How I learnt totally new levels of respect for good client services…

Over the last 5 months or so I’ve been out there on the road meeting all sorts of great people, but also been pretty engaged with pitching the merits of Mummadadda, and its lose collective of makers and creators. With a few projects, contracts and engagements under my belt it didn’t feel an unfamiliar challenge to get stuck into strategy and the creative task. An area that felt like new territory was the ancient and much underrated mantle of consummate client services work.

I have to declare that, I am married to one of the finest proponents of this art, and have long seen the value of the ‘agency craft’ that lays behind this role. As a creative that’s been around a while you do find yourself having to play a client services role, but, in a traditional agency structure, you always with the safety net of having someone to handle those duties and a chicken button you can hit to retreat you back to the safe confines of the concept formerly known as creative department.  And that’s not always an entirely healthy ‘get out’ clause, as I feel that too many ‘creatives’ have a way of fully taking responsibility for the consequences of their thinking. It gives us something of a bad name when we fail to face up to the business consequences of a creative proposal.

A good client services person knows that they have to balance agency and client opinions, sensibilities and outcomes. I’ve always respected that art – often carried out under heavy fire from both sides in no man’s land, without a blue helmet as a guarantee of neutrality or safety. I’ve drawn a fair bit of flak, over the years, from creative peers, for empathizing with client services people. But I’ve never wavered in my support. It’s a role that takes all the blame when things go wrong, but little of the glory when gongs are handed out.

Lately I’ve come to think of starting up Mummadadda as a vital developmental stage in me ‘growing up’ and leaving behind the cosy blanket of being a colourful creative cog in the increasingly antiquated agency model. Clients are warmly receptive to talking about their business with a seasoned strategic and creative mind, but they’re quite naturally expecting a grasp of business metrics and the financials behind the work. I don’t mind admitting that I’ve had to up my game here. But I’ve enjoyed it. And it’s another reason I’d thoroughly recommend making the leap to being a fully grown up creative mind in a challenging business world. It actually makes you better at the creative work, if you can balance business outcomes against creative output. This is the essence of grown up and measurably more effective creative. Balancing pragmatism against pyrotechnics in creative can win back no found levels of respect for the creative industry. Expecting clients to simply buy great creative work, just because the creative director says it’s great work, is not enough. Confidence in the agency most often resides in the person who has the deeper relationship with the client - someone who knows all of their business challenges, metrics and personal back story - usually that person is the client services person. If we understand the client we get the brief right and know how to enthuse them to feel confident. As Sir John Hegarty has said in a Drum article:

“Agencies don’t make great decisions they make recommendations and when we talk about agencies being brave, we’re not, it’s our clients.”

Having had the privilege of working with him at BBH I have always been struck how much his role of unquestionably creative mastery was all the stronger for being easily able to intersect with the consummate strategic business thinking of Nigel Bogle and, perhaps more importantly, the genius of understanding human relationships in John Bartle. I make no claim to being on their level. Working at BBH has always been the pinnacle of my work experience but, as well as some great work, perhaps I also took away an understanding of how creativity, strategy and good relationships go hand in glove to great and effective work.

As the excellent veteran Creative Director, Dave Trott, says in a Drum article:

“It all starts in account handling. We can do it but we need to know it will run, we need to know that it’s wanted… you look at the person who creates the context, the person who makes it happen.”

So here’s to all of you good and great client services people out there who walk the tightrope every day. You know who you are. And some of us creative and strategic people know too. We would be nothing without you. I know, because I’ve found myself fielding difficult questions over cost reconciliations and timings plans. And all with a smile and the lessons I’ve learned from some of the best client services people I’ve worked with over the years.