PS: Live Young

Another question: how do you keep up with what's going on?

OK, I shall follow your theme of brevity as I think you can see some of how I keep up to speed in my other postings.

Apart from reading various publications, I subscribe to a number of blogs which give me an overview of what’s going on. Some of them are listed on the right. You need to tap into what people are currently thinking and saying. I know Passive-Aggressive Notes is a little left of field (really here only for entertainment) but is a good example of real people doing real, unedited things - for example in the office space; hence the photo above. The industry blogs are great for other reasons but you cannot beat raw behaviour and thought – not filtered through clinical analysis or industry-speak. Make sure you grasp what motivates your people. If you need to really understand what’s going on, talk to them - go to the source. Talking of the source, Adverblog recently showed the Paul Smith Evian vid. For somebody from the North who went frequently to Nottingham and always made his way to one particular shop, I have admired Paul Smith and looked to him for inspiration. His mantra at the end of the short film and his “yesterday’s papers” comment in the middle are spot-on for those looking for new ideas:

Fun Time

How come a particular client will go to corporate hospitality events of another agency but we can’t manage it?

Yes, this is nightmare territory – the potential for stronger relationships and the equal likelihood of squandered money. The simple answer, to quote a movie line, is that you just ain’t doing it right. The more complicated one takes a bit longer to explain. Actually the fact that the other agency has succeeded shows that the client is on for such entertainment in the first place. You just have to work out how you can make it work for your agency.

First of all, you have to decide what you are trying to get out of your corporate hospitality. Is it stronger day-to-day team relationships, connection with a new senior decision maker or change in agency perceptions? For example, if it is a stronger client-agency team you may want to consider something interactive. This can range from activities like outsourced management survival courses to a few beers and ten-pin bowling. If it is change in agency perceptions, it may be more work-based and be a breakfast or evening seminar for a number of clients where the content is geared around something which the clients will be interested in and a revered outside speaker takes the lead. Getting Rory Sutherland to be his entertaining self may be easier if you are part of WPP or arranging for Robert Peston to speak about the economy may pay off with senior clients you are wishing to impress.

You also need to get the tone and timing right. In my experience, getting clients to come to events has seemed harder over the last few years and with the current “post crunch” pressures in every client organisation, it is becoming even more problematic. So making sure you are designing the right type of event is even more essential. Clients will only come if they really want to come. Therefore see it from your clients’ perspective. Are we talking about a breakfast session of intellectual discussion or a drunken evening culminating with your MD showing off his exclusive party trick of setting fire to his Sambucca-drenched testicles? (I kid you not. I could not make this type of story up!). What would work for your clients? Is the most senior client going to accept/like it? What signals about the agency does it give out to the other clients?

A good friend feels that alcohol is an essential ingredient for corporate entertainment and I tend to agree with him but he goes further by explaining it is a lubricant that enables clients subsequently to award projects to assuage their embarrassing behaviour. Then again he told me the Sambucca story so he moves in slightly different circles. However I do feel you need somebody in your team who is the catalyst for things to happen. They may not always be the most senior but it helps. It may be you....they are the ones without any prompting who get the party started and lead the initially reluctant clients to the dancefloor and get them to enjoy themselves.

Summer entertaining around sports or Christmas parties are laden with timing problems. There are invariably expensive but if you book Goodwood when the Wimbledon semi-finals are on or you schedule your Christmas bash on the night of the main industry awards you may have wasted your money. Time things carefully and consider teaming up with other agencies or suppliers to host a client event (your clients will thank you around Christmas time). Also think about not doing a broadcast event but use the money to do exclusive, discreet things which will have a greater effect. The Claridges Chef’s Table may create a stronger experience with a select client list than the agency team trooping down to Basingstoke to take out the whole marketing department out to the local Café Pasta.

Hope this helps. In the meantime, don’t forget Christmas is around the corner. (and thanks to Holly O’Neil for the photo above).

New World Whine

I mentioned in my last post that I was reading Steve Harrison’s How to Do Better Creative Work. Well I have just finished it and I owe him a "virtual" apology as a few months ago I was talking to someone about the book. My friend had been to the book launch and it was the same day I had a read an extract in Campaign. I can’t remember exactly why I thought this but I had got the impression from the extract that Steve was stuck in a groove and the world had slightly moved on from this viewpoint. Well, I misrepresented him in that conversation and I should set the record straight.

I had intended to read it after that but I intend to do a lot of things. It was only because I pass by a new bookshop called Clerkenwell Tales on my daily walk to work and one day I noticed his book in the window display that I resolved to buy it. The first thing I noticed about it as someone who has had arguments with publishers about pricing of my own books that it was being sold at just under £15. This is definitely a plus point – nobody wants to pay £30-£35 for a book of this type. I also liked that it was well designed inside. Anyway it was a good read, offered real insight and a good breadth of case studies. I would recommend it to anyone engaging with the creative process. Don’t get me wrong, though. I did not always agree with his way of going about things but you don’t get to be one of the most awarded creative directors in the business by appealing to everyone all the time.

The reason why I mention it here again is that I had a lot of sympathy with his concluding chapter in which he encouraged people not to throw out the communications rulebook with what currently seems to be a new age in communications. I am no doubt misrepresenting him again because what I call the rulebook he would probably describe as the sum of valuable learnings gained along the way since the communications industry started to mature.

I think back to April this year when the IPA Excellence Diploma essays were published and the likes of Alex Dunsdon from M&C and Matt Sadler at Euro RSCG got us to think about the consumer communications landscape in a different way. I was genuinely excited about having the chance - through those essays - to think a bit differently about customers, communications and how agencies will need to gear themselves differently around these challenges.

You might think that some of the IPA essays were in direct conflict with what Steve is promoting. Well I am not so sure. There is no doubt that the consumers’ world is changing but we need to look for new approaches through the filter of some of what has gone on before. Our emotions and behaviours have not totally changed – they just have a new contemporary context. Steve’s heroes of Ogilvy and Bernbach did not have our historical perspective. They used their intellectual curiosity, rigour and instinct to master their particular moment. We need to do the same for ours by embracing the new but not throwing out all the old - something we could easily do just because we don’t have the imagination to update its guiding principles to cater for a new challenge.

What that means is that we have to take a look at a number of areas. For example, how does the sacred cow of the brand idea work in this new context? As I am currently in danger of creating a "supersize" posting, this is something I am going to return to in a subsequent blog.

Art Nazi

This is my first agency and I am struggling with the creative head who is assigned to my main account. He does not take me as seriously as he does other colleagues. How can I work better with him?

The issue will be more with him with you if he is the senior in the relationship. He should be making you feel part of the team but that is obviously not happening. I remember the unnerving experience of being an account exec caught in between clients and a stroppy creative team so I know that you will be the one having to work at the relationship.

This would be my 3-pronged attack:

1) Put yourself in his shoes. Are you doing something (or not doing something) which is aggravating the situation? Or is it work overload or another concern on his part? Ask one of the colleagues he does get on with, what is their way to get him on side. Understand what makes him tick and through what you can connect with him.

2) Creative people respond well to those with passion about their work and knowledge of an account. You are in a good position to help the creative head look good in front of the client by providing him uptodate info about the client’s products and what is going on in the marketplace (but do not inundate him – find out whether that would be useful). In terms of being passionate about creative work, maybe he feels you do not understand the creative process enough and have not been exposed to enough work to appreciate the creative perspective. I am currently reading Steve Harrison’s How to Do Better Creative Work and although he has a specific way of seeing things (who would expect anything less..!), he does give an good insight into the creative process. Also I think adverblog is a great way to keep up with new campaigns and the ways creativity is developing.

3) Be patient in your expectations. Things will not change overnight but if you show your worth and use chemistry to connect, things will get better. And remember you are not the first to encounter problems. How do you think cartoon stereotypes come about? See below – of course these "cardboard cutouts" don’t really exist....!

Mind the Gap

Listening to the radio this week, I was surprised to hear that it has been two decades since the release of When Harry Met Sally. Today sees the UK release of the most recent take on boy-girl relationships – 500 Days of Summer - and it is being vaunted as the 21st century version of the Meg Ryan/Billy Crystal film.

I was reminded of the more traditional “Men are from Mars. Women are from Venus” view on relationships when I went to an AAR/BIMA presentation of some agency/client relationship research. Agencies were portrayed as more “touchy feely”, believing that perceptions could be mainly steered by the state of the relationship and clients were more single-minded in their view that performance was everything. In fact, the widening of this gap was one of the main symptoms of a relationship about to break down.

Maybe 500 Days of Summer will give us a few hints to view the state of the 21st century agency/client relationship as well. The dynamics are becoming more complex as both sides re-engineer the traditional model. And as agency-folk know - if we tinker with our client relationships in the wrong way – adding the equivalent of a different soundtrack, giving it an edgier voiceover, we may end up with a monster: