Savage counsel – little white lies
In a piece that first featured in Encore, Chris Savage tackles your career and agency dilemmas. This week, he talks about when it’s okay to lie to clients.
Hi Chris,
I often find myself telling little white lies at work – I tell people on the phone that I don’t want to speak to I’m about to duck into meetings. I told my colleague her new haircut was great when really it wasn’t and I praised someone’s work when actually it was kind of shit. After each of these occasions, I felt pretty terrible and wonder if you could tell me how can I speak with candour in the future – for my sake and others.
Tread cautiously. Being truthful all the time is a hard road to follow. White lies are called white lies because they are basically harmless. They protect the feelings of others in most cases. Sure, we can train ourselves to become more truthful, when it makes sense. STW CEO Mike and I made a pact on a recent trip to tell the truth in every conversation we had. Within two hours, in our first meeting, we came away knowing we’d told two untruths each. And about silly stuff.
I’d be lying if I said I enjoyed this.
Agencies lie to clients all day lonh – about deadlines, how many people are working on the account and how many people are being billed.
Making up excuses for why things take so long because only 1/2 the number of billed people actually work on the account, but you can’t tell the client that.
Whacking at least 3 hours of retouching onto every estimate and then bullshitting the client when they ask saying things like make th image punchier, bring out the highlights, adjust it for print, (even when the image is perfect as is).
Having the production manager/studio manager go through each job # to see how much estimated studio time is not billed and then them sitting down and logging onto the timesheet programme as different mac operators to make sure all the studio time is soaked up so no refunds needed to client.
I have never worked at an agency in my life that wasn’t ripping off the client somehow.
Now working client side, I have found that the big advertisers I worked at are extremely ethical and always want to follow the law, contracts etc and do nothing shonky.
But I still remember how ghastly working in agencies was, so i will still sign off any estimate you give me, so long as the agency duchesses the hell out of me.
Sad, but true
ha ha ha ha bloody ha….hang on let me stabilise. did somebody say client side is ethical, law abiding and do nothing shonky ha ha ha ha ha tee heeeeee. big breath ha bloody ha.
Bet the writer would love to name the agency he was unhappy working for…no Axe to grind there eh wot???
Rubbish @ Client (ex Agency).
Generalisations. ‘All Agencies’.
Yes, some. All, far from it.
Clients, ethical. Yes some. All, far from it.