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Those who have spent time in a field like advertising would understanding the frustration of clients not accepting your agency’s best-thought advice or work. Just about everyone in the agency business would have seen some (in our opinion, of course) pretty good work rejected and replaced by second grade ones, or watered down until it was a slap in the face.

When it came to the crunch, one diplomatic tactic which my peers and I loved to use to rationalise (and negotiate) the creative work with clients was to simply ask them one question. Would you, dear client, have your name on the ad or DM piece as the person who approved it?

Of course, it was often a rhetorical question meant to prove a point. Many clients would try to side-step the issue by saying it was against company policy, and so on. But everyone knew what we were driving at. Would you, someone who has the final say on a piece of public-facing work, readily put your good name in black and white on that piece of work, to be seen (albeit in very small print) by the world?

Clients aside, anyone who strongly champions a piece of work, should have the balls to say “Yes! I will put my good name against it, and let the whole world know it was me who made the call.”

Ad agencies have traditionally requested for their names to be placed on the fringes of print ads. Now, web agencies, like ourselves at Convertium, request for permission to have our name listed at the bottom of the websites that we create.

Whenever our name is at the bottom of any client’s website, we pay really special attention to the quality of the work. I huff and puff just a whole lot more at work to insist that any client, who has the professional courtesy to allow us to list our name on their website, should get the best possible treatment.

Of course, when our company’s name is at the bottom of each and every web page, we also want to avoid any major embarrassment to ourselves. So, it works in the clients’ favour, really.

But what about clients who insist that the end results follow their vision and taste of things, as against the agency’s honest opinion? Just ask them for permission to have their individual names listed under the credits. Whether they say yes or no, don’t forget to remove your company’s name.

Sometimes, I really want to blame it squarely on the schools. Especially fancy tertiary institutions that spin PR about how their graduates will become masters of the universe. Be it for recruitment, marketing or funding purposes, there is a dire consequence of such spin – unrealistic expectations borne by fresh graduates.

It is a phenomenon experienced in all developed economies, and across industries. Young recruits and interview candidates expect to be in positions that are high profile and high impact. They want to be in charge of marketing strategies when they have little domain knowledge. Or even having visited the real-world places where the commercial and human activities take place. Tell them that their entry level positions require maybe a few years of grind like hitting the stores, number crunching and mind-numbing paperwork, and they make for the exit faster than a premature ejaculation.

As I read the business magazines, I find scant consolation that CXOs of major corporations face the same recruitment and human resource issues as our small interactive agency. Even when the candidates say they really want a get into the Internet field, what they really mean is they want to work on big brand accounts that allow them to score big points. They want to do award-winning creative work; take control of the online marketing destiny of a product; write codes for the next YouTube. And if you do not mind, please pay them very well because they have the potential to deliver for you.

It is a good thing I do not do the first line of interviews, which is handled by our operations director at Convertium. Wait till you hear her stories. She tells me that the human resource conferences she attends talk about the issue of the millennium generation – kids coming into the market with rose-tinted glasses and a major dose of entitlement. I tell her to give as good as she gets from the kids.

Whatever happened to simple values (and logic) like, if I perform well please pay me more and promote me? To make matters even more fun in Singapore, even “foreign talents” from neighbouring countries are being caught in the zeitgeist of asking for the world before showing the goods. And it does not help that we have an “official” culture of pay-more, pay-more.

So, coming back to the tertiary institutions, yes, your under-graduates are smart kids. They probably know a lot about something or other. But please do not lead them on to think without reservation that the world is their oyster. Expect them to taste some cockles first.