Going client-side is no longer the soft option
Koala creative director Charlie Gearside argues the case for going client-side, and addresses the stigma around what is often considered the easy route.
Going client-side used to be like leaving the National Rugby League, and signing a contract with French Rugby Union.
You’d choose the money over environment, and go somewhere where the pace is slower and the competition for a starting position a little less cutthroat.
In short, there was a stigma you’d chosen the soft option, and that you’d get handed the same brief over and over and over.
But in my experience, those days are over.
Creative quality
We’ve brought our creative team in-house and have the enviable task of writing our own ads… and approving them too.
Though Koala started with a single product (and now sell five, three years later), it’s possible to go crazy-deep on one product. You spend so long with the product (and its designers, and customer service) that you know it inside and out.
Each selling point is the grounds for a new brief, multiplied by many different audiences we aim to sell to.
So the argument that there’s ‘no variety’ is plain wrong.
We’ve shot ads with surfers, a V8 racing team, a chef, real koalas, a Japanese mascot, models, influencers, footballers, octogenarians and babies. And while the product is the same, the audience rarely is.
Critically, our endorphins don’t come from trophies or awards. We get our buzz from seeing spikes in the website traffic graphs that are projected on the walls of our office. Everyday.
Speed
The second advantage is the speed. Copywriters and art directors can get three years of work produced in three months.
The feedback loop our small creative team of four means you act fast, execute fast and, if it fails – which it has, countless times – forget fast.
The aim is to take small creative bets, instead of big campaign bets, where the long lead-time and high hopes can be paralysing.
Work environment
What about a fun working environment? Agencies are about as good as it gets when it comes to great staff, culture, and offices in cool locations.
Aussie startups like Canva, Campaign Monitor, Airtasker and Atlassian are fighting back with big pockets full of venture capital money and cultures built around technology and measurable work. Unlike the trend in adland, drinking and bonding is not banned, but encouraged.
Work-life balance
Agency life is deeply unpredictable, because your worth is tied to head-hours and retainers.
Your time is sold for money, and juicy retainers usually start with late-night pitches.
You simply can’t control your social life at an agency. You don’t know when you’ll be home, or whether you could keep plans for the evening. For me, that was a very familiar feeling.
Non-service business models are generally be more predictable. For me, that’s a perk.
Charlie Gearside is creative director at Koala and is currently planning to rescue ‘Australia’s most frustrated copywriter’ and bring them client side.
Client-side has never been the softer option.
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Working at a startup \ scaleup like Koala isn’t ‘client side’ in the traditional sense. Going to a Nestle, Toyota or Telstra is, I think, what’s typically been considered the ‘I’m out’ move.
This is a poor comparison between a challenger business where accountability is palpable, and located at the edge of execution vs a multinational corporate enterprise where accountability is murky, which is the unspoken of but real reason people often make the move.
PS – love my Koala mattress, keep doing what you’re doing!
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Having worked both sides of the fence I respectfully disagree with any notion that client side is easier. Agencies are almost always on project work, a small sliver of what it is like to run a business and subsequently have little / no exposure or experience to the full operational beast that is an operating business. We have tried bringing on agency staff in house and they really struggle with the complexity and pressure of working in a fully fledged operational, some get there in the end but most really fail to balance all the competing demands.
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I’m not trying to make the argument that client side is easier.
Instead, that there is a perception that it’s easier inside agencies – based on less frantic pace, more manageable work hours etc.
Agree 100% that you get exposed to budgets / kpis etc in a business (something you hardly feel agency side).
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Biggest shift for me moving client-side: you work tirelessly to impress the user/customer, not the client. My employer dies if the customer doesn’t love the stuff I create.
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Spot on @This isn’t client side……….
I also love my mattress 😀 . (I ordered it and it took 4 hrs to arrive…)
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