Jimmy Gilmore – Writer – Director

Fact of life, junior cre­ative: not every client is going to buy your great work. Some will just wear you down until what finally runs is just bad. Why? Pol­i­tics, bad taste, stu­pid­ity, or just plain arro­gance. And in a good econ­omy, great agen­cies fire them. But most agen­cies have clients that are there just to keep the lights on. Usu­ally,  juniors get stuck work­ing on them while the senior peo­ple work on the fun stuff.

But most clients will buy decent work, at least on occa­sion. And a lot of it has to do with how it’s pre­sented, defended, and the steps that are taken once an impasse is met.

Pre­sent­ing: Some peo­ple do bet­ter sell­ing work by prac­tic­ing. Oth­ers take improv classes. And some use salesman’s tricks. Then there are the per­son­al­ity sell­ers, a rare breed of agency rain­maker that can force the work through just by using their charm – you can often find these guys sell­ing bad work just because they hate los­ing. I try to con­nect on a per­sonal level and let the client know that I’m being hon­est and that I have their con­cerns in mind. I find this strat­egy almost always works bet­ter for exist­ing clients.

Defend­ing: Most peo­ple will try to use the rhetor­i­cal skills of a lawyer. But my most pow­er­ful tool is lis­ten­ing. Just lis­ten to what they have to say. Don’t be quick to refute and make sure they’ve fin­ished talk­ing before you offer up a cri­tique of their think­ing. A lot of times they just need to work through things in their mind. And just by keep­ing your mouth shut you can sell a great idea. I used to work with an awe­some media direc­tor who later became a client. He uses his body lan­guage to get the other guy to talk first and allow him to win the nego­ti­a­tion every time.

It’s good to keep in mind that clients aren’t paid to have taste. (That’s actu­ally your cre­ative director’s job.) Their job is to drive incre­men­tal sales for the com­pany. So qual­i­ta­tive argu­ments will often loose. A par­tic­u­larly blunt boss once reminded me, “this isn’t fuck­ing Cannes, Jimmy.” No it wasn’t. And “artis­tic” argu­ments were never going to win the day. If you have to argue with them do it using their terms and goals, never yours.

Next steps: Don’t agree to any spe­cific changes at the meet­ing. Take good notes (or make sure your AE is) and let them know you’re going to look at all of their sug­ges­tions and you’ll be com­ing back with solutions.

Bogusky calls these “change moments” and says to embrace them and make them positive.

If they’re insist­ing on some­thing bad, try and fig­ure out why. Most peo­ple have rea­sons why they’re sug­gest­ing some­thing – although they don’t always share them unless they’re asked. Get­ting answers may feel like pulling teeth because some clients don’t want to share their motives — they’re not always pos­i­tive. This can be hard. If it weren’t, every agency pro­fes­sional would be doing great work and the award annu­als would be much thicker.

Unfor­tu­nately, some­times you have to move on because the client refuse to buy any­thing good. After all, they’re pay­ing. But that’s not your deci­sion, it’s your cre­ative direc­tors. If you do punt, don’t give up on sell­ing some­thing good. Find some­thing else to work on pro-bono or take on a side client to crank out some good stuff for the award shows yourself.