I've often in my adult life felt like Tom Hanks in Big. I suspect we all have.
However, embracing this a bit in all agency meetings could improve your experience greatly.
If you are fortunate, these are meeting of the best minds, the broadest experience and nicest people. All in order to bounce off each other, pool knowledge and solve client problems in the most amazing way.
In most cases, we are rarely that fortunate. They tend to be regular sessions of point scoring, back stabbing and deviousness. Regular skirmishes in a cold war fought with icy politeness, ruthless charm and merciless precision, all for share of budget, owning the idea and leading the strategy.
To quote Tsun Zu, the supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.
I have often found myself wondering if some clients enjoy the polite conflict playing out in front of them, or if some are wonderfully oblivious. I suspect it's both.
Of course, great clients don't have the time or patience and people who don't play nice don't last long.
Yet, even if it's the passive aggressive point scoring scenario, even if you're shy planner like me, all is not lost.
First thing to remember, no one cares if you're right. I've seen the nicest, most serene human beings fall apart because their watertight argument, there eloquent delivery or whatever falls not only on deaf ears, it's slayed through charm, off the cuff remarks and people the client simply likes more than you.
You will never win through guile and cunning, there is always someone more devious. Guile and cunning are in the job description of Account Directors, or should be. Make sure you have a great one with you, make sure you're gone through what you need out of their meeting and let then work their black magic.
Or you can forget guile and cunning and be generous.
Let me explain. Others will always be more slick, more eloquent and clever than you, however, the thing that kills charm is enthusiasm.
Like Tom Hanks in Big.
The trick to being a great planner is to genuinely care about what happens to the client, their business and their customers. Interested people are always more interesting, you'll naturally know more about every aspect of the client's business and it will show. Your enthusiasm will be infectious, clients will feel and WANT you to do well in these meetings.
Weirdly, it rubs off on your previously stand-offish colleagues too. Not only do they see you're more interested in everyone doing well through the client doing well, so you become less of a threat. You become simultaneously become more of a threat by exposing them as see you next Tuesdays. They play nice.
The deeper knowledge, the palpable care enables you to cut through the bullshit with the brutal honesty only afforded the nice. Who can fault someone who wants the the best, not to win?
It also liberates you to ask the dumb questions no one has thought off or dares ask. Like what is the actual objective?
And when you're not second guessing every move from people around the table, you're free to use your most powerful weapon, your ears.
Because when they are not being petty, other agencies are amazing practitioners too. You can be enthusiastic about THEIR work build on and., most wondrously, steal it for your own stuff another time.
I had the misfortune to work with a well known London agency, clients use to call them Motherfuckers, because they were brilliant, but arrogant. As soon as they messed up, they were fired. But I learned a lot of new ways to think about strategic leaps and deliver presentations that were stories, not decks. Watching their CEO deliver a creds deck was like watching Federer hit a forehand.
The more approaches, ideas and frameworks you absorb, if you would just listen, the more you can breathe out at the right time.
But it's hard to listen while you preach.
Ultimately though.
No one wins unless the client wins.
To quote Morrisey, it's not easy to love, it's so easy to hