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: