Put your name where your work is
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.