CLIENTS AND AGENCIES: ALAS, THERE IS NO HOPE…

CLIENTS AND AGENCIES: ALAS, THERE IS NO HOPE…

James R. Rosenfield

July 2003

You've heard of the town without pity? This is a column without hope.

In almost 35 years as a consultant, client, and head of an agency, I've seen agency/client relationships work effectively perhaps 10% of the time.

A ten percent success rate is awful, not much better than you'd do at blindman's bluff. The agency/client model is seriously flawed, to say the least. Instead of partnership, there is contentiousness. Instead of mutual respect, mutual distrust. Chances are that if you look clinically at your own experiences, you'll be able to cite only too many instances of clients abusing their agencies, and agencies, in turn, bamboozling and hoodwinking their clients.

And, in a sense, who can blame them? It would take a saint not to hoodwink someone who abuses you, or not to abuse someone who hoodwinks you. What a sad, endless cycle this is!

What a pity! All agency/client relationships begin with harmony and great expectation, the triumph, like a second marriage, of hope over experience.

That, in fact, is where the problems begin. The courtship pattern of the agency selection process heaps false promises on both sides.

It's like the old joke: A fellow has a near death experience, and finds himself hurtling downwards to hell. To his surprise, he's greeted by an elegant tuxedo-clad devil, who, plying him with champagne, shows him to his palatial private quarters, where he can look forward to an eternity of wine, women, and song.

He recovers, as it turns out, and returns to life. Several years pass, and this time he dies for good. He ascends to heaven, where he finds the serene but boring spectacle of angels floating around playing harps. He requests assignment to the other place, a request quickly granted.

In an instant, he plunges an infinite distance downwards, where in a twinkling of an eye he finds himself chained naked to a burning post, holding a pick, and sentenced to break rocks forever. "But…but…what about the champagne and women and song I was given previously?" he cries to the nearest devil.

"Simple," says the devil. "You were a prospect then. Now you're a client."

PROBLEM #1: THE SELECTION PROCESS

When I was a young client, fortune found me sitting on one of the larger direct marketing budgets in the U.S. Politics on the part of my boss' boss had cursed me with an incompetent agency, which I was finally able to get rid of. I then contacted the three largest and most reputable direct marketing agencies of the time, all of whom were eager to present their wares.

One of these agencies was run by a legendary gentleman, gifted in the wiles of client seduction. And boy, did he seduce me! Within minutes of meeting me he had all of my hot buttons figured out, and he pushed them like a virtuoso organist playing Bach. Deep, soulful, (pseudo) intellectual conversations…trans-continental phone calls at home during weekends from his summer house in the Hamptons (I lived on the beach then: "Well, Jim, you're looking at your ocean, I'm looking at mine..," Who could resist a frisson or two, especially a naïve and pretentious young fellow like me?)

The coup de grace was dinner at his Fifth Avenue townhouse, and a private tour through an impressive art collection.

Needless to say, he got the account.

Needless to say, I never saw him again.

PROBLEM #2: AGENCY INTERNECINE WARFARE

Agencies and clients are like cats and dogs, but the real cats and dogs reside within the agency itself: The account people and the creatives.

The account people ("suits," in the condescending jargon of the agency business) are charged with interpreting the client's wishes to the creatives. No good can possibly come of this. It is exceedingly difficult simply to understand what a person standing next to you is saying. When you add a layer to the communications process, especially a layer attempting to serve three masters - the client, agency management, and, yes, the creatives - communications disappear.

Agencies resist letting creatives appear before clients because, according to myth, they are free spirits, likely to say things that contradict the party line. In reality, I have never seen this happen, and would universally recommend creative people getting information directly from the client, and then presenting the creative directly to the client. The account people can play golf while this is going on.

PROBLEM #3: CREATIVE DELUSION

A major function of ad agencies in post-industrial capitalism is to give slightly non-conforming people a place to hang their hats. Ergo, the creatives.

