The Hindu Business Line : The clients from Hell

AN `insider' column in one of our business papers recently talked about a certain client giving his agency a hard time, by rejecting campaign after campaign. And making uncomplimentary remarks about the agency's creative talent.

Déjà vu, anyone?

One knows only too well that some clients are not overly appreciative, even when dealing with much lauded creative people. Creativity, after all, is everybody's business.

One client would take home creative work and his wife would use them as dartboards. He would then display his thumb (no, not the other digit, much as he may have liked to) to the agency in the `down' position.

The only way out would have been to meet the client's wife on a social basis and try and work out the arcane workings of her mind and then find a strategy to de-fang her. I never did find out whether the after-hours session worked ... but I did want to check whether there were two telltale puncture marks on the creative director's neck.

Are clients not like you and me? Could they be aliens? Before you say nonsense, read on.

One head of a client organisation would berate and threaten to sack or demote his entire team because they had misunderstood what he had said in the previous meeting. And this was in front of the agency personnel who were busy admiring their own shoelaces with rapt attention, hoping the axe wouldn't swing their way. Every meeting was fraught with uncertainty and fear. Antacids and tranquilisers were part of the regular diet and could be charged to the understanding finance man at the agency.

A creative director who had put his considerable genius to work on a campaign was devastated when the client laughed in his face. But our hero persevered and told the client it would take some time to appreciate the work, so he (the creative director) would frame the campaign for the client to put up and admire at leisure. The client only had one thing to say: "Make sure at least the frames are worth looking at, so that I can use them for something else."

At a presentation being made to the Managing Director of a Company, the ads were being displayed around the room.

After the work was arranged and before the agency man could speak, the client said: "Someone who appreciates his own creations so much has so little regard for God's creations."

The agency people were totally clueless as to what it meant ... until the client's right-hand man, who obviously was in tune with the Great Man, whispered to the agency head that in setting up the ads, a flower arrangement had been shifted unceremoniously to the back.

"Let's start at the very beginning ... " was the unsaid or unsung modus operandi of one marketing professional. I suspect he had seen the Von Trapp family too often.

After the initial presentation that could not be completed for lack of time, the agency would meet the client on a subsequent occasion when the whole genesis of the campaign would be debated once again. " How did we arrive at this?" he would thunder. "Let's review the logic track once again." Then it was the turn of the `ladder of benefits' to be re-examined. Then it was time to short-circuit the meeting because our worthy had some other issue to commence elsewhere.

It would be a miracle if the agency could get even one campaign off the block. The agency could be pardoned if they wanted to handcuff the client in a darkened cellar with only one light source aimed at his face and then make the presentation ... from start, hopefully to finish.

We know that not all clients behave strangely. Some are absolute gems and agencies would give their rights arms to partner them. So can one spot them easily? Sure, try spotting truffles in the Sahara.

Await another account of curious client encounters in another episode.

(The writer is former Director (South) of Ogilvy.)