Personality determines client behavior which is then
magnified or minimized at any given moment by the individual’s status in the
food chain, political clout, savvy, management air cover, P&L
responsibility, intelligence, coping behaviors, industry insight, competitive
pressures and stress from any number of sources. Baseline personality is to
client behavior what gravity is to earth – a fundamental organizing principle.
A smart, strong and confident client will treat an agency
similarly. An anxious, scared, weak or worried client will drive an agency
crazy. An ambivalent, chair-warming bureaucratic lifer will stall, misdirect
and baffle an agency. A flighty, tentative, ADHD client will spin an agency in
circles.
In working effectively with clients it’s critical to
identify and to understand each individual’s personality. And while its fun to
play amateur psychiatrist and speculate about how and why they are they way
they are; its much more important to zero-in on how they operate. Focus your
powers of observation and your energy on interacting with them in productive
and mutually beneficial ways. The myth of the “client from Hell” arises because
agencies don’t identify and respond to the personality factors, which drive the
agency-client relationship.
Across industries and functional verticals several species
of clients occur time and again. They might represent the dominant evolutionary
mutations of personality types in organizational settings. They might also be
standard behavioral pathways acted out over time and geography. In any case
there is a very high probability that agencies will encounter these
archetypical client types; each of which has unique operating and handling
characteristics.
The Mandarin. A
senior client, usually a CMO or someone at or near the top of the food chain
earning big bucks and big esteem. Mandarins can be fundamentally malevolent or
benign based primarily on their sense of job security. In an environment where
the average CMO lasts 23 months, there’s much less grace and much less
psycho-demographic homogeneity at the top than there used to be.
Mandarins manage upward. Their primary audience is C-level
players who generally undervalue their contribution to both the organization
and the bottom line. They live and die by serving the CEO, even though most are
the designated fall guys for CEO-initiatives that fall flat or implode. And
they frequently battle with the CFO and the head of sales, technically a
counterpart, but frequently a rival.
These clients focus on big stuff -- big ideas, big concepts,
big scale and big rewards. They frequently operate in lavish environs and
casually mention their perks, the number of corporate jet flights they’ve
taken, their hectic luxury travel schedule, the tedium of gourmet dining with corporate
leaders and their interaction with big names or boldface individuals. They
rarely talk about marketing stuff and almost never discuss their own campaigns
or plans choosing instead to sprinkle their conversation with stock price
quotes, PE ratios and other financial slang, which they often barely
understand. In many cases they are trying to convince themselves that they are
bigger than marketing and play a broader role on a bigger stage, one more
integral to the overall functioning of the organization, even if they just
joined the organization last week.
They depend on the senior agency people to know everything
that’s going on within their organization and within the agency’s world. Many
will ask for details about people in their organizations and programs in their
pipelines with the expectation of complete candor. In the same breath, they’ll
inquire about IPG’s balance sheet, John Wren’s latest acquisition tactics or
Sir Martin’s personal foibles and expect their agency counterpart to dish on-demand.
Mandarins rarely rock the boat. That’s both the reason they
stay and the reason they go. But, they frequently want to know about and talk
about best practices, big ideas, trends and campaigns garnering broad-based
buzz. They see themselves as messengers and advocates of big ideas and they
react viscerally and negatively when they get blind-sided or upstaged in this
arena. They know and have the big ideas. You support them, feed them and remain
unseen and unheard by the people they seek to impress. Agencies load the
rabbits into the hat. Mandarins make the magic.
The Know-it-All.
Usually a mid-level executive, know-it-alls come in friendly and hostile
flavors. Both demand massive amounts of attention and acknowledgment. A
know-it-all without an audience is a potential serial killer.
Agency people understand that like Wikipedia, what a
know-it-all knows isn’t necessarily accurate, true or current. But that’s much
less important than understanding this client’s need to control the
conversation, surface critical data points and remain on top of everything
going on. Validation, security and productivity are a direct function of
knowing (and frequently reciting) for this personality type. You cannot win a
KIA competition with a KIA. Agencies with KIA clients give them the forum and
the attention they need and find ways to direct their energy productively.
Friendly KIAs want to share what they know and bring you
into their circle. They see themselves as feeding the strategic and creative
process. They figure if they didn’t bring a fountain of knowledge to the table
the campaign, the program, maybe even the company would be lost and
rudder-less. But they are eager to teach you and invite you to be in-the-know.
Nasty KIAs get off on busting agencies. They find errors and
mistakes, expose exaggerations and overblown claims and seek out opportunities
to embarrass and humiliate the people who are supposed to be helping them. They
see themselves as fastidious keepers of the truth; mullahs charged with
defending the faith and punishing infidels. These guys turn tidbits of data
into “critical” variables whether they really are or not. These KIAs are angry,
often loners, who can’t get out of their own way or let go of their own
pathology. Agency people know to cut a wide swath around them and to work
overtime to avoid their harassing behavior.
The Up-and-Comer.
Ambitious, energized, focused on the prize, these clients are out to win the
corporate game by climbing the ladder of success and reaping the riches at the
top of the tree. Many have MBAs and all kinds of experience that they see as
investments toward obtaining a goal they intend to achieve either with your
help or over your dead body.
Contemporary literature and business magazines are filled
with these personality types from Horatio Alger to Bill Gates or from Michael
Dell to Sammy Glick all convinced that they can realize the American dream.
U&Cers can be divided by sensibilities and the ethical lines they’ll cross to get what they want. Most
are cautious and appropriately respectful of laws, ethics, customers and SOPs.
Some are willing to do whatever it takes, cut corners and/or undertake a
scorched earth policy of death and destruction to reach the top.
Understanding what an U&Cer genuinely wants, their risk
appetite and how they define success is key to working with them successfully.
Some are playing the short game. They want to survive the next re-org and get
the next level promotion. Others have found a tribe or a rabbi and are looking
to game the system or to jump multiple steps in one move. And still others are
looking for greatness and global domination; seeking to be plucked from the
middle of the pack, their success rewarded with much greater authority,
responsibility and hard cold cash. Working with these clients requires
assessing what they want and their likelihood of getting it and then
calibrating agency behavior accordingly.
In many cases, one hand washes the other. The agency helps
them and they return the favor. In some cases the agency provides the insights,
the intelligence or the springboard for these guys to succeed. In other cases,
the agency is a threat since agency performance can retard their trajectory or
risky agency recommendations can potentially backfire to their detriment. Up and
comers spend a lot of time reading the board, identifying likely allies or
antagonists, calculating their moves and evaluating scenario
Agency partners need to be in this head game and do the
same, usually with a 90-degree difference in perspective. This type of client
can cement an agency relationship and drive endless new business opportunities
throughout a long career across business units or geographies. Or with equal
ease, a U&Cer client will throw an agency fatally under the bus without
warning or apology. If someone’s got to take a bullet – it will always be the
agency.
The Lifer. The polar
opposite of the Up-and-Comer is the lifer; once a robust and healthy species
now smaller in the age of outsourcing and downsizing. The Lifer lives outside
of work and warms a chair in an organization to fund his or her real life. They
are entirely focused on staying around. Completely risk adverse, they do as
little as possible, hide, avoid any situation that could draw either attention
or blame and are generally happy for an agency to do their job completely. It’s
all about the paycheck, the benefits and a pension. Nothing else matters to
them. They will torpedo anything that threatens this holy trinity.
Lifers are the human and corporate equivalent of those small
creatures living in coral reefs that have amazing camouflage and who spend
their whole lives hiding from predators. They have no expectations for
creativity or productivity, though they know that self-preservation is often a
function of meeting timetables and budgets. They will default to process
compliance in every situation. They have zero interest in innovation, in new
tactics or in making any perceptible noise.
Lifers can be great clients because they are genial and are
masters at not giving offense to anyone over anything. They don’t want to be
too bored and are more than happy to work with you, have countless meetings and
work sessions, dine out frequently and give you access to others so long as you
(and they) leave no traceable tracks in the sand. They are masters at creating
motion, which gives the illusion of forward movement.
Agencies can’t be faked out by the form and must focus on
the function. Lifers will get you whatever you need but cannot be counted on as
allies. They are generally nice people who are used to pleasing those around
them. They are pleasant companions, good traveling partners and really try to
connect with individuals on a personal basis. They will happily cue you about
internal personalities and politics as long as you don’t disclose the source.
Just don’t ask them to stick their necks out or put them in any posture where
they can be exposed or judged.
The Nerd. This
client is buried deep in the details. Rather than get something done, they want
to dissect and understand all the working parts. Entirely focused on process at
the expense of creativity or productivity, Nerds want to go to school on your
time and on your dime. Grasping every detail is their ultimate pleasure. They
will slow you down, tie you up and make you crazy, if you let them.
Nerds have a need to know. The impact or import of knowing
doesn’t matter to them. They want to master the process and will insist you
tell them and show them everything on their terms and on their timetable.
Unlike the KIA who might question the answer, for Nerds the answer itself is
enough. They are the company fact-checkers, the last line of defense against
randomness and chaos.
They live in an ethereal world of sketchy concepts and
half-baked ideas secretly thinking of themselves as philosophers and prescient
observers of the human condition who have unique perspectives and deep mystical
understandings of the fundamental forces in the universe. More likely they are
nudniks and outcasts who use their leverage as clients to monopolize your time
and attention and to focus on things that don’t, won’t or can’t matter. They
never got over the brutalization they endured in high school and are just as
likely to be locked into the same dated behavior, aesthetics and vocabulary.
Nerds won’t help you until you pay the information toll.
Working with them requires that you acknowledge their needs and feed their
appetitive for trivial details, the inner workings of each campaign asset or
data set and as much gossip as you can serve up. Successful agencies pair a
Nerd with a Nerd to run interference and to establish relationships, which can
be surprisingly productive.
Working with advertising clients means being in a
co-dependent relationship where goods, services, ideas, insights, and emotions
are exchanged. A client relationship is different from a customer who purchases
a discrete product or service because a client has to participate directly in
shaping the outcome or the deliverables.
Being a client means taking on a role representing,
protecting and advocating a brand. Individuals taking on client responsibility
infuse the role with their personalities, which are shaped by rank, experience,
skills, beliefs and stimuli. These environmental and attitudinal factors are
often subject to and affected by timing, stress, competition, resources and
corporate politics. So personalities operating in corporate contexts determine
how clients engage, interact, direct and treat agency partners.
These archetypes are gently exaggerated for emphasis but
they illustrate actual personalities frequently encountered in agency life.
They are the clients that you will have to work with and through to achieve
your personal or agency objectives. Understanding the underlying personality
type and making agile adjustments will help you be more productive and have
more fun.
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