The first career I had was in was law. No surprise: It was the most traditional environment imaginable, and so slow to change. We all had individual offices, of course, but also they were even handed out according to seniority, using a calculation of view and square footage. Every lawyer had an assistant. Partners still referred to them as secretaries. They all had those long “law firm” names. (Only much later would all those multi-name firms drop all but the first name. Controversy!) And when I said diversity was important, they put me on the hiring committee. Actual partner quote: “I don’t care about race, but I want them to be Ivy. Or BC. I don’t know what Morehouse is.”
We charged clients by the hour and tracked our time in 15-minute increments. But to even get us involved took a huge, banked retainer. Our job was twofold. One: do what we were trained to do in law school (looking for potential issues) and two: Bill tons of hours. If we saw a way to be more efficient for the client and had the audacity to suggest it, we’d be laughed at. That was not a goal. In fact, it flew in the face of goal number two.
If you were lucky enough to get on some interesting matter, the last thing you wanted was to complete it! You wanted to stick with it as long as possible, doing all the cool issue spotting and strategic wheelies you learned in law school, while partners took credit for training you (and sometimes for your actual work itself) and flexed in front of the client.
When I left the law, I thought: “I will never again work in such an antiquated field. Hurrah!” I moved from copywriting to editing to freelance journalism to dotcom world. And then I went to a big ad agency.
Nothing against this agency. I’m sure it’s widespread. But it was like hopping into a time machine and going back to firm life in the late 90s. The same big retainers. The same goal: Get on something you can bill the hell out of to ensure your safety. Every time I tried to articulate that there was a better way to support the client (because I literally had JUST BEEN the client) — an innovative idea, an untraditional approach — I was shut down. Late nights were encouraged and bragged about. Just like in law, there were few women in powerful positions, and a frat boy sensibility prevailed.
You were encouraged to draw out whatever was on your plate, because if you got it done too efficiently, nobody benefitted. And one thing was even more bizarre in agency world: Work was assigned not according to skill or experience, but according to who had open hours! There was a project for the Red Sox, and I’d had a blog about the Red Sox for years, won a fiction prize for a Red Sox story, had stories published in three Red Sox anthologies and had family in the baseball business. But they didn’t put me on that work because I was “busy” already.
This was all at a modern, digitally-focused agency. And I was in a state of shock. I expected this kind of dated, old boy stuff at a Boston law firm. But advertising was all about creativity! I left it (and agency life) only about a year after I’d arrived, back to the startup world, where being nimble was an asset and innovative thinking often led to … innovation. This was 10 years ago now.
It stuck with me that creative solutions for brands and organizations could be done differently. That the fresh perspective you get by partnering with an ad agency could be even better if you were really, actually partnering.
I called it “Honor Code” to hold myself accountable for how I wanted it to be. I pulled my partner Susanne out of the big agency world (she totally got it and felt the same) and we set out to do things differently. We would have no offices, and no full time employees, relieving us of that intense pressure to bill. Instead we’d have a crew of our all-time favorite talent, freelancing with us. We would assign work based on experience, talent and heart for it. And wouldn’t be about “cool stuff” that made us look good. We loved an innovative, under-the-radar “aha” answer just as much. Or even more.
We would always tell the truth. To clients and to each other. And that, we believed, was the key to a real, lasting partnership.
Ironically, one of the harder things about running Honor Code has been defining what we do. Too often, we end up talking about what we don’t do. All those agency things. Which is so un “me” — I’m generally a positive, grateful person. I’d like to better define ourselves by what we do do. (This is something we’re working on now, our own brand and message. The cobbler has no - you know.)
Our clients often come to us after being burned by an agency - and it’s really hard to convince them that we only genuinely want to help. (Or they paid such a massive retainer at the previous agency that it felt like “little things” were all “included.” Whereas we don’t do a retainer but do bill for any actual work. So we’ve also been called by a client confused when she got “money back.” We just hadn’t taken as much time as expected, so we returned a portion of that deposit.) When the business/brand isn't a good fit, we are honest and say so, and we also brainstorm, network, and offer other channels/partners they can reach out to that may be a better fit. We can make plenty of money by billing the right clients fairly, having them see our value and come back to do more or refer us to friends.
With some amazing exceptions, some of whom are partners of ours, like Allen & Gerritsen, changes in the agency world feel like they’re happening at the pace of my metabolism in menopause. And it’s taken 10 years, but finally clients are starting to notice.
[Watch this space for Part 2, coming soon.]
This is a happy place to work at and lucky companies and people who work with you.
All so true! There is such a more efficient way to work...