You need kevlar undies these days

It’s looking like branding as we come out of the recession is still not for the faint of heart or weak of bowels. Good Lord. I sure felt the truth of this over the last several weeks. And it looks like the new Forrester report called The Future of  Agency Relationships confirms it. We recently [...]

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Clients, we’re willing to die on your behalf

I just watched the movie Pirate Radio, with Philip Seymour Hoffman et. al. Clients, if you want to understand the commitment of creatives to great work on your behalf, watch this movie. In it, the disc jockeys are willing to go down with the ship to keep playing rock and roll on behalf of the [...]

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Curiosity never killed nothing

The difference, I have finally learned, between a good agency-client relationship and a bad one, is curiosity. How often have you been in a meeting when work gets presented (whether that be a creative brief, a brand platform, a logo, or a full-blown campaign) and immediately people start talking about what they don’t like? They [...]

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Two Households, Both Alike In Dignity

In-house creative departments – now that’s a delicate subject. We’ve had great relationships with them, and we’ve had not-so-great relationships. And we have more than one client with an in-house group today. There can be a lot of pain on both sides. There can also be pleasure, too. What’s interesting about in-house creative departments is [...]

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Is Your Relationship Retarded?

Developmentally speaking, of course. Are the humans who comprise your client-agency relationship operating at a pre-schooler level of fear and anger? Or are they acting like well-adjusted adults? Not that I generally favor the company of adults over pre-schoolers. Pre-schoolers lift my spirits, renew my sense of ridiculous optimism, and laugh at the word “poop.” [...]

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