I’ve had a couple of instances recently where I’ve had to tell a client that what they are proposing is mind numbingly, completely the wrong thing to do. To explain that I’m giving them our best advice and that we wouldn’t do it if it was our money.
But do they act on my advice? In some cases, no. In some cases, they even adopt a “la la la I can’t hear you” approach.
If clients are paying their agencies significant fees to give them best advice on communications, surely they should be at least listening? I do appreciate that sometimes there are other factors at play that the agency hasn’t been exposed to, but I’m getting quite depressed at the amount of clients (and new business prospects too) who seem to want to employ ‘yes men’.
Maybe its the slightly wobbly state of the economy that is denting client confidence, maybe its a reflection of the changing client/agency power balance.
But I’m way too bloody minded to just take the money and run.
(pic by bullish1974 via Flickr)
Some companies are just that stupid… sadly.