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Agency credentials: What clients don't tell agencies and agencies don't tell clients

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By Matthew Charlton | CEO

April 15, 2014 | 5 min read

Was there ever a more amusing invitation than a potential client inviting an advertising agency to talk about themselves? The code word for it is "credentials" or the shortened version "creds". I can assure you there is rarely any cred attached to these meetings. It's like taking the pin out of a hand-grenade and then putting it under everyone's chairs.

Are you giving your clients what they want?

Hence so often agencies get it 100 per cent wrong and look like complete idiots.

I think it starts in a bad place because unknown to the client, the agency has spent more time arguing about the font, font size and visuals in the Powerpoint and even longer on what to put on the reel than any one of their clients' business in the last three months. Agencies are obsessed with their creds.

Asking an agency to talk about itself appears to translate into agency folk's heads as: "Could you just do that three-hour guitar solo please. The one that goes on and on and on." Clients walk in to be confronted with the adverting equivalent of Jimmy Page complete with violin bow and 12 string Powerpoint presentation powering up to tell his/her life story. So proud are the agency of their skills, so obsessed with coming over well, they just lose it.

I have sat in credentials meetings when suddenly one of my partners seemingly loses connection with the glazed look and frequent yawning of the client on the other side of the table. The nightmare scenario is when one of the agency team thinks that the nice, down-to-earth pet food manufacturer from Milton Keynes is really impressed with their knowledge of exotic lens and camera angles achieved – the ones we used in our incredible two-minute epic spot we show everyone including the nice man from Milton Keynes (even though he has come to ask if he needs a Facebook page).

At this stage it's too late because you can't bring down your charging creative rhino, now mid-flow on how this filmic opus has won a prestigious bronze doughnut award at the well known Lucky Kentucky Ad festival for best use tracking shot. Oh and yes, we can confirm on the lift on the way out, "you do need a Facebook page".

High fives all around the room afterwards on how well the meeting went and how that amazing film gets them every time, confusing how great it feels to talk you your self up vs talk your way in. Often the poor account exec sat in the corner is both too inexperienced to realise the creative magic that has just been revealed to the lucky client, and even more inexperienced to actually read the brief from the client from beginning to end. They often look somewhat bemused through the meeting – not because they are out of their depth, but because they have no idea what their colleagues are doing.

Clients have of course created sensible processes to try and insure against the above circus by issuing clear briefs about how long the agency has to talk and what they should talk about. But so often it still fails to crack the real problem, which is years of using a simple and secret equation only agency people know. For the first time I shall reveal it to the world. Here it is:

a) What The Clients Wants (WTCW) = b) What The Agency Actually Wants To Talk About (WTAAWTTA) - c) What The Agency Has Actually Produced (WTAHAP) x d) Level Of Summary Exaggeration Required (LOSER).

So it's simple WTCW = WTAWTTA - WTAHAP x LOSER.

As a simple rule of thumb the higher level of LOSER you require, the worse your creative work is and the lower your chances.

It looks like a pile of confusing, indecipherable rubbish. Well, it is, and that is exactly what clients walk out of the meeting so often thinking. What about the brief they spent hours crafting and getting signed off?

The simple truths I have come to learn over the years of getting these meeting wrong are four crucial things:

  1. Clients want to like you as people. Essential.
  2. They only care about what you have done, so the creative work tells the story for you. Everything else gets in the way.
  3. They actually only need a little convincing of the two above and really want to talk about their problem, which is why they are sitting there in the first place.
  4. Anyone in the agency team who thinks it's about them personally needs to be locked in a cupboard.

You can fill your agency website with all the other rubbish and assume someone somewhere is interested.

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