I’ve had a lot of ‘small world’ moments recently, from crossing paths with media types from three jobs ago to working on projects for an ex boss and bumping into old colleagues in the park.
Which brought me back to an idea I’ve touched on before – that the marketing world is basically one big village, so you’d better try not to make enemies or generally p*ss people off because they’re almost guaranteed to pop up again a few years later.
But it strikes me that this applies to clients too. I was powerpointing away at an agency last week when New Business popped into the room to share news about a new client opportunity. Two of us had worked on this client before and piped up that we wouldn’t touch them with a bargepole and the client subsequently got a polite email from the agency declining the opportunity.
If clients behave less than professionally when dealing with their marketing partners and suppliers word will inevitably get round. I’d guess that a lot of agencies would think twice before pitching for Innocent after all the pitch related shenanigans (we want an agency, stop the pitch we’re taking it inhouse, no we want an agency etc.) a couple of years ago.
Perhaps we all need to think a bit more about the bigger, long term picture when dealing with our fellow marketeers.
Really interesting point. It is a small (read incestuous) world – on both the agency and client side and it is foolish to think that people never talk!
This (http://www.trendwatching.com/briefing/) was waiting in my inbox when I got back from holiday and I think some of it might feed into this? In terms of influence and how with all the different tools that are out there it is only becoming easier to find these opinions.