Yes, clients can misbehave. Thank God, most of them don’t. And to account for all that awful work you see on TV every night, those bad clients must have a few friends on the agency side of the busi- ness. They do.
Like everything else in life, America’s list of agencies makes up a big bell curve. There are a few truly great agencies, then a whole bunch of agencies that are just okay, and then a few bad ones.
To get off to the right start in this business, you’re going to need to know how to spot those bad agencies. And it’s not as easy as you
think. Just because an agency has a commercial in the latest awards annual doesn’t mean you want to work there.
What you’ve got to do is, during your interviews, look for The Hack. (Let’s call him Hallway Beast #1. There are others in the menagerie.)
The first warning sign that you’re in the presence of a Hack is that he’ll somehow bring up his One Good Ad from Way Back. He won’t call it that. In fact, he’ll show it to you and say something like,
“This is the kind of work we do here.” That’s when you notice the ad is on brittle, yellowing paper from a magazine like Collier’s.
All Hacks have one of these ads. They made their name on it.
They’ve been riding its tired old back for decades and look about as silly doing it as Adam West now looks in his old Batman suit.
It can be a great ad. Doesn’t matter. Ask yourself, what else have they done? Talented people with a gift for advertising keep doing great work, time and again, for a variety of clients.
Another warning sign that should send your Hack-O-Meter into the red is how they talk. And how they do talk. In fact, talk is all a Hack can do, being incapable as he is of producing an ad that a fly won’t lay eggs on. He’ll know the buzzwords. And worse, he’ll have a few of his own. “At this agency, we believe in advertising with Clutter-Busting®Power.” If you hear something like this, just drop your portfolio and run. You can put together another book. Just run. Don’t risk the elevator. Go for the stairs.
Agencies are the way they are for a reason. It’s no accident they’re doing awful work. They have clients on one side asking for awful work, Hacks on the other side giving it to them, and a guy in the middle counting all the money. Talk is cheap. Especially talk about how “we’re going to turn this place around.” If you hear this phrase, you should turn around. Again, go for the stairs.
The quintessential giveaway, however, is the creative director who denigrates creativity in general and awards shows in particular.
This was the kid in the playground who didn’t have a big red ball, so he told the other kids, “Big red balls are stupid.” He can’t do it. So, of course, he’s going to denigrate it.
Some of these guys kill ideas simply because they’re unable to generate ideas of their own. In fact, to kill what you’ve come up with actually seems like an idea to them. They’ll go: “Hey wait!
Shhhhh! . . . I have an idea! Let’s not do your idea!” Their ideas are like antimatter. They don’t really exist until yours does and when they meet, they’re both gone in an instant.
In an interview, this guy will look you straight in the eye and say,
“Creativity is overrated. Client sales is what we’re all about.” He’ll get out a case history. Show you some commercials he’ll call “hard- working” and then tap his finger on a number at the bottom of the results page. “This, my little friend, is what we do.”
Someday I’d like to try an experiment. It will cost $40 million. I’ll give a fifth-grader a brand name and tell him to shoot a commer- cial. Whatever he comes up with, I’ll spend the rest of the $39-some million airing on prime time. In a couple of months, I’ll bet Little Jimmy can take off his baseball glove and tap his finger on a similar sales increase. The point is, with a two-ton sledgehammer even a fifth-grader can ring the bell at the top. (I suspect Mr. Whipple’s war chest of several trillion had something to do with his high recall scores.)
On the other hand, you have what’s called creative leverage—
beating out the competition’s advertising by doing something that is more interesting. Years ago, writer Ed McCabe said, “Disciplined creativity is often the last remaining legal means you have to gain an unfair advantage over the competition.”
Compare that quotation from McCabe with this next one. I can’t print this man’s name, but to a national trade magazine he said blithely and without shame, “Sheer repetition can build awareness and equity for a client even if an ad is not considered creatively bril- liant. A dumb dollar beats a smart dime any day.”
Sheer repetition? If I were this guy’s client, I’d take my dumb dollar over to an agency that can give me 10 times the wallop with a dime’s worth of sheer brilliance.
Hacks get easier to spot as they feed and prosper. In their mature years, they sprout long titles, some growing up to 10 inches in length.
Recently, I saw a picture of a Hack in Adweek, and below it, this title:
“Executive Vice President/Vice Chairman/Chief Creative Director North America/General Manager/Worldwide Coordinator.” I’m not kidding—word for word.
Agencies may keep them on, sort of as expensive hood orna- ments. They’ll trot them out at big pitches, but during the rest of the year they’ll give them what I call a “Nerf account”—something they can bat around without hurting themselves or anybody else. They are well known, as one wag put it, chiefly for being well known.
A closing thought on Hacks. One of the great things about this business is that you’ll be surrounded by vibrant, interesting, and genuinely nice people. I don’t know why the industry attracts them, it just does.
And Hacks are no exception. Most of the ones I’ve known are people just as nice as you could want to meet. After office hours, they’re great fishing buddies, loving mothers, and intelligent bridge partners.
But I warn you against joining their team during working hours.
As a junior, you’ll learn bad habits from them, habits that will be hard to break, even when you come under the tutelage of more tal- ented teachers. We improve by surrounding ourselves with people whose work we admire.