Jimmy Gilmore – Writer – Director

What’s worse than a yes man?

Easy. A no man. (Or even a no woman.)

Cor­po­rate cul­ture breeds them just as inces­santly as yes men. And, unfor­tu­nately, so do many large adver­tis­ing agencies.

OK. So who is the “no per­son?” And how do they make your adver­tis­ing suck?

Imag­ine a smart, no non­sense woman who has the power to make deci­sions but needs to del­e­gate because she’s busy and impor­tant. Then she gets peo­ple to help her.

But either these peo­ple are scared to actu­ally say yes and move projects for­ward. Or the boss treats them more as gate keep­ers than an actual project man­ager. So they say no.

So the boss’ del­e­gate, the no man, feels he has no power to approve any­thing. They feel their choice is to do noth­ing or to dis­ap­prove. For any­one who deals with them, they become a bar­rier to get by. And the only way the no man can feel any power is by say­ing no. So some­times they say no a lot. Even if it’s for no other rea­son than to feel like they’re con­tribut­ing. Because they can’t con­tribute by say­ing yes.

This is a pretty com­mon phe­nom­ena in cor­po­rate cul­ture and some­times there are sev­eral lay­ers of no men before you get to the yes lady. I’ve even per­son­ally pre­sented to no men for months before ever get­ting a chance to present to any­one who had the power to rub­ber stamp something.

This is frus­trat­ing for agency cre­atives. But some agency pres­i­dents and bean coun­ters love these no men because each round of pre­sen­ta­tions means more changes and more bill­able hours. Kah ching $$$$$$.

The no men get to feel impor­tant because they “improved” the work, the account exec­u­tives have billed more hours, and the cre­atives have more work to do and will get to keep their jobs. Every­one wins but the advertising.

As illog­i­cal as this may sound, a lot of big ad agen­cies have some sim­i­lar dynam­ics going on. Lots of lay­ers that the work must get through and lots of peo­ple who need to con­tribute to mak­ing it “bet­ter” – asso­ciate cre­ative direc­tors, cre­ative direc­tors, group cre­ative direc­tors, exec­u­tive cre­ative direc­tors and chief cre­ative officers.

What can you do about no men? If you’re the boss you can empower your peo­ple to say yes. If you’re caught the mid­dle you can try and stay as objec­tive as pos­si­ble and con­tribute pos­i­tively to the work. If you’re a cre­ative direc­tor you can resist the urge to “plus” the work when it’s already great.

Some­times a con­tri­bu­tion to a project is not a con­tri­bu­tion to the work. But rather cham­pi­oning it instead.

Be Socia­ble, Share!

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This entry was posted Friday, May 7th, 2010 at 11:43 am and is filed under advertising, marketing. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.