Let’s have some fun (and share our trauma)….whats the worst/dumbest/cringiest client feedback you’ve ever received? I’ll start… on a shoot the client said that they wanted the logo in the shot….in every shot. We said that we could put logo in as a bug in post, that logo in every shot would compromise the style. They said that wasn’t good enough. This was a doc style testimonial/broll thing, and they forced us to print/hang banners/signage with logo every shot…and then they wanted them in focus.
To me is always when they propose to make all the shots based on a color palette that reflects the brand colors and they think that they are genius. And there goes the prospect of doing something good.
Yes. Coke and Pepsi ads that look like they were art directed by the Bloods and the Crips.
I have posted these before but I have 2 that always stand out:
“The talent is not pale enough ” (ie, not white enough)
Had to remove goldfish bowl from animated spot because of “animal cruelty”
I have two:
-I used to work for a big Diner brand and proposed a proactive campaign for pride month. The clients killed it saying: “The gays don’t eat fast food”
-Clients didn’t want to pay for color correction because “why would they pay for a CORRECTION, if there’s anything to CORRECT it should be paid by the agency”
‘The gays…’ flex
Client asked us to make a funny campaign. They approved a bunch of funny scripts. Then after we shot the ads, they told us they changed their mind. They didn't want funny ads anymore. They wanted to be serious. So they asked us to recut everything to remove the jokes. We ended up with ads that were just set ups with no punchline. It was surreal. I thought I was dreaming a few times.
From an editor POV that might win. How did you even stretch the footage to fill the :30 or whatever it was meant to be?
Pro
Once had a relatively senior client at a big P&G brand review animatics and tell us that they thought it didn’t look great and implored us to consider using real actors instead.
Rising Star
I had a 9 hour wardrobe fitting for 3 people once….
9 hours, 6 clients that couldn’t agree on things like the moms necklace, or if the son should wear socks with his shorts, a producer that was absent, and a director that was about to kill himself. And in the long run most of those painful decisions weren’t even viewable in the cut. You give a point of view and rein it in when you can, but by god those 6 ladies all hated one another.
Chief
Been there. Stupid people will forever be stoopid.
I read a radio spot. Wanted bootsy collins so gave it my all in the meeting. Client said “well, that was certainly…urban.”
Client: “Hiiiiiii!!! sorry to be THAT person but like, can we get new bacon for the next shot? This batch is looking a bit j*zzy. Thaaaaaaaanks”
Video village:
Client: ‘we think the energy feels off and the spot should be recut. As a note, we were having technical difficulties and couldn’t hear the audio on the posting’ 🤬🤬🤬🤬
After asking for 5+ rounds of work and seeing literally hundreds of ideas without offering any feedback, I asked the GCD if they had notes on anything they’d seen.
Their response: “I can’t possibly be expected to give notes, there are too many ideas, I don’t have time for that.”
That’s a terrible CD, let alone a GCD.
In casting: “She looks too Oriental”
Rising Star
Were they talking about a rug?
A new head of Marketing at a longtime client, who was eager to ditch our secondary-market agency and hire a NY agency that would take him to lunch at Lutèce, had to campaign with his management for nearly a year to build a case that we were "shopworn." The final straw turned out to be a small-space newspaper ad announcing the opening of a new market. After weeks of rejections, coming up with increasingly far-fetched reasons why our submissions were NG, he finally kicked the last one back, saying, "You've overdignified our product."
It always annoys the crap out of me when they client says they don't like the colors even though it's their brand colors
I had a client request to put in their color instead of green. It was a greenscreen.
A client kept wanting to add things to a 30-second spot. By the end, the script was 4 pages. Tried to tell them this is now a four minute spot and they just said to make it work. Our poor editors. Of course, by the end, it was basically the original script.
They wanted to burn their money on it, so I think it was something like five minutes of extraneous detail that just died on the cutting room floor.
Not from a client but from my first shoot with a particular agency producer. The spox was having a hard time hitting the read we wanted, and we ran through several takes before he absolutely nailed it. When the director called "Cut," there was a brief ripple of subdued applause from the copywriter, at which point, the producer turned around and said to him, "Oh no, dear...never applaud the talent."
Easy solution: custom contact lenses for all actors with the logo on them
Honestly the one you wrote about is pretty bad