Marketing Motormouth

Having been fortunate enough to work at junior-senior level on the client side for seven years, I can appreciate how the client mindset thinks. And, whilst it’s impossible to put every client into the same category, we’ll try to give you an overall view of what goes on in Clientland, giving you a better chance of getting things right.

We should really begin by covering the most important point which is, “Clients aren’t supposed to understand what designer’s do, otherwise they would do it themselves.” If we start with this assumption then perhaps there wouldn’t be so much negativity towards clients from designers that there often is. Clients are clients and designers are designer. Generally speaking they are equally as good at their jobs as designers are at their own. Therefore, if we respect this then the process is usually more favourable.

Let us detail a few of the major issues clients face when they are looking at our work:

Looking from the client’s perspective

• If its junior or senior management level, there’s often the big boss to please, so some clients tend to bias their views based on what the big boss would like to see.
• Unless they own the company, a client will have a job, which they ordinarily would jeopardise by taking a punt on what may be the best advert.
• By nature, most clients aren’t creative and if you have to work hard explaining the creatives, then your chances of selling in the desired concepts are somewhat diminished.
• Whilst clients may understand the notion of bleed, crop marks and positionals, invariably they won’t have the same level of insight into the finished article as you, therefore don’t be surprised by comments such as, the box on the right hand side is too big, when it’s a 5mm page clip with an additional 3mm bleed, the box looks 8mm wide. If it looks too wide for the client, then there’s little use attempting to force your visual prowess into the client mind – they won’t be able to see it, unless of course they have a visually creative mindset.
• Client offices are filled with company politics. This means that there may be views on everything from what coffee to buy, through to what colours they do and don’t use.
• Clients have confidence in what they do and when it comes to creatives, many of them ask around, take your concepts home with them to show their partners or simply ask everyone in the department for their feedback. You have to show them that your concepts work in terms of business generation before they’ll learn to trust your judgement.
• Marketing departments will be more concerned with the impact of communication of the message, rather than the overall visuals. This means that to get things right you must communicate the visuals in a strong manner whilst respecting the importance of their message, no matter how strange it may be to you.
• Clients sometimes are unable to give you a clear brief or clear feedback because they lack the confidence to talk on your terms. If you can’t talk the language of the marketer, you need to have 100% clarification regarding the points they are clear about and the ones you aren’t. Checking is a good thing which shows enthusiasm, not a bad thing.

Stay in control

With the adoption of online technologies and time pressures faced by the client-agency relationship, it’s too easy to email the client and wait for their response, especially if you are in a small agency.

My advice here is that unless you manage their expectations and do this prior to forwarding your concepts electronically, you really place yourself at the mercy of an untrained individual who’ll relay the message in the way they see fit.

Worse still is the scenario whereby three people stand around a monitor whilst looking for problems in what you’ve done, by which time, selling in the client benefits of your concept is an uphill task. Therefore, always go to the client’s office to present or, if there’s not enough time, go through it with them meticulously on the phone before sending, then set up a telephone meeting where you discuss the concepts with them live as they receive them. The bottom line is to stay in control of the presentation at all times.