Disappoint Your Clients

Disappoint your clients. Early and often… because it’ll make your work better, more effective and save bigger headaches down the line.

As Irish people, we never want to be a bother. We strive to make everyone else’s lives easy at the expense of our own. How many times have we heard our mothers take on too much? Saying ‘yes’ to picking up the grandkids, while they’re already looking after a neighbour’s dog, and have agreed to bake something for the fete the next day.

“Just tell them no, Mum!”. Easy for us to say - , while at the same time agreeing to take on another new project, add another round of feedback, or write an opinion piece for an advertising website.

“Saying no to someone? Shock horror, what will the neighbours think?”

Who cares?

Okay fine, I do. There it is - my great shame: caring what people think. We say yes, out of fear of causing some friction, an attempt to appease. But I think it’s holding us all back.

There is a reason why the squeaky wheel squeaks. A problem shared is a problem halved. A problem kicked down the road is a problem tripled by the time that proverbial can presents itself in front of you again. It’s all rooted in the desire to be liked, or at least just not disliked. The urge to ‘say nothing’ or not cause a fuss’ means skipping over a few bumps in the road and a few issues at hand.

One example I’d say every single creative who has ever made a piece of video content has been guilty of is “that’ll definitely fit in thirty seconds”. We all know full well the script is overwritten. We have our full creative story arc (that we’re convinced will make us famous and make their Nan cry), we have the fifteen seconds of RTBs that the client needs to go into the ad, AND the end frame, AND the new three second sonic branding, AND the reprise that is the cherry on top of the emotionally manipulative cake.

Thirty seconds my arse, we’re closing in on a feature film here.

Yet in that pre-pre-PPM we say “Of course we’ll have time, these things look longer on the page. What’s that? Another RTB, yeah I’d say with a good quick VO read that could definitely work”. Great, the client thinks you’re a pleasure to work with, so does your boss. Phew.

Cut to three weeks from now in the edit suite:

“I guess if we lose the whole scene with the gran and the daughter that was supposed to really set the whole reveal up, and we speed up the VO by forty percent, and we remove all of the dialog in favour of supers… the ad might still make sense.”.

Happy you avoided that difficult conversation now?

The client may think you’re lovely but they now think you’re also inept.

A very agreeable and pleasant idiot.

So why don’t we speak up earlier? Are we scared that by mentioning the problem we’ve suddenly made it real? You can see it in how we talk, carefully dancing around problems as to not speak them into existence. Spoiler: it exists anyway, and it’s getting worse the longer you don’t say it. We’re scared we’re not good enough to solve it, not smart enough.

Uh-oh it’s our lack of self-esteem.

How do the Americans do it? The Brits? Their confidence is bullet proof - they’re not the idiot - everyone else is! But in our heads, we’re the idiot, trying not to be found out. So we leave it, hanging there, fermenting, maturing. Until it’s just ripe enough to fully ruin our month.

The unfortunate truth: endure a little pain earlier, for a lot less in the future.

Disappoint your clients now so that you can delight them later. That’s our job, having the tough conversation is actually the responsible thing to do, it’s at the heart of the creative process.

The best work is not made without friction, in fact, that’s exactly what sharpens an idea. The abrasion of each difficult conversation knocks away anything that doesn’t need to be there, grinding that idea closer to perfection. You’ll come away with a better mutual understanding of the idea and more mutual respect for each other.

The client won’t like the fake, amenable version of you but the actual you, the one who fights for the work because it will do just that, work.

God loves a trier, clients love them even more.