All of these years later, it feels like on the one hand clients understand that they’re not getting enough out of their agencies - but on the other hand, they’re torn and held back by their old vision of what working with an agency should look and feel like.
Back in the day, a good agency just seemed … “cool” in the traditional-but-now-kind-of-old-fashioned sense of that word. I want to share what I mean, but first I want to go back a little farther.
The big reveal
Before I was in house at multiple brands, I was the Creative Director at a PR firm owned by two women. A couple moments really stand out in my memory. First up, our founders said that if you were off working without talking to the client, even working on an RFP before you were officially engaged, you were blowing it.
And that made sense to me, even if I fought it at first. I’m an ideas person, and even though I’m an extrovert, I like getting my thoughts together solo versus hashing them out. Still, it seems obvious to me that a) you want there to be collaboration from the beginning, so you get in the habit of it because b) it makes the work better because c) the client knows more than you about their business, needs and challenges.
Obvious, right? Here’s the first thing that BLEW MY MIND while working with agencies from the brand side.
So they would get the brief, have one kickoff, and then vanish. Like 100% vanish. For a LONG time. And then they’d come back and present the work.
In the interim, you’re playing the waiting game while dealing with the brokenness that led you to hire the agency in the first place. There’s been this veil of secrecy, to the point where, on a call, you can’t see a page of the deck before it’s shown to you! Or if you’re in a room together, the conceptual boards are lined up facing a wall to be revealed only at the last moment.
All teeing up to this big, huge AHA!
What do you mean you don’t get it?
From the agency perspective, you’ve been working on this stuff in your silo for what seems like A MILLION years. The creative has been pushed through rounds and rounds of reviews (including last minute random POVs from heavies who’ve never worked on this client). It’s been changed, changed back, mired in red tape. The budget is so big that it’s been labored under the pressure of being “perfect.” And then this moment, presenting the work, has also been practiced over and over.
At the point of the big reveal, it’s new to the client. But the agency knows every word, every nuance by heart.
The client has questions (some things inevitably aren’t explained — the agency, living with it solo for so long, just gets it). Some of the elements are off brand. (The dark, edgy, skateboardy video shot at a huge cost for a light, prep shoe brand, for example.) And some just aren’t usable for the problem the client is trying to solve. (Like we’re an online-only business, and we didn’t get any examples of digital assets.)
But asking those questions feels obnoxious and too late in the game — after all, the agency has been working on it for months. The result? The agency, caught off guard, and feeling cornered, may default to “you don’t get it.” And from their perspective, the client doesn’t. To be that “in it” over all that time, it’s hard to think otherwise. The client is like — wait, what just happened? It feels like you’re not cool enough to understand.
Yeah, you loved the cool swagger of that agency. The idea that thy would make you unassailably cool. But no one can “make you” cool. No one can do it “to you” they have to do it with you. And as some parent or grandparent 1000% said to you at some point: There’s nothing cooler than being yourself. (Audiences can smell anything else, too.)
Clients need to find out what that real self is. That’s the job at hand. And we have to do it together.
Work In Progress
I still think we are a WIP when it comes to collaboration, and we have to keep it foremost on our minds. It’s a balancing act.
One thing we do is create an Answer Honestly at the start of the engagement, a tailored series of about 20 questions that we ask all stakeholders to respond to from the heart. We read this over and over during the partnership to make sure we’re always listening to the real wants and needs. But if a stakeholder doesn’t participate (sometimes we’re told “oh it’s fine, they’re deferring to me on this"), it really hamstrings us. You want to push back when that happens, but you also don’t want to be a pain in the ass!
This Answer Honestly is the basis for a brand DNA to start the engagement. I share what I THINK the DNA is, and in that session we can talk through anything that’s not working and make updates in real time before finalizing. If that’s working as it should, the DNA is the measuring stick for all the creative to come. If someone has opted out of the Answer Honestly, and then isn’t in the DNA session, it can be hard to come to agreement on anything going forward.
Another thing we do is show actual work in progress. That’s a big one. If you’re working on a campaign, say, or a logo, and you refine and refine before the first time the client sees it, it’s a waste of resources and feels defeating. It’s a partnership. We’re in it together. The client wants to be able to provide feedback when it’s truly actionable. We typically show a few WIP versions, get all the feedback, and then refine it. It does require a little vulnerability. And the client has to be able to grasp what unfinished work can become. But the feedback is actionable.
And one thing I always struggle with is how passionate I am about my point of view and recommendations! The client’s a client, and I don’t want to be the agencies I didn’t want to work with, insisting on my way. But also, the client’s paying for expertise and fresh thinking. If ideas are getting so watered down, wordy, if I get fearful that it’s taking them right back to where they came from when they called us, I feel a duty to stop the train and at the very least, to articulate the issues truthfully. That’s part of the “honor code” we’re named for. Most clients really appreciate it. But not all! I work and work on my delivery.
At this point we’ve worked with so many clients, and we do stop and take stock after everything we do. We’re good about using it as fuel to get better, to make the collaboration better. To make the work better. All of it goes back to openness. It takes guts to communicate, to tell the truth and hear it. It’s how you get to great, truthful work.
So no silos. Open them up. Let the air in.