Jessica Goldsmith, Account Supervisor, Palio
In our “Client/Agency” series, we’ve talked about the different ways that clients and agencies view several different facets of their partnership – from time, to the bottom line, to expectations, to creativity to collaboration.
Now we’re going to talk about the fundamentals of the partnership: the different ways that the two parties view their clients.
In both cases, the most important relationship for the person involved is the one with their clients. If this were a tech situation, we’d call them end users. For the client in the “client/agency” pairing, their end users – the client’s clients – are often their marketing colleagues. They need to deliver ideas, plans, materials, collateral, strategies, campaigns: ones that meet the goals and objectives of the brand and of the company as a whole. If their deliverables don’t match those expectations, they have dissatisfied clients.
This much, so far, is obvious.
The problem arrives when agencies forget about this larger client base and think only of their client as being their end user.
Agency folks, here’s a reminder: our client is not just our client.
Our client is that person, yes. But our client is also their client.
We can’t just think only of our client’s personal preferences. We have to always take into consideration what we know about the larger brand team, the brand itself, the company itself, the competition, and the industry. Our recommendations have to be informed by all of those factors, not just by what might make our direct client initially happy.
It follows, then, that our responsibility is to know enough about all of those factors – not only about our immediate client – to use them in our thinking. If you can’t do that already, you need to seriously rethink your work and your research.
And we need to consider that every day. Are we alerting our client to information that’s relevant to them – or are we also adding information that they could be providing to their colleagues throughout the organization? Are we considering just how our work can help them – or how it can fit in with all of the other activities across the brand, and with all other marketing activities on other brands in their portfolio?
We are the ones outside of the organization. It’s our external perspective and creativity that make us vital to our client’s success. We can’t develop tunnel vision.
Don’t forget who your client is: and who else your client is, too.
Palio is an advertising agency revolutionizing pharmaceutical and healthcare marketing to create experiences that will Never Be Forgotten.
