Droga5 creative chief Ted Royer to agencies: Saying no to clients will earn you respect
The chief creative officer of Droga5 had some advice for agencies for how to get more respect from their clients today, telling his audience at Spikes Asia, “The power of no is amazing”.
Ted Royer told delegates at the event in Singapore: “It’s a scary thing to push back against a client. But even if we don’t always win the battle, at least we get more respect. Then you will soon find that you become seen as a partner, not a vendor.”
“The power of no is amazing. We hardly ever say ‘no’ an industry. But if we do, we will no longer be treated like cheap, easy people.”
Royer said that to earn more respect, agencies needed to believe more in their own brands, and empower the most junior executives to stand up for their own ideas.
It would be interesting to see what happened if one of the bigger clients with a bad reputation for how they treat agencies just couldn’t get any of the top agencies to pitch or work for them. Perhaps some balance in the agency-client relationship would be restored.
So true, but the client you’re dealing with hasn’t the courage to say “no” up the line. Mostly they’re cowards, yes-men and yes-women, who submissively fail to manage upwards, to the detriment of all. The bigger the client, the more pronounced the trend.
But yes, say no. You may lose a client but you’ll retain your integrity.
Who is this news to? Yes men?
My advice to the ‘Mikes’ of this world [8:58pm 26 Sept] is simple. Save your ‘No’s’ for when they really count and let’s see how precious you are about your integrity when its your money and your employees lives you’re playing with
@mike saying no from a position of mutual respect may work. Probably a lot better than your position. If you think your clients are cowards and yes men and women then chances are they think you are a wanker with the depth of a car park puddle. Not the basis for a profitable and lasting relationship is it?
who’s this news to? every other type of professional service firm has used ‘no’ as a marketing tactic for decades. Good to see adland is dragging itself into 2014.
Some of the briefs Agency people talk to me about (mostly digital) say this is the idea we’ve pitched and the client “love it”! So now we’ve got to produce it … are you interested?
And the next questions I say is “sure show me the budget you’ve done” … and they look at me with glazed eyes and say we haven’t done one yet but we’ve got around $15,000 and I look at the (well let’s call it a script) which is at a glance about $60,000 if not more … and I laugh to myself and reply “you know what guys, I’m not the right producer for this”.
You’ve either got to write a script to your budget, or tell your client you need more money. And they stare at me again – and say – “oh no we can’t tell them no, they love it”… and I just shrug my shoulders and wish them the best of luck.
In my humble opinion there’s two things going on – Agencies are not following the usually processes to take a brief and work that brief according to the clients budget and more importantly are not saying no to the client’s demands. Most agencies at the moment are letting the client direct the relationship… which ultimately denies the client the expertise of the Agency. It’s a simple boundaries thing.
Client’s are running Agency land at the moment – and because of that the standard of work is dropping badly. Just look at most of the TVCs on air, the good ones stand out like dog’s thingys – and you just know it’s because the client hasn’t been managed properly by the Agency and the client have been overrunning Account Management and no-one is saying no to them.
Agenices have got to start getting their act together again – and start managing clients properly otherwise Agencies themselves will have a bench life of about another 5 years.
Royer does a great line in stating the bleeding obvious with great conviction. Perhaps that’s what nervous marketers want.