Agencies can never know a business as well as client says Jeff Goodby

Goodby

Agencies should aim to ‘unknow’ their prior knowledge of a client in order to take a fresh approach to the work and senior marketers need to take more of a role in encouraging a fresh approach to ideas, acclaimed adman Jeff Goodby has said.

Speaking at an Australian Association of National Advertisers (AANA) conference in Sydney yesterday, the co-chairman and partner at Goodby Silverstein & Partners also took a swing at what he deemed “dithering” lengthy pitch processes, urging marketers to put tighter timelines on their processes.

On the issue of agencies taking a new approach to their clients he said:”My obsession with unknowing is a reaction to seeing too many presentations where planners and creative directors and so on told the client they were going to take ‘deep dives’ into their business and learn so much about them and use the drill down and unpack kind of language we’ve all caught ourselves using.