When You Have a Crappy Client

Every business has its share of personalities. So many marketing professionals are quite brilliant. Some are quirky brilliant. Some are arrogantly brilliant. Some are brilliant at pretending to be brilliant. The range of personality types never ceases to amaze me. Over the years I have come to realize that everyone has something to teach if you are open to learning.

Balancing Act

Not surprisingly, running a sizable advertising account for an agency is a balancing act. On one hand you have clients that need to be managed and require constant attention. On the other hand, you have staff that need to be engaged and motivated. It all operates on the shifting sands of an evolving marketplace where competitive pressures require both sides to be resourceful and flexible. An important principle that maintains balance and propels it all forward is respect. The agency needs to respect the client. The client needs to respect the agency. And as we all know, respect is earned when it is given freely. Where there is no respect, there is imbalance. Something or someone will suffer.

I have had the privilege to work with many clients that understood the unique balance required to operate a successful client/agency relationship. They encouraged and expected the agency to come forward with ideas. They knew that fresh, original ideas could lead to a competitive edge for a business. I loved working with them because I knew they respected and valued our partnership. That respect cemented my loyalty to them.

Sadly, this same principle is lost on a few clients. I have worked with some that did not respect their agency personnel at all. They treated us like flakey adolescents. They made it clear that our manners were not good enough to eat at the big table with the adults. Some of the disrespect was ‘in your face’ while most of it lived in the darkly quiet corners of the client’s culture, unspoken but very real. The sad result was the frequent turnover of agency staff. It is quite common in the agency business; highly motivated people choose to leave when they could no longer tolerate the disrespect. Legions of incredibly talented people with amazing ideas were lost to clients in the process.

An Example

I think this example illustrates what I mean. It was planning season for our client’s business. My team spent months working on a high level, multi-faceted brand marketing plan. It was all encompassing. It was intricate. It was well conceived. Each team member had a hand in its creation. It drew heavily on layers of research sources, weaving together disparate sets of data to arrive at some key insights that would give rise to effective strategies. The team sweated blood to build it. They were anxious to present it. I believe in rewarding the people that did the work with the opportunity to share it with clients. To me, that time in the spotlight, in front of a client was its own reward. We booked a meeting so the team could share their combined work.

On the appointed day, we sat across from our client’s team. We exchanged some preliminary niceties and dealt with some minor housekeeping issues before we got to the main purpose of the meeting. The presentation of our comprehensive marketing plan. The team started the presentation. They had rehearsed it many times over. The client interrupted the presentation at about the 5-minute mark. They had barely explained the research sources and their process to pull it together. The team was stopped cold. The client then pulled out his own list of priorities to be discussed. Thus, in that critical moment, he took the meeting in a totally different direction. Months of sweat, and blood laid on the boardroom table, dead as a doornail. It would never see the light of day again.

The rest of the meeting proceeded amicably enough. It ended with some ‘to-dos’ and follow-up work for the agency. This off-agenda turn by the client was a total blind side to me, as well as the rest of team. I was expecting a polite hearing at least. Back at the agency, I assessed the damage to the team’s morale. They were all terribly heartbroken, frustrated, and angry. Attempting to soften the morale damage, I tried privately to get some explanation from the client a few days later. I am certain he did not think he owed me any explanation at all. Although, he did disclose this. He felt that ‘the agency’ could not possibly understand his business as well as he and his team. Therefore, how could he spend any time listening to something ‘the agency’ created without proper client direction? When he referred to ‘the agency’ in the context of this conversation I felt the term was synonymous with ‘the children’. Any pretensions about being a partner with this client were gone. The operating imperative was ‘listen to me’, ‘take orders’ and ‘don’t talk back or think’.

Teachable Moments

Everyone is entitled to their opinion. It would be foolish on my part to expect a ‘home run’ that day. Quite frankly, I do not think anyone on the team did either. This point remains nevertheless, if this client respected our agency a little more, he would have taken the time to listen to our entire presentation. Throughout he could have offered helpful, corrective thoughts to adjust some of our thinking. He might have pointed to various conclusions that were flawed in his view. We could have worked together to make the plan that much better with some collegial collaboration. In the end we might have achieved something that would make us all proud. A respectful client takes care to protect the enthusiasm of his agency while attempting to teach them something valuable. In the end, we would learn something from each other. If he had invested the time to teach us, my team would have loved him forever. Their loyalty would have been unshakable.

He clearly did not understand or care. Instead he chose the path of no respect. Do not look at the work. Do not attempt to teach. It was not worth his time to do so. Just sit and give orders. Expect us to act without question. From that day on, my team grew to loathe him. Their lack of engagement became palpable in everything they touched. I was quite certain there was a blizzard of resumes flying out of the agency after that fateful meeting. Frankly, I could not blame any of them. Client disrespect is like a cancer at agencies. It robs them of motivation, and creative energy. The work inevitably drifts toward mediocrity. It is half-hearted, lacking energy or originality. In the end a disrespectful client gets the advertising he truly deserves.

In the End

As a footnote to this story, I can report some justice. Within a few months of our meeting this client was moved to a different role elsewhere in the organization. That move opened some opportunities for others. Our agency inherited some amazing clients who really knew how to get the best work out of us. If you believe that the universe tends to balance things out over time, then this is a good example.