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Spending a lot of time talking about measurement at the moment. A career development which is rather unforseen.

The good news is that clients in a recession are more and more interested in a) getting a response and b) proving it.

But when your client is emailing, mailing, advertising, running a Facebook group and a Twitter feed, doing face-to-face and door-ro-door and word-of mouth, and when consumers are refusing to respond to your communications via the medium you want them to, how can you know what’s working and what’s not? In planning speak, how do you attribute a particular response to a particular channel?

The best answer I have heard yet: “It’s complicated”.

Reuben

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.

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 

Yesterday, I told my kids what I did at work. They never ask – they’re not particularly interested really, like all kids, but I told them just to see the expression on their faces. It went something like this: ‘Today kids, I wrote two words’. All of them frowned slightly and stared at me. My eldest was the first to speak – ‘Was that it?’ The middle one said – ‘Is that all you do?’ The little fella added – ‘That’s easy!’ I explained that I had been in meetings, done a few rough visuals and researched projects but the most important part of the day was the two words.  

I told them that these two words were the right two words – two words that will potentially drive a global campaign for a multinational IT company. These two words, like the immortal ‘Just do it’, would challenge, would be a catalyst for the future of a sector, would be something a company could proudly stand behind with commitment, openness and confidence.

The thing is, even though everyone who has seen these two words has loved them, the client has yet to see them. They may look at them the same way my children did – ‘Is that it?’ – then the whole thing dies. Amazing really – the life and death of campaigns. Every client is an Emporer giving the thumbs up or thumbs down to the gladiator who has fought bravely to stand in front and await his fate.

Eight years ago, one month before 9/11, I presented one word to a different multi-national IT company, this time the place was north of New York and had corridors so long that you couldn’t see to the end. They liked the word. The understood it, saw the potential, got behind it, really pushed for it – it was the right word and set them apart from all the competition in that sector. All associations were positive and it was a brilliant, insightful word that explained so much so simply. But it never saw the light of day. Someone somewhere for some reason (no doubt political) decided his or her wavering thumb would this time fall downwards. Subsequently, another nondescript, wallpaper campaign followed. Weird isn’t it?

But our quest for the right words, the right images, the right elements to make the right campaign never ends. Every set-back just makes you stronger and more committed to keep doing better work in the hope that that thumb points skyward again. And it will. 

Chris Catchpole
Creative Consultant
Chair of the DMA Creative Forum