant work for nothing? And why bother restricting yourself to your incumbent agency when you can ask anyone to show you work and get everyone to undercut each other? Some call it ‘business’ – getting the best ‘deal’ whichever way you can. We’re all corporate whores after all. The difference is agencies are getting screwed right, left and centre. Then they screw their staff. And nobody makes any money. Blimey, this is sub prostitution. And the client gets sub-standard work because they’ve shafted the agency.

The funny thing is, DM agencies and Clients have talked about ‘Loyalty’ programmes for years. Loyalty? You must be joking. They’ve ignored this idea for a long long time.

And why is it that wages haven’t changed in 10 years either? Perhaps it’s a) because we haven’t progressed in 10 years in terms of billings (what sort of retarded industry would that make us?) b) because there are too many agencies out there wanting their share of the pie or c) because agency owners are creaming it all off? Personally, I think there’s a mixture of all three. In terms of c), I know of an network agency where one of the Directors would award himself 50% of the annual bonus allowance then divide the rest between the staff – all 100 of them… Happy Christmas guys.

Come the revolution, we’ll all know the good from the bad from the ugly. Just watch the movement when financial times change and things pick up. The good agencies should clean up. 

Chris Catchpole
Creative Consultant
Chair of the DMA Creative Forum 

There’s a disturbing trend in clients using pitches to solve problems rather than choose agencies – ie, to find the right idea, not the right agency.

It’s disturbing, because it means they get a lot of good thinking – arguably, our most valuable commodity – for free. That’s not good for agencies. But it’s also not good for clients. Because they get an idea based on a rushed, pitch-frenzy process and therefore a superficial understanding of the brief, the market and the client.

Even worse, the idea you present may be one you’ve developed to impress the client, not solve the problem. As I always say, in a pitch the client is the customer, not their customers. I’ve always been tried to pitch the idea that will win the business first, and answer the brief second. Now that these are one and the same thing, it’s harder and harder for everyone to get it right.

Ctrl-F Account Handling says: ‘my job is to forward emails from the client on to the relevant people’.

Ctrl_F Account Handling adds no value.

And when the client has the relevant person’s contact details, it makes the Account Handler redundant (sometimes literally).

Can you afford to be Ctrl_F’ing right now?

Reuben Turner, the Good Agency

Does anyone know which agency produced this poignant and intelligent interactive banner for Amnesty International? A good old Google search draws a blank, as does speaking to Amnesty themselves. A friend of mine wants to feature it in a book he’s writing but needs permission. Please let me know ASAP – chris@chriscatchpole.com

Chris Catchpole
Creative Consultant
Chairman of The DMA Creative Forum 

This is the best book about advertising, creativity and business I’ve ever read. The ads are truly groundbreaking in terms of both copy and art direction. But it’s also the best exposition of what a client/agency relationship should be that I’ve ever come across.

Unfortunately it’s not quite as easy to find as ‘Whipple’, but you can always borrow mine?

Reuben Turner, creative director, the Good Agency.

I’m delighted that the DMA has finally decided to take digital seriously, with its ‘revamped’ awards for 2008.

A little bit late to the party, perhaps, but better late than never.

A couple of years ago I wrote an article for the agency blog about how DM was failing miserably to embrace digital.

I thought then – and I still do – that digital belongs to us. After all, we already understand the idea of bringing brands to life; the importance of involvement and engagement; the secret of getting people to do something. We know all about targeting and measurement and testing.

Combine that with the expertise of online practitioners - interaction designers, information architects, developers – and I think you’ve got something special in the making. And something that sits right in the middle of our domain.

So why have we been so reluctant to grab the opportunity? (more…)

I started writing a ranting post just now but then I remembered the words of some amateur philosopher friend of a friend in The Swan the other night: “Why are we all so negative these days? Why don’t we just be optimistic instead? We’d be a lot happier”. So instead of moaning I thought I’d just send a link to a site that made me laugh and reminded me to never take this industry too seriously. http://adverbatims.blogspot.com/

You may have seen it before. Don’t worry if you’ve heard some of the quotes where you work - I have.

In the last couple of weeks both Ogilvy and RKCR/Y&R have been victim of green activists. Ogilvy because of Dove and it’s links with palm oil and RKCR/Y&R because it works for Land Rover and BAe Systems.

Just when Dove was winning hearts and minds with their campaign for real beauty, out comes an ugly skeleton from the cupboard. Dove are the biggest users of palm oil and that’s causing the Indonisian lowland forests to be laid waste.

(more…)