Editor’s Note: The following excerpts are from a speech delivered at a High Tech Marketing Alliance meeting that took place on Feb. 5 at the Radisson Hotel, La Jolla, Calif.
As long as I’ve been in business, agencies and clients have had a torrid on-and-off-again love affair. In fact, the greatest lament I’ve heard from agency folks is, "Advertising would be a great business if it weren’t for the clients." Well, when I started an agency nine months ago and I had no clients, it wasn’t so much fun.
So how do we sustain the passion of the love affair? [With] respect and mutual growth. Sounds like a marriage, doesn’t it? Well, like a marriage, the answer to a fruitful relationship lies in a commitment—in vows taken and adhered to from the very beginning.
At NYCA, to get to know our potential clients, and for them to get to know us, we ask some questions, and we open ourselves wide for cold, clinical scrutiny from the beginning. One of the most important questions we ask prospective clients is, "Who can say, ‘Yes’? ‘Yes’ to the strategy, ‘Yes’ to the creative work, ‘Yes’ to the media, ‘Yes’ to the spending?" Seems like a simple thing—one little syllable. But that one question can make a lively room go quiet faster than a seven-figure production estimate because it defines roles quicker than multi-titled business cards do.
It is important for us to work closely with the people who can say "yes." "Nos" are easy, inevitable and, hard as they are to hear, helpful, and "maybes" are the kind killers of progress that get us nowhere. But "Yes"—in all the rhetoric of our industry—is the elusive key held by a rare few that can make things happen.
Lots of client/agency relationships begin during a pitch. Poorly handled pitches are as artificial as most of the contestants on the reality show, The Bachelor, and end up with the client and agency breaking up. Here’s the analogy: One beautiful, inviting, charming client and lots and lots of salivating agencies panting and preening for the client’s favor. Just like in the show, the idea is to knock off the other contestants and marry the prize—not to get to know each other, to date, to let the relationship take its natural course.
Yeah, that relationship will last, sure. Not past the next sweeps period. But that’s just what it’s like during the pitch process with agencies. Each agency is forced into beating the other agencies instead of being themselves and learning if they and the client are truly right for each other. Chemistry is hard to define. It’s critical to answer the question, "Is this the right agency?" [Here’s some] pitch advice: Don’t buy the work. Buy the right agency.
Does an agency need category expertise to be your agency? Yes, if you are doing one ad and you don’t have time or a strategy, but want to make a measurable difference. No, if you’re doing anything more. Agencies need to be fast learners to exist. The difference is in the talent and passion of the learners, and the methodology of the learning. Don’t buy past experience unless you want ideas from the past above all.
Now, on high-tech ads … well, can you tell me what is a high-tech ad? Some nondescript neon graphic and some futuristic san-serif type? Sure, that will sell your product—that’s the insight you’re looking for! If it were only that easy.
It’s good [for people to] say, "Hey, that is a high-tech ad!" but isn’t it better [for them] to say, "That’s a Kyocera ad!" or "A Proxima ad!" or "A Sony ad!" What does it mean when we’re asked if we can do tech ads? It means there is a convention—some rules and clues that tech ads fit into and want to fit into—so you spend your ad money … and it gets lost in the sea of sameness in your industry or category.
A good agency can do general category-oriented work, but bad agencies do it better. The question is not whether your agency can do category-oriented work, but can it do ads for your one and only specific company, for your product, for you?
After all the science, the research, the process, the brief, there is still something more to do if you want the work to be truly great. This isn’t mandatory. You can stop at all this good work and have talented people hit singles and doubles, but [it’s only] with the talent set free in an environment that breeds belief in the impossible where you will get homers.
If you want to stir your consumers’ souls, make people in your company feel they are working in a place that reaches for excellence, you’ll have to risk something—you’ll have to allow your agency some magic room. We are talking about science mixing with art. Our culture is not accepting of the emotional/ intuitive "I feel" as much as the rational "I think," but we need to [change people’s minds]. That is when we will form strong allegiances, bonds, relationships and brands.
So please save some room for inspiration, for the double-gulp, the "uh-huh," the happy accidents, the inverted cone technology, the boing!, the thingy that makes it fly, the moments when you see something and say, "Oh, my gosh!"
[To paraphrase from a poem by Christopher Logue,] "Come to the edge," he said. "No," they said. "We are afraid." "Come to the edge," he said again, and when they came, he pushed them … and they flew.
Reserve some room to fly.
