Far as I’m concerned, everyone in advertising is “A Suit”. Everyone’s accountable. Everyone’s in Sales. The client pays the bill, you get your salary. No client, no gig, no money for smarties. Just long lonely contemplative walks in the park. Without any smarties to munch on.
Good agency planners are only as good as their ability to sell their thinking, agency creatives their words and pictures. McCann-Erickson headlines what they do with Ideas Well Told. That’s their mantra. I think “Ideas Well Sold” is pointedly even closer to the mark, and I see little wrong with that. Have a great idea; selling it should be easy, but still make sure you do it well.
Of course, “sales”, “selling”, “salesman”, these are dirty words. They come with ugly baggage. The salesman is desperate, is dishonest. Self-interest is his eternal ulterior motive.
Alec Baldwin doing what Alec Baldwin does best. Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)
I say there’s selling... and then there’s selling. The great thing about the ad industry is, when it’s done well, you’re selling and your client’s buying, and there’s not some tug-of-war across a Ravine of Suspicion. The agency work is produced for them, based on what you believe they need and believe will work.
With hope, you want to sell your client a Ferrari, that’s really reliable, with great mileage, cheap parts, and the kind of roll cage that goes in a Volvo. “Sales” is never ugly or ulterior if you’re selling an idea you truly believe in.
In the best Client-Agency relationships, there is no Them-and-Us. You don’t sit across a table from one another, opposing, brokering a cease fire or resolving a trade union dispute. You occupy the same side of the table as your client. You trouble and preoccupy about the same issues. You go to bed and worry the same worries – and if you’re good at what you do, you wake up in the morning with a few ideas. That’s your value. That’s your contribution to the relationship. Your role is that of consigliore.
The Consigliore Positioning.
Agency Planners and Creatives who roll-up their sleeves, sell well and make it happen, who get the job done - they’re worth their salt (and their smarties).
Because these are Our Times; life within a Capitalist structure; post-Industrial, mostly light industry, light on manufacturing. It pretty much leaves us with Our Ideas, our conviction, and our ability to bring our thinking to the table and hypnotically to life.
Audacious Ideas, Genuine Innovation, So-Sharp-It-Might-Cut Creativity. That’s The Ad Industry Well Told, and that’s no bad thing. In fact, it’s the complete opposite. It’s all good and as it should be.
So go sell it.
SP.
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