It's the creatives who give agencies their distinct cultures: A sort of tiresome playfulness. On the other hand, account executives, media specialists, et al. would fit in anywhere.

The problem: Agencies seek creative solutions to most problems. But most problems in reality need strategic solutions, followed by tactics, with creative executions coming at the end of the tactical process. Agencies put them first, although they will deny this.

Worse still, above-the-line agencies cling to television like a baby to its blanket, even though the world of media has been fragmented and re-fragmented to a fare-thee-well for several decades now. The ostensibly hippest of the hip, the pony-tailed and sun-glassed creative director, is in reality living in the world of the 1960s.

The emphasis on television is especially dire in the U.S., where print advertising has existed in an abyss of incompetence for years now. Only the kids and the burnt-outs do print, as the stars trot off to supervise their location shots.

PROBLEM #4: EVALUATION

In the world of above-the-line general advertising, how do you evaluate? Market share? Recall? Likeability? All of these are flawed.

Market share is a result of numerous processes, including distribution, promotion, and competitive activity. It's a "dumb" measure, not necessarily leading to profitability. (Packaged goods firms in particular buy market share all the time, and let's not even talk about the dot-coms.) Let me hasten to add, though, that in the absence of anything more scientific, it's a most useful surrogate. The eagerness of agencies to take credit for market share gains, though, often outstrips their real contributions.

Recall? Who cares? It's nonsense, focus group hocus-pocus.

Likeability? The history of advertising is filled with likeable campaigns that did nothing, and loathsome campaigns that moved the profit needle.

A few years back in the U.S., Alka-Seltzer ran ads showing dyspeptic people exclaiming " I can't believe I ate the whole thing." Everyone in the country was talking about it. Sales, alas, declined.

Conversely, Procter & Gamble's Charmin toilet tissue launched (and ran forever) one of the world's most hated campaigns, featuring an irascible grocer warning customers not to squeeze the Charmin. Sales soared.

Counter-intuitive, perhaps, but the world is a strange place.

Surely evaluation problems can't exist in the world of direct marketing, you ask. Well, that was the case formerly. These days, though, as the once-great direct marketing agencies have been swallowed up by vast agency networks, tap dancing and obfuscation prevail. So-called "below-the-line" has become almost as soft as "above-the-line."

Lester Wunderman used to say they will become us. He was wrong. We have become them.

PROBLEM #5: CLIENT DEPENDENCY AND ITS BACKLASH

Years ago, an agency CEO cynically told me that you make money from weak clients.

Weak people, though, are dangerous. The passivity and dependency that has fed the agency for years can disappear in a moment, as a result of new bosses, new policies, or a bad economy.

Strong, knowledgeable clients, though, won't fall for agency hogwash, and will demand not only performance, but accountability, rationality, and basis, things that agency culture seldom can provide.

This traps the agency between the Scylla of weakness and the Charybdis of strength. It's enough to make you want to get an honest job!

SOLUTIONS?

I can only think of two, neither of them without problems:

--In-house agencies.

Not a good solution, except for specialized environments, like catalog companies. You end up with the same kinds of people you get at regular agencies, except less talented.

--No agency.

This can work, although it requires departments and divisions to staff their own communications areas. Result can be a mixed bag of quality. It's also not the best solution if overall branding is an issue.

THE REALITY

Somehow the agency/client model has survived for many years now, in spite of its clumsiness and lack of effectiveness.

This is not rational, but there is much about capitalism that isn't rational. Agencies and clients may be one of those things that are in essence a secret offering to the gods of abundance, a way of showing that we can waste, waste, waste, and still be rich.

I look for the model not only to survive, but to become stronger, as capitalism evolves (or devolves) into a handful of multi-national conglomerates serviced by a handful of international agency networks, like twin octopi wrapping their tentacles more tightly around each other.

I advise thoughtful young people to seek careers elsewhere.