The only way a client will buy an idea is if it’s sold to them.
These days they just don’t buy it without a solid, business based, rationale.
In the past an ad agency was a magnet for clients. They were drawn there because it was a wonderful world of clever thinking and creativity.
Yes, there was booze, long lunches and pretty girls but there were strange people who dressed differently and, more importantly, thought differently. They were challenging, aggressive and they had ideas that were beyond the client’s grasp but, strangely, they seemed to work.
Clients trusted the agency to create solutions that would help their business grow.
So why did the clients suddenly decide they could do it all themselves?
It wasn’t sudden, it took years, because over time we abrogated our responsibility.
We took the path of least resistance.
We failed to quantify the ROI that good creativity can deliver and settled for delivering ‘what the client wanted’ rather than ‘what the client needed’
In other words it was easier to capitulate than fight. This resulted in the client believing that he was right.
Once that happened it took the magic out of advertising.
The client then believed that they could come up with the ideas and they could make the ads. All they needed was a Mac and a technician.
The rest is history.
They now have the Macs, the technicians and a belief that agencies are nothing but a cost centre that they can probably do without.
There is also a belief that the media is the message.
Success won’t come by simply having a presence on Facebook or YouTube. These messages still need to have an idea, one that will catapult them beyond being just a public announcement.
We have to put the magic back.
This will only happen once we give our clients something that they can’t do themselves. And that is still clever creative thinking.
However there is no magic wand that we can wave to return the status quo. We now have to ‘prove’ our worth by justifying the value of that creativity.
This will come down to statistics and the ability to quantify how a creative approach is worth the perceived risk.
It will also come from reintroducing the idea that a creative solution is also better value for money than a mediocre one, or no idea at all.
Creativity sells, it always has done and still does now.
Agencies once promoted themselves as being the conduit between the client and the consumer – we have forgotten how important that is. By connecting the client and consumer, through great advertising ideas, we can again prove our worth.
Short term thinking and instant rewards are no excuse for taking the easy way out. Clients need to look seriously at their brand, its lifecycle and then be made aware of how important building a sustainable, long term, brand image is.
We must educate them to be able to articulate the importance of their brands to their senior managers.
In most cases we are not dealing with decision makers within our client’s business. At best we are talking to the people who have the power to say “Maybe”.
Arming the timid marketing person with the arguments to sell strategies and great ideas must be part of what we do.
Great work isn’t bought by clients, it’s sold by agencies. Advertising is the art of selling and great ideas need to be sold.
All’s not well in the Spamasphere.
Tuesday, March 22nd, 2016There has been a strategy shift in the spam I get – it’s moved from greed to fear.
I receive up to six spam emails a day, and until recently they have all played on the greed factor to try and get me to respond.
I have won competitions, had thousands of dollars put into my account and been offered amazing money-making schemes.
All I have to do to unlock this wealth is to ‘Click here’
I know that they more than likely contain malware or are using ‘phishing’ to get personal information – I have therefore never clicked on anything to find out.
They seem to get around the text-based junk mail filters by disguising the content using numerals instead of letters and inserting punctuation in the middle a word.
‘The first thing you need to do is c0llect your c0mmissi0n ch.eck of 6,492.94. Set up your details here:’
This has suddenly all changed.
I am now getting, with equally annoying regularity, a different form of spam. These all relate to impending disasters that will be unleashed on the USA, changing the American way of life forever.
And I don’t think they are referring to Donald Trump.
Subjects like: ‘The Imminent Danger From Within Our Borders’ and ‘The Worst Crisis Within US History is Almost Here’ now grace my inbox.
The ‘Click here’ relates to viewing secret reports or videos that will reveal these dastardly plots.
Conspiracy is now the new reason to ‘Click here’
Also to be found at the base of these emails is another link:
‘If you want to unsubscribe from our list. Click here’
By clicking to unsubscribe you are actually verifying your email address.
Of course the spam will continue – that’s unless disaster strikes first.
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