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Every client, ever.
To those who live and breathe advertising. Why?
How old were you when promoted to CD role?
Worst boss? Let’s hear it
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- Don’t be scared of the client when you’ve bitten off more than you can chew. Sometimes it’s perfectly OK to admit that you underestimated, and need more time. Client deadlines are often just made up on whims, you’d be surprised how easily you could push a Thursday morning deadline to the following Wednesday.
- Stop promising things without asking the experts first. Especially when you have no idea how long something takes to finish.
- Learn to toss out a decoy deadline. This is when the client puts you on the spot, trying to corner you into an unfair deadline. Instead of throwing out a deadline off the top of your head, promise them when they can see an **email** about the **schedule** for the work. This gives the client something to say to their boss up in corporate. While giving you time to figure out a schedule with the right people. This will save your ass many times.
- Stop begging for negative feedback! After the client says it’s great, never say “Do you have any further thoughts or changes?”!! Just say thanks and move on.
- Underpromise and overdeliver. If your experts say it takes a month, tell the client two months. They’ll squirm. Say, OK, we can probably do six weeks. Tell your internal team four weeks. You will probably have an unexpected delay of a week. You’ll have it done in five. You still look good because it’s under six weeks.
- Make the client accountable for feedback deadlines. If they don’t have feedback by X time, that’s fine, but it will shift the schedule by Y amount.
- Learn to work out phased deals if there’s too much work. If it all cannot be done by the main deadline, see if it can be split into multiple delivery dates to lighten the load.
- Get the brief tight! Sign off on the strategy! Have all the deliverables clearly defined!
- Learn to say no. Stop saying yes to impossible things. Try it out on small things first, then work your way up to the big stuff.
Well put!
In house, in a boring industry- they will appreciate everything you do SO MUCH. It’s a breath of fresh air. And 1/2 the people I work with are older than me, finally.
Myself - agency side. My SO in-house. She’s definitely having a lot better work life balance. Its a bit more button down culture, a lot of meetings and planning, less of actual doing but in return strict 9-4:30. Overall better benefits and growth opportunities. If there’s really nothing holding you to stay at the agency, I’d say go in house. It’s the right time to switch sides and in-house is not what it used to be 10 years ago.
Brand side - more of a meeting culture but I have found the workload to be about half. And timelines are SO long! Financial services is the best.
I’ve been on both sides over the years. Spent 5 years across 2 agencies, then went client side for 3 years and just spent 6 years at another agency. I will be going client side again in a couple of weeks!
I’ve always worked in strategy.
My client role will be marketing and insights at a financial services company.
I highly recommend the boutique route. Everyone runs really hard and wears 1000 hats but work/life balance seems to be far, far better than what my colleagues at the large agencies report. That being said, myself and my account team do a ton of things that most account folks don’t/won’t so it’s not for everyone.
Chief
I have started to just put my foot down entirely. Probably daring them to push me out, but I’m the only AD on their biggest account and the client likes me, so it’s been working so far.
Following!