Advertisers: How to sell great idea to a difficult client.
We’ve all had clients who call themselves brave, but can’t get out of their own shell—because everyone approaches it the wrong way.
You know the type. You’ve got a brand with a lot of potential—it could be service like an airline or travel company, or even just a commodity like soap or paper towels.
Every CMO says they want to be disruptive, they want to go outside the box, all while sitting comfortably inside a shell and convinced that anything they come up with is surely “disruptive.” A recent study by Oracle revealed that 91% of people globally want brands to be funny, yet 95% of business leaders are afraid of using humor. An official handbook by YouTube and Google recommend the longtime controversial industry practice of mentioning a brand or product in the first five seconds of ads, reiterated by an Amazon advertising handbook, despite the infamous Cadbury Gorilla spot that skyrocketed sales by 9% which doesn’t mention the product until the end of the 90-second primetime TV spot. Moreover, marketers continuously learn and preach to agencies clichés such as “don’t say anything negative,” repeated by trusted sources such as the Wall Street Journal, despite widespread success from brands such as Burger King relying on the negative with Moldy Whopper.
Creatives and marketers come from opposite sides of the spectrum when it comes to what we think makes a good ad. We’re taught differently, we approach differently, and we often clash when creatives are determined to make it pave new roads by breaking the rules, and CMOs are determined that ensuring success is following all of them. Alas, we’ve all been in those situations where creative leadership wants to go off the rails, pitch something crazy, something award-winning, and the resounding “NO” from the clients echo the conference rooms with each failed pitch. At the end, you end up with social posts, product shots, and banal product claims. How do you get out of this?
A creative director at my first internship, former head of the Toyota account at Saatchi for over 15 years, summed it up perfectly in a way that I’ll never forget: Always give the client at least what they asked for. Who likes ordering a burger at a restaurant and getting a pizza instead?
She was spot-on. Imagine if the server said, “We know you asked for a burger, but we think you’re going to love the pizza, because we make a great pizza!” Well, cool, but no. “I’m sure you do. But that’s not what I asked for.” Naturally, you’re taken aback. With that in mind, we’re going to use the restaurant analogy to explain the process.
You have to start with something they’re going to buy.
You need to start by meeting them on their level, show them that you listen to them. The restaurant can suggest everything else they want, but you know what you want. This whole “If we show the customer something really great, maybe they won’t take the burger!” concept agencies constantly tout never works.
The truth in the cliché: get your foot in the door.
If you want to give them something totally new that they’ve never one before, you need to start in small doses, get your foot in the door. You’ll never do it on day-one. You can’t shake hands when you’re standing on different hilltops. Blow them away with what they want, gain their trust more and more, and start suggesting more creative stuff in little steps. Then, one day, they’re willing to let you take the torch.
Again, you have to start with something that they’re going to buy.
This is especially true with proactive work, where you’re in control, but you still need to meet them on their level. You go into your restaurant one day, and say “I don’t know what I want. But I come here a lot, you know me, make a suggestion.” If the server says, “Well, there’s the pizza and the hot dog!” You’ll be a bit taken aback. You think, “Hang on, you should know me by now. I always have a burger. What is this? Not what I’m looking for.”
What they should do is say, “Well, you like burgers, here’s a burger with everything you want. Perhaps a few different toppings—I know you like bacon, so what about some capocollo? There’s your pork, right? And for the sides, we’ve got that salad you always want. But let’s suggest something totally new for the fries — how about calamari instead?” You, as a customer, are much more likely to try that very different, very new thing. Because they showed you that they know you, they listen to you, they know what you like—and it’s a small twist. Not a compromise, a dash of something new. This burger has everything you like, a few of their recommendations too, and that one salad that’s non-negotiable. You trust them a little more, and this time, you’ll take a small dose of something totally new. A side dish, or in the client’s case, a totally different idea in one of the executions. Now you’re inching closer to really great work, and the ladder starts going up.
You’re on a honeymoon period. Now’s your time to shine.
This is really the only way to get there with clients — one more time: you have to start with something that they’re going to buy. When you make it exactly how they want, you meet them on their level, and they’re willing to take your word on that new thing that’s just on the side. The calamari blows it out of the park. The next time you go to the restaurant, “I really liked that calamari you recommended,” you say. They reply, “This time, you should really try the pizza.” Okay, sold. They showed you that they know you, they understand you. Everything you’ve ever gotten from them was great. Their little different recommendations here and there were great. That last side-dish was completely different, but they you loved it. So if they really push for this pizza, this time you’ll finally take it.
I repeat: If you want to sell a stubborn client something out of left-field, you have to start in small doses. You’ll never do it on the first try if you show up at the table with an order that looks nothing like the usual combo. If you win them over first with their typical order, they like you. The more you do this, eventually you’ll start having those days where they take your full recommendation, exactly as you envision it.
It’s not a perfect process, some clients are just too dense at the end of the day. But, you’ll never produce anything good if you start from the top of the hill they’re not standing on. So start small—give them want they asked for, and knock it out of the park exactly as they want, regardless of how terribly boring or bland it is. Start selling better work in small doses first, through executions. Give them something that answers everything they’re looking for, even if it’s not grandiose. When they see you understand them, they’ll open up. Increase the dosage, and you’ll get more creative work and a better working relationship hand-in-hand. But trying to send them down a completely different path from the moment they arrive will never yield results.
Still here? Let’s go with a more concrete example from my past.
I had a sports brand that always ran the same content: word bank for the social posts to look identical, client-made template for storyboards of stock shots of athletes on the field, etc. We would pitch some wild proactive stuff, and we came pretty close, but we never got the thumbs-up. The client has these three “pillars” that every ad needed to meet in their eyes: fandom, subscriptions, and excitement. Our proactive pitches would hit one or even two, but never all three.
A new ECD came in who touted proactive work. His process was exactly this: let’s show them something that hits all three. We came up with an interesting campaign, more of a new internal policy than an actual ad. The deck repeated the messages they liked; every few slides mentioned how each stage is built on “fandom, subscriptions, and excitement.” We broke down the whole campaign. Lower level CDs and managers scoffed. “This isn’t that interesting, this isn’t something AdWeek would care about. It’s hardly a portfolio piece.”
But the client loved it. We got the green-light, and began developing a full 360 campaign with print, online video, OOH, social, and podcast shoutouts. When it came to the social, that’s where the small dose arrived: our ECD said, “TikTok (very new at the time) is a different ballpark, the rules are different. We have something funny we can do there, here’s three options of crazy (re: my Nixon Principle article). Client went for the wild card—the wild card. After 12 months, we had a campaign that looked pretty similar to the kind of work they already did, with a little extra creativity sprinkled in. But the social wasn’t their average social, it was a digital activation that took the lead, ended up in our portfolios, and won three silver Clios—nothing to scoff at. By the time I was leaving that job, we were working on another social activation that hit none of their three pillars yet made it into Campaign Live and LittleBlackBook, and the client loved it. Meanwhile we produced a TV campaign that wasn’t proactive, hit two of the three pillars, won a Telly, a couple shortlists, and boosted subscriptions by almost 4% (most previous campaigns did just 0.5 to 1% on average). These were things we never, ever would have sold before. They worked, they boosted subscriptions, we won the client’s trust, we won our own little trophies; client was happy, we were happy, we had more projects in the pipeline, and sold things we never could before.
Too Long; Didn’t Read: Start small, small doses lead to trust. Go with something proactive, give the client something they’re going to buy, even if it looks like the same thing they always do. Insist on your creative vision for something small, one of the executions. Win their trust, show them that your vision works, push a little more for the next project, until eventually they trust you to take them all the way out to left field. You’ll never win them over if you start on a different field.
