Here are some notes I took from a very inspiring presentation this morning at Ogilvy by Simon Thompson from Apple and Russell Davies on how clients buy work. There were a couple of notable differences of opinion and it was interesting to get two perspectives on the same issue, however the common ground was that as agency folk we need to remember that we operate in a people business.

Key take-outs from Simon Thompson’s presentation

·       Agencies sometimes slip into a manufacturing mentality: make ads, then sell them to the client.

·       Buying work can be terrifying for clients. Fear of making a decision that leads to a mistake that is out in the world for everyone to see.

·       If you make a mistake in a client organisation, you certainly know about it – MD comes knocking, as does FD, HR etc.

·       Money is all the client really cares about. Discussing brand image, favourability etc is a means to an end.

·       But the marketing client operates in a difficult internal culture: Finance hates marketing as it costs money, Sales hate marketing as it deflects budget from discount offers they can provide. HR hate marketing as it’s difficult to measure success. Everyone in the organisation is a ‘marketing expert’ and will have an opinion about the work.

·       Easy to sell work to clients if there is a clear strategy linked to business objectives: demonstrate how an idea solves a business problem and the work is generally bought.

·       Most clients come from a finance/sales background and aren’t necessarily instinctive when it comes to evaluating creative work.

·       Often easier for the client to say ‘no’ than ‘yes’ - e.g:

·       Awards are important for motivation – both for the client and the agency, however it’s not important to the client when they are first being presented work. Their main priority is a successful business result, as that is what will give them fame in their organisation. You certainly don’t want to give the false impression that you just want to spend the client’s money simply to make the agency famous.

·       As a client, would never award business to an agency if the strategy is right, but the creative idea is wrong. Need the whole solution.

·       Never get the client involved in the creative process. It is important that there is a clear divide of roles.

·       The reality is that agency and clients operate in different worlds.

·       There is a clear distinction between ‘client speak’ and ‘agency speak’. It is important that both parties learn to speak eachother’s language and have aligned goals.

·       Trust is the building foundation for everything. If you have a solid relationship built on mutual trust it will foster a culture of taking risks, as in the event of things going wrong, it’ll still be OK.

·       Remember that a client’s ultimate motivation is money: ambition is to sell more product and sell it at a higher price.

Key take-outs from Russell Davies’ presentation

·       Biggest crime by agencies is failure of empathy.

·       Agree that client priority is money, but less the organisation’s money, more the individual client’s money.

·       Need to remember that this business is all about people – and it is therefore important to understand and be sensitive to people’s individual motivations.

·       Important to remember the simple human stuff – e.g. from the impact to the individual of an agency team being late to the career ambitions of an individual client to do something different, successful and get noticed within their organisation.

·       There is not an amorphous group of clients. Clients respond in different ways and getting attuned with the culture of who you are dealing with is critical in establishing a long term working relationship.

·       In pitches clients will ask themselves “what would it be like to be in a meeting with these people?” Are they engaging, friendly, personable, and attentive? Could I work with them? This human factor can often be more important than the strategy that is being presented.

·       It is easy to fall back on exiting agency processes. The key is to align agency processes and working styles with those of the client.

·       Big mistake by agencies is to pretend that the business is a science. The industry has created a pseudo science culture around itself, perhaps at the expense of the culture of charisma and creative ideas, which are the real currency.

·       Clients shouldn’t be buying work, they should be making work with you.

·       Try not to put the client in a position where they are having to make a decision every day: creates a highly pressurised and unproductive environment.

·       Agencies can be very secretive. Being open and working with a client can be more productive in the long term.

·       It takes time to build a relationship with a client, establish trust and ‘bed in’ a strategy before the best work starts to materialise. Agencies should be more patient and allow the relationship and the work to develop together.