How many times have you heard that it’s all about the work? It’s all about the work. It’s all about the work. It’s all about the work. It’s all about the work. It’s all about the work. It’s all about the work.
I am curious. Is your success in advertising really all about the work? For most people, it’s also about being easy to work with, among other tangibles, like your gender, race and age.
Getting to the bottom of these questions is more than a rhetorical exercise for people working in advertising today. The agency business is facing pressure from all sides. The best talent is heading to tech companies for the money and the challenges offered. Meanwhile, clients are calling up their consultant friends and building out their internal creative departments.
What’s an agency worker to do?
Mark Pollard, a strategist who loves words, is puzzling over these things too. Let’s consider his thoughts on better agency/client relationships, which are required before any creative bars are raised.
The 4 main reasons marketers don’t get better work from their agencies:
1. They don’t really want it
2. They don’t know what it is
3. They don’t want to pay for it
4. They want process for the sake of process— Mark Pollard (@markpollard) December 12, 2018
The 4 main reasons agencies don’t give better work to clients:
1. They don’t know what it is or how to do it
2. They aren't as good as they think they are
3. The client is difficult (in their minds)
4. The client really doesn't want it (meetings, put-downs, conservative, laws)— Mark Pollard (@markpollard) December 12, 2018
I like how “They don’t know what it is” appears on both lists. Pollard is driving the dagger in both directions. Everyone’s at fault.
Better Work: A Definition
What is better work? You know it when you see it, am I right?
Even if I am right, knowing it when you see it is the ultimate dodge. Better work can be defined. Better work is work that captures your imagination and drives you to want to know more and do more. Better work is work that you remember. Work that you can repeat or mimic from memory like “Whazzup?” for Bud Light or “Where’s the Beef” for Wendy’s.
Better work is not necessarily the work that ends up winning industry awards. Award show judges are not the customer. You’ll know when you’re consistently producing better work because your prospects and customers (the people in your audience) will tell you and they will show you.
Bow Down Or Go Home
How is better work made? That’s the question we’re all working to answer.
This is what I believe: To the humble go the spoils. Author Steven Pressfield explains what I mean: “Nobody wants to read your shit.”
He may be overstating things because here you are reading my shit. But let’s give the man the benefit of the doubt. He says the answer to this problem is twofold:
1) Streamline your message. Focus it and pare it down to its simplest, clearest, easiest-to-understand form.
2) Make its expression fun. Or sexy or interesting or scary or informative. Make it so compelling that a person would have to be crazy NOT to read it.
His standards are high, which is good because he’s speaking for the reader and/or customer here. If you’re going to interrupt someone’s favorite program with a pitch for softer toilet paper, you better make the pitch funny, sad or something that doesn’t make people throw things at the TV.
In other words, you better get on the customer’s page now or face the client’s disappointment later.
