As Luke Sullivan writes in “Hey Whipple, Squeeze This”, every once in awhile, agencies are stricken with clients known as “Meat Puppets”. Why meat puppets? Because the marketing people to whom you present your ideas aren’t really the ones in charge. They’re really just there for the sake of being there. The real decisions are made upstairs. He describes them thus, “Invisible strings, thin but powerful, dangle down from management and are attached to every part of their bodies. Everything these guys do, everything they think, every memo they write, every decision they don’t put off, will be second-guessed.” And so how do these half-lifes survive? Well, they say no. No to everything. No to the copy, no to the art direction, no to idea #1 through to idea #457. No to religion, no to agnosticism, no to atheism. Ok… so that’s taking it a little far. But the idea is NO,NO,NO.
To which I was going YES, YES, YES as I read on. That’s exactly what we’re facing. The marketing people to whom the battle-hardened AEs are presenting our work to just aren’t the ones in charge. They’ve been told that they are but they’re not. But they act like they are. They fuss and say no to almost everything before finally, and, I assume, reluctantly agreeing to an idea, before the head honcho appears, tells the cowering bugs she likes idea #1 even though the idea they approved was idea #458 and we start from scratch.
It gets worse when the client starts to nit pick on the copywriting especially when their language of choice is most likely Hokkien. And so I have to deal with ridiculous comments like “we don’t like the line ‘our products will cater to all your needs’ because we’re not food caterers.” Or “your copywriter tends to use very cheem words hor. Can you replace the word ‘murals’ with something else cos we don’t understand it and so our target audience won’t.” A hint: not everyone's as stupid as you are. And the best part is, after extensive changes which they insisted on and which I tried my darnedest to integrate, they have the cheek to come back and say that they like what the copywriter in Malaysia has written which is no different from what I did initially. “You must get involved with our products”, they shamelessly say even though they can’t even provide me with a half decent specifications sheet. But I guess that’s the way it is in small agencies. Every client counts. All you can do is take a deep breath, curse their parents to hell and get on with it.
SMEs are generally the same, especially in Singapore. They wanna advertise. They wanna produce all their stupid little booklets and brochures with beautiful language and wonderful visuals. They wanna target the snazzy consumer with money to spare. They wanna show off their range of products. They wanna boast that they have a website and showrooms all over the country. Of course they do. Our suits agree with theirs. Handshakes and smiles all around. A partnership is born. And then the trouble starts. They don’t have the visuals to jazz up their collaterals. They don’t have product info for the copywriter to work on. They assume that everyone’s as dumb as they are. They wanna be seen as classy yet act like streetside turds. They spend a fortune getting someone to think up a brand identity for them when they have no brand direction. It’s just all wrong. So in the end, the agency is dragged kicking and screaming along by a leash of dollars and cents. The creative department is constantly bogged down by edits and ridiculous timelines. The servicing department constantly has to push things back while trying not to let slip to the client that we feel they’re a bunch of world-class idiots. It’s a monumental struggle and all without reward. None of my work for them is going into my book and I don’t believe that handling an SME like that will add much to a suit’s portfolio either. Just our luck.
To which I was going YES, YES, YES as I read on. That’s exactly what we’re facing. The marketing people to whom the battle-hardened AEs are presenting our work to just aren’t the ones in charge. They’ve been told that they are but they’re not. But they act like they are. They fuss and say no to almost everything before finally, and, I assume, reluctantly agreeing to an idea, before the head honcho appears, tells the cowering bugs she likes idea #1 even though the idea they approved was idea #458 and we start from scratch.
It gets worse when the client starts to nit pick on the copywriting especially when their language of choice is most likely Hokkien. And so I have to deal with ridiculous comments like “we don’t like the line ‘our products will cater to all your needs’ because we’re not food caterers.” Or “your copywriter tends to use very cheem words hor. Can you replace the word ‘murals’ with something else cos we don’t understand it and so our target audience won’t.” A hint: not everyone's as stupid as you are. And the best part is, after extensive changes which they insisted on and which I tried my darnedest to integrate, they have the cheek to come back and say that they like what the copywriter in Malaysia has written which is no different from what I did initially. “You must get involved with our products”, they shamelessly say even though they can’t even provide me with a half decent specifications sheet. But I guess that’s the way it is in small agencies. Every client counts. All you can do is take a deep breath, curse their parents to hell and get on with it.
SMEs are generally the same, especially in Singapore. They wanna advertise. They wanna produce all their stupid little booklets and brochures with beautiful language and wonderful visuals. They wanna target the snazzy consumer with money to spare. They wanna show off their range of products. They wanna boast that they have a website and showrooms all over the country. Of course they do. Our suits agree with theirs. Handshakes and smiles all around. A partnership is born. And then the trouble starts. They don’t have the visuals to jazz up their collaterals. They don’t have product info for the copywriter to work on. They assume that everyone’s as dumb as they are. They wanna be seen as classy yet act like streetside turds. They spend a fortune getting someone to think up a brand identity for them when they have no brand direction. It’s just all wrong. So in the end, the agency is dragged kicking and screaming along by a leash of dollars and cents. The creative department is constantly bogged down by edits and ridiculous timelines. The servicing department constantly has to push things back while trying not to let slip to the client that we feel they’re a bunch of world-class idiots. It’s a monumental struggle and all without reward. None of my work for them is going into my book and I don’t believe that handling an SME like that will add much to a suit’s portfolio either. Just our luck.
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