Are you ready to “marry” your agency? (original) (raw)

When you meet the “right one,” it is commonplace to ask a few questions. Like “is he or she the one to introduce to your parents, start a family with, the one to marry? It’s not unreasonable, and in fact, healthy, to ask yourself these same “dating” questions in a client/agency relationship. But as most agencies will agree, we never seem to ask enough questions, or read the tea leaves.

Psychology researchers say that there are recognizable signs that can foretell where a relationship is headed. Typically, researchers measure some aspect of a relationship at one moment in time and then see how that measurement coincides with relationship outcomes months or years later. Researchers call this sense of whether your relationship will eventually result in marriage your “commitment to wed.”

You had a great first date. But something happened on the way to the alter.

I met a client not long ago who loved everything about my advertising experience in healthcare, and my creative work in particular. He introduced me to his VP-Marketing Director, in-house artists, and his entire sales force of 12 people. It was a first date made in heaven. Accolade after accolade of my creative and industry experience, laughing at all my jokes, holding hands, a fabulous good night kiss, no other suitors, just us. All leading to a request for proposal two weeks later.

Our next date went almost as splendidly as the first, with one exception. The VP asked what the company was getting for the retainer we had proposed. What psychologists might call a “recognizable sign.” But the CEO, losing his patience with the VP said, “they spelled it all out in their proposal, were you not listening?” The CEO went on to say, “look Tom, I’m a doctor and a CEO, I’m not a creative director. We need someone with Stuart’s talents to help take us to the next level. And it’s worth the retainer he and his team are asking.”

So we left the room after setting a wedding date and feeling like we had met our true love, the CEO.

Within 2 days, we submitted an agreement, a pre-nup if you will, that spelled out all our services and fees. That’s when our wonderful relationship hit a headwind. After submitting it, we heard nothing for a couple of days. Then we spoke to Tom who expressed candidly that he was surprised to see us asking for media planning and placement in addition to us doing the strategy development and creative. He wanted to take a few days, submit the pre-nup to the lawyers, and since the CEO was going on vacation, suggested that it might be best to wait a few weeks until his return. This came as a shock to us. After all, we were already picking out the wedding dress, working with the caterer (their in-house creative staff) and ordering the flowers.

So as not to lose that “lovin’ feeling,” we suggested that Tom pay the first month’s retainer for now to enable us to get started working with their in-house staff, and by the time the CEO returned in two weeks from vacation, we can iron out the language in the pre-nup and begin building our wonderful lives together.

Tom said that sounded like a plan and sent us an email the following day agreeing to the first month’s retainer, but with the provision that they would own ALL the work product of the agency, including the slogan, headlines and other intellectual property that we created and presented on the second date to win their hand in marriage. In other words, they wanted to keep the engagement ring, even though we hadn’t agreed to wed. We explained that our intellectual property (IP) was more valuable than one month’s retainer and that we’d be happy to license our IP to them until we were married for a period of time (say 4 months), at which time we would sign all copyright ownership over to them and they could keep the diamond.

Pre-nuptial agreements can be big stumbling blocks.

Psychologists say that an individual’s commitment to wed can be affected by many factors. For example, spending too much time with friends, fighting, or just being too different, could nudge commitment to wed down. Conversely, meeting the partner’s family, spending a lot of time together, having a lot in common and receiving positive feedback from friends or family could make commitment to wed rise. Well, we had met the family, had a lot in common, and received positive feedback. But that was certainly no guarantee of wedded bliss.

Psychologists breakdown commitments into four groups:

1. Dramatic (34% of the sample) – This group had an “up and down” type of relationship, with more downturns and steeper changes in commitment than other groups. These individuals spent more time apart and had lower opinions of the relationship, and their families and friends were less supportive of their relationship.

2. Partner-focused (30% of the sample) – This group had a “my partner is the center of my universe” approach to commitment and experienced very few downturns. Their changes in commitment hinged on how much time they could spend together.

3. Socially involved (19% of the sample) – This group experienced very little variability, and fewer downturns than those in the dramatic and conflict-ridden groups. When changes occurred, they were largely determined by the amount of interaction with their social network and what those friends and family thought of the relationship.

4. Conflict-ridden (12% of the sample) – This group includes the fighters. Like the dramatic group, this group had a large number of downturns. The sizes of the changes were not as steep, but they were disproportionately due to conflict in the relationship. Those in this cluster also reported fewer positive things to say about the relationship than those in the partner-focused group, and less support from family and friends than the socially involved group.

While our commitment with Tom was conflict-ridden, our commitment with the CEO was partner-focused. Yet, while fitting your relationship into tidy categories has intuitive appeal, classification is simplification. Our client relationships and psychological experiences are complex in a way that defies basic categories or groups; every relationship cannot fit neatly within these four categories.

So was our relationship doomed?

We soon found out that our “you swept us off our feet” relationship was in jeopardy.

Tom was unresponsive to our emails, phone calls, texts. Complete silence for 4 weeks. We reasoned that perhaps Tom was getting kickbacks or perks from the media outlets and didn’t want to relinquish his control over the buying. Or perhaps, he saw an experienced agency as a threat, since his experience was in healthcare, not in marketing. Or perhaps he wanted to own the IP and didn’t see our side of the story in the slightest. Regardless, we returned the wedding dress, cancelled the banquet hall, and drank heavily to drown our sorrows.

Psychologists suggest that it is good to be partner-focused, but not dramatic. In other words, those who frequently experience substantial fluctuations in their commitment should have concerns about the relationship’s long-term sustainability.

While we didn’t experience frequent fluctuations, we did experience a severe breakdown of commitment.

All that became more clear when we read in the newspaper and saw on the local TV stations weeks later that the company had been convicted of Medicare fraud, required it to pay a $20 million fine and 3 years probation. Somehow, through all the pain of cancelling the wedding and returning the dress, we felt we had dodged a bullet. We could have been deep in launching our campaign when the sh#* hit the fan. And we may have been left holding the bag to collect our money. Perhaps the CEO wasn’t on vacation at all. Perhaps he was deep in meetings with his lawyers and the Feds ironing out the details of the settlement to stay out of jail.

So much for our whirlwind romance. Until the next time we fall in love.

STUART DORNFIELD is an award-winning freelance Creative Director/Copywriter with more than 40 years of experience in marketing, strategy, advertising and production. As the former Sr. VP-Creative Director of Zimmerman Advertising (Omnicom), the 13th largest agency in the U.S., and the former co-founder of Gold Coast Advertising, 3rd largest agency in South Florida, today Stuart offers his creative services and marketing insights as a freelancer with offices in New York & Miami. http://www.stuartdornfield.com