I have yet to meet a client that truly knows the cost of good creative. Now hang on, notice I wrote cost, not value as I believe they grasp the concept of the “value” of good creative but sometimes they have trouble with justifying the final cost of it. I really don’t blame them at times as the results seem to vary greatly no matter how much they pay.
Marketers will sometimes write off these situations to Client knowledge of creative process. The creative process takes time and time is money. Solutions may come in minutes, hours or days…it may come in a creative session or a week later in the shower! I often answer the question of how long will it take for you to come up with an idea with someone asking an artist how long it took them to come up with the concept to do a particular piece of work (I can’t remember who said it but their answer was all their life). But I think the problem may go further than Client education.
In dealing with Clients we normally layout a budget that spells out what we will spend on creative, managing, execution and media. The client usually gets the allotted time/dollars for managing, execution and media but I have not worked in or with an agency that has not given more to the creative hours than was billed… So, what is going on? How can a client not see the value if they are getting more than they are being billed?
The client looks for proof in the pudding. Was the product worth the cost? To me, creative should meet or exceed the client expectations for both cost and results. This means it should do what the client asks for and be within brand and budget expectations. Should it win awards? The client is not paying us to win awards, they are paying us for results foremost and sometimes, when the stars are aligned right, you can achieve awards and I’m also not the first to say such.
It seems like a very simple task yet we still see failures. Where is the process failing in such a simple process? I believe the failure point comes when the creative team forgets (or doesn’t know any better) the core objectives; solving the Clients communications problems. It’s quite common and used to be rampant. There use to be a time when creative teams for larger brands (um, think beer) would do creative based on where they wanted to travel to that year OR what type of dinning room set would look great in their house. Those days are mostly gone but it’s been replaced with ads done only because the creative team wanted to do that “style” of ad for their portfolio or just didn’t see the Clients problem worth their while to really think about. In other words, the creative would have very little about being good for the Clients problem.
When I see creative that would be great in a portfolio or doesn’t look like anyone read the brief it pisses me off to no end! Not that the ideas may not be great and could be award winning; it’s that they don’t solve the clients problems and I know I’m going to have to eat those creative costs.
I have worked with lots of creative people in this industry and have witnessed the difference in being creative and being able to come up with a “complete idea” that solves all the clients points. The later will always be considering the clients problems (messaging) with every idea that floats through their head. The former may have a good idea but fails to fully connect it to (or wrap it around) the Clients points.
If I was the client and received an idea that was only half the solution, I wouldn’t put much value on creative! I would start pushing for the lowest cost creative as possible as the solution is not unique to my problem and there are a lot of suppliers delivering the same quality…They use the Walmart strategy; if you can’t supply y for x then someone else will.
Here lies the dilemma. Both suppliers bill out the same amounts for two totally different products and, even more challenging, one may have better looking portfolio than the other but can’t do the same quality of work. Hmmm…maybe it is Client education after all.
How do we solve the problem?
To be continued…..
Scott Westerlaken
With over 25 years of award winning experience in marketing, television commercials, film, video, communications, web, radio, print, and events, Scott has the ability to maintain focus on the big picture and offer a wide range of solutions appropriate to the clients message and budget. He has been recognized with dozens of awards in business, communications, and filmmaking from around the world. For the client, this means a truly unique balance of hands on technical knowledge and high level strategic experience that always leads to unique and creative solutions.
Al Graham is a veteran of the advertising wars who once smoked like Mad Men’s Don Draper. He is also a veteran of many social conflict wars and has been actively involved in protesting dumps, airports, expressways and urban sprawl.
