In an ad agency somewhere in the world right now, there is a group of people shut away in a glass box enthusiastically debating whether they should be giving the client what they want or giving the client what they need.
As a communications agency, we should know the business needs of our clients, inside and out. We should know their market. And we should know a thing or two about advertising. But these are hardly astounding observations. Wait. The good bit is coming now.
It’s about the nod. The nod is a good way of selling work. And you get the nod by showing a client what they need which, through some freakish level of mutual understanding, is also what they want. I know, right?
Here’s how it works. First, set up your idea with an insight. This demonstrates your understanding of their business. And, even better, some intuition of what people want and some awareness of how people behave. Because they’re who’s buying.
An aside: you’d be amazed at how few people who work in advertising actually understand other people, which is weird because they are people themselves – yes, even the ones who work in account management.
But back to the nod.
If you have identified a strong insight, then the client you are presenting to will nod. “Yes,” he or she will think, “that is true.” And they will nod again. You see where this is going.
Next you outline to them how that insight can be applied to their product or service. The way you describe it should make the link logical and therefore unarguable. It should make them think how inadequate they are that they hadn’t made that particular connection themselves. Once more they will nod, but with a twinge of sadness at their own shortcomings.
Then you show them what your thinking is. You show them how that attractive insight and that handsome link to their brand are the parents of a beautiful, pink, healthy creative platform. “Congratulations!” they will say, nodding even more.
And then, only then, do you start to reveal the work. Demonstrate how the concept is articulated in each of the appropriate media channels you have cleverly selected.
Hopefully, your client will now be nodding in the same way they would if they’d been drinking nasty percolated coffee all morning. Involuntarily. It should look like they can’t stop doing it, even if they wanted to.
Now, you won’t get through to the final nod every single time (if we did then no agency would ever lose a pitch), but the more nods the better. And nods accumulate like gold coins in Mario Bros, and convert into trust and respect.
All you have to do is get it right by identifying a brilliant insight, cracking a concept and putting the work together in a way that says what it needs to say. The only time a client will tell you what they want something to say is when they don’t have faith in you.
Are you nodding?