BBH’s Johnny Tan: ‘The better you sell, the less scam there will be’
Creatives must learn to sell their ideas better to clients in order to prevent scam advertising, according to BBH China’s chief creative officer Johnny Tan.
Speaking at Spikes Asia, Tan said creatives need to improve their selling techniques in order for “game-changing” ideas to get past a client who is nervous of risk and obsessed with big data.
“The world desperately needs good ideas, ideas that change the world. But unfortunately, a lot of clients right now are risk adverse, they’re data obsessed,” he told the audience. “They’re building walls to make it harder to see ideas come to life. If we don’t acknowledge this today and do something about it, it’s going to be hard to get good ideas out there.
“The better you sell, the less scam there will be,” he added.
Scam is advertising created to win awards rather than to solve a particular brief. Earlier this year, a number of questions were raised about the legitimacy of Australian entries into the Print category of Spikes’ sister festival The Cannes Lions.
When pitching an idea to a client it all comes down to how it is said, rather than what is said, Tan suggested.
“In any kind of persuasion, 70 per cent of it is how you say it, 30 per cent is what you say,” he told delegates.
He offered “four P’s” to help creatives better sell their ideas: preparation, performance, passion and personal.
According to Tan “nothing is more important” than preparation.
“You’ve gotta make it look easy,” he said. “The shorter the presentation,the longer the time you need to prepare.”
Performance was next with Tan urging creatives not “to make a speech” but to “put on a show”, adding that eye contact and voice projection are key.
“It seems unimportant, but trust me, it’s going to make a lot of difference,” he said.
He described passion as “really critical”, stressing “there is nothing more annoying than someone going up there and sounding like a used car salesman”.
Tan also told creatives to be personal when dealing with their clients.
“Nobody wants to talk to a robot. People want to hear anecdotes,” he said. “People want to laugh, they want to hear why it matters to you so much.”
Miranda Ward at Spikes Asia
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Dare I suggest that clients are “risk-averse” because it’s their job on the line, not yours Mr Tan, and that they are “data obsessed” because that’s how every other function in a modern business is measured and managed. The anachronistic ad industry either needs to get with the program and reinvent, or be left behind.
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Sammy,
‘Risk’ is the game.
Nobody knows what will work and what won’t – no matter how many pretty charts and diagrams we put around it.
You can call it archaic if you wish, but the simple truth is if it were a science and there were a proven formula for success, it would have proven itself by now.
Clients are data obsessed because it removes accountability and gives them something to hide behind.
How ever on the other hand, Mr Tan, why am I going to knock myself out trying to make a client take the medicine they need? Unless I have skin in the game, there is little reward for me. I’ll simple use my energy elsewhere.
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Jeez, give him the State The Obvious Award. Eye contact and voice projection are important? No sh*t, Sherlock.
Although he fell down on one point – how to ensure less spam work is created – just stop doing it. Solved.
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I am very curious as to how often most creatives get to meet the client, let alone present ideas to them.
In my experience, rarely.
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Bear,
If that’s the case, I would imagine you work at an agency that very seldom does good work.
There is no one better to present the ideas and answer questions and concerns (before they are written as a directive in an email) than the people who produced the idea.
I always present my own work.
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I’m not sure I follow his logic. So if we’re unable to sell our big ideas to clients, it then naturally follows that we can do scam instead? The inability to sell an idea hardly justifies the fabrication of scam work in its place. Try again Johnny, and think it through next time.
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