Can we stop blaming agencies for horrible work, when we all know it’s terrible clients?

Asking for a friend.

This was a prime example of a time I truly couldn’t understand how a writer would be able to come up with that. Because you know what? A writer didn’t come up with that. Their client did.

But without a moment to blink, creative directors took to twitter to shout “whoever the copywriter is that wrote this, pack your shit and get out,” or “it baffles me how somebody manages to succeed in this industry when this is the garbage they think is good creative.”

No no, hold your horses mate, take a step back. Think of every terrible ad you’ve ever made. How many times was it your idea, and how many times was it the client going rogue?

I’d bet my next paycheck 99.9% of every time you can think of, it was the client going rogue. You really believe that there’s this giant group of 30–100+ people in an agency with a global household name client, and not a single one has a clue what the hell they’re doing? Give me a break.

It baffles me how somebody manages to get the position of a CMO, when you’re sitting across the table from them and they’re actively complaining with genuine confusion why the ad they came up with themselves is testing so terribly—despite knowing they’re the ones who thought it was a brilliant idea to force 20 mandatories into a 15 second spot, and speed up the voiceover to resemble an announcer at an abandoned storage-container auction.

I’ve had clients sign off on scripts, and then hastily rewrite the entire spot the night before production. What’s the new script? Literally a copy/paste of the bulleted list of legal claims that were on the original brief.

I’ve had countless clients come to the agency with their own “genius” idea, and they think it’s so amazing and creative, it’s the first thing all year they decided to put money behind to produce, despite all the painstaking work you’ve pitched all year. And any time you try to convince them it’s a bad idea, they brush you off.

So seriously, stop demonizing copywriters, art directors, creative directors and their agencies every time some absolutely terrible horseshit manages to make it out into the world, because we all know, it’s nearly always the client’s fault.*

This is a real quote, from a real meeting, with a real client I had a few years back.

“Okay guys, we have a new claim! Our vehicle’s LED headlights are 11% brighter than 3/4 of other four-door subcompact AWD vehicles in its class under $34,000. This is huge, so how do we get consumers excited about this? What would make them want to talk about it on TikTok?”

Sir, they’re headlights. And TikTok is for teenagers. Our target is midlife crisis-suffering dads who can’t afford Corvettes.

It’s reasonable to understand a CMO wants an ad to express every mandatory and claim they have, presumably being under pressure from a number of departments beneath them. They live, eat and breathe the brand, so every claim excites them. It’s obvious that, because they are the CMO, they are so heavily absorbed in their brand that they become completely separated from reality until they don’t realize not a single person gives a damn.

So it’s unfortunate that rational and reasonable trust isn’t afforded to agencies to produce something good, or even effective, simply because the client is so self-absorbed in their brand. It’s the nature of the business. And we’ve all suffered from it, so we really need to stop degrading others for something that is so often not their own work.

The bigger the brand, the worse it gets. Massive clients like banks and automakers have far more people in the approval process than is ever needed, and because they’re involved, each one has this bizarre fabricated need to force their feedback on it. There’s absolutely no reason someone from the client’s finance team should be telling anyone why one word in the script “doesn’t sit right with them.” It’s completely nonsensical and quite frankly disrespectful to always blame the agency and their creatives, when we ultimately have zero control over the final decision

Here’s a fact to wrap it up—Forbes reported that roughly 4% to as high as 12% of C-suite level executives exhibit clinically psychopathic traits, as opposed to the 1% rate found in the general population. That includes your client’s CEO and CMO.

So please, be cognizant that the client is the final decision maker. We work for them, and sometimes you just can’t convince them in any way, shape or form that their idea is a bad one.

*I’m well aware there’s plenty of times that agencies screw up and sell a bad idea to a client, but more often than not, that is not the case. If you look back on every time this has happened to you, you’ll realize it too.