Elasticity’s “Big Cheese of Creative” Nick Walden joined our own Aaron Perlut on the latest episode of Stretching Boundaries to discuss a range of topics, one of which was about the relationship between client and agency, and one thing we wish every client would understand as they begin working with us.
“Our most successful endeavors are with clients who also know their industry and can work really well together with us to be a part of that process and help gain the knowledge and insights to make things more successful.”
We’ve seen it a lot over the years – a client who thinks hiring an agency is just like ordering fast food: Tell them what you want, pay at the first window and drive away with a completed campaign. The truth is that’s rarely a winning formula. The real success comes when the client stays involved throughout the process.
Maybe that sounds a little weird coming from a creative. Wouldn’t I rather the client stay out of my way and let me create? Aren’t they just going to step on my toes and ruin my creative vision?
Honestly, no. As creatives (hell, as an entire agency), we do our best work when we are in regular communication with our clients – when our relationship is more of a partnership and less of a short order cook.
See, we at Elasticity know a lot about advertising and marketing. Combined, our team has over 200 years of experience in this industry. Competitive analyses, customer audits, strategic insights, media placement, concepting and building of creative campaigns – these are all things we’re good at and bring to the beginning of any project.
But one thing we often don’t have at the start is that all-important institutional knowledge about a client’s business. We won’t know the intricacies of commercial airline pilot career paths. We won’t have firsthand experience with the rebate system of technology distributors. And we won’t be able to tell you which model of impeller is needed to pump a wood pulp slurry (a few more recent client examples).
We as an agency rely on the expertise of our clients. They often know their products, services, people, customers and business better than we ever could. And when a client is willing to share that expertise with us as a partner, we are able to combine our strong foundation of advertising experience with their business information and brand new insights to create compelling and successful campaigns (oh, and by the way, you’re probably best off with a semi-open impeller for that wood pulp.)
You can see this in practice with some of our previous work. When we worked with the Missouri Wine & Grape Board, the knowledge they shared about all the meticulous details of how Missouri wine is made led us to our Worth The Work campaign, which showcased those details to an audience thirsty for stories with authenticity. Our Scouts Stand Out initiative was fueled by both the considerable research and data shared with us by our Scouts client, as well as their willingness to provide context for how that data related to their organization’s efforts and goals. And the advertising we produced for the Denver Museum of Nature & Science’s Numbers In Nature exhibit was born out of the great rapport we’d built up with the client, sharing details about their highly targeted audience and the types of campaigns that have and haven’t worked for them in the past. These projects were a triumph not just because of our own talent and expertise, but because of the partnerships we’d fostered with these clients.
“I would love clients to know that as much as we value being a good partner to them, and want to do our best work, it’s a two-way street where we want those clients to be involved in it too, and understand that we’re getting a crash course in this and we’re trying to move as fast as we can, but it’s vital that we’re able to have that connection to build the details together because it makes it that much more successful.”
Well said, Big Cheese.
