I get it. I get why clients want to. They’re spending a lot of money on something they don’t really understand and the last thing in the world that they want is to be dragged to the “how come room” by their boss. You know, where they have to explain “how come” they spent all this money on a disaster, and “how come” they didn’t stop the agency from going off the rails and “how come” they’re even working here at all any more (they REALLY hate this last one).
Plus clients – generally speaking – got to where they are by doing stuff. Being actively involved is in their DNA. “Hands-on, roll-up-the-sleeves, get-in-the-weeds” – these have been the mantras of ambitious corporate types since the first caveman began franchising fire. They’re used to being involved – the ones who are good at delegating still want to be a part of the process, and the bad ones don’t know how to justify their jobs if they don’t see their fingerprints all over everything.
And it’s not like they’re stupid or something. These are titans of industry we’re talking about. People who didn’t just go to college, they went to graduate school! They have MBAs! They can do things with an excel spreadsheet that will have you whimpering “mommy” before they’ve finished explaining how the first macro works.
So I “get it”. I just don’t generally allow it.
Which, I know, makes me sound like an outrageous diva. Or, if you prefer, like even MORE of an outrageous diva. “You won’t ALLOW it? Who the hell are you?”
Who am i? I’m the guy who’s taking what you said you need, translating it into something that fires the imagination of the creatives, so they can create something that you never would have thought of, that will meet your goals and exceed your expectations. And most of the time, that’s not a linear, direct, understandable process. There’s a lot going on in the early days of a project that doesn’t make sense, that might NEVER make sense, that might never make it into the final product. Or maybe it will. It varies. From moment to moment and from project to project. It’s hard to say.
So if you’re a client who wants to “peek under the tent”, or see the work at an early stage – you know, just to make sure we’re on the right track – you have to demonstrate to me that you can either look at that early stage stuff and understand where we might (or might not) be going with it, OR that you can feel comfortable looking at utter chaos and say “okay, well, whatever”.
And both of those are extremely difficult to do. Hell, a lot of creatives can’t do it. In fact, my rule of thumb for determining whether a junior creative has potential as a senior creative has often been their ability to see where an idea is going, or could go, when it was still in a very early stage.
Now, perhaps all this sounds very elitist. Very “you’re not part of the club”, very “we’re wizards and you’re just mortals”. But really, that’s not it at all. And to help clients – and perhaps you – understand this, I tell this story.
Imagine I am not an advertising creative director. Imagine instead that I am a baker, and the client has asked me to bake them some chocolate chip cookies. Pretty straightforward and understandable request, right? We’ve all had chocolate chip cookies, we all know what they look like.
Oh, and then the client says “And I’m going to check in on your progress. ‘Peek under the tent’, as it were. These are very important cookies and I just want to make sure we’re on the same page. I would hate for you to go down a wrong path.” Got it.
So I get to work. Get the mixer out, get the flour out, the baking soda, the salt. Put those ingredients in a bowl to set aside while I get the pre-softened butter into the other mixing bowl… and that’s when the client shows up. To check on my work-in-progress.
“What the hell is this?” he shrieks. “I said I wanted chocolate chip cookies, not butter cookies!” Well, yes, but… “And what’s in this bowl? Flour? And what are these, eggs? I hate eggs. NO EGGS! Where are the chocolate chips?” Um, well, they’re in a bag over here but they don’t go in until later… “Later? They’re the most important part! They’re literally in the name of the cookie!” The client rips open the bag and throws them all into the flour mixture. “There, now we have some chocolate chip cookies going! Carry on!”
And then he leaves and I’m left trying to make chocolate chip cookies without butter (“I don’t want butter cookies!”) or eggs (“I hate eggs!”), and with the chips now covered in flour and baking soda and salt.
Now, if the client knew how to make chocolate chip cookies, they’d know that, despite chocolate chips being in the very name of the cookie (as they rightly pointed out), they’re actually one of the last things to go in. And the eggs that he hates? Yeah, they’re an emulsifier that holds everything together. And the butter? A huge contributor to the texture. And on and on. If he knew this, he’d understand that while what he was seeing didn’t look like it was going to become chocolate chip cookies any time soon, it actually was.
Exact same thing with creative.
If you can look at the swipe and the greek and the pencil scratchings, and if you can decode the “um”s and the “it’s kinda like”s and the “sort of a, you know”s and see where we’re going, or where we’re not going, or where the germ of an idea is germinating, or where we’re pivoting and why, or what territory and tone we’re uncovering – if you can do that, then sure, you can see the work in progress.
But if you can’t – and again, most people can’t – then you should trust your agency, trust that you briefed them properly, trust that they’re not a bunch of idiots and assholes.
Now, if you can’t trust them – and if that’s what’s really going on here - then it doesn’t matter when you look at the creative, does it? Because you’re not going to get good work regardless.
And that’s the way that cookie crumbles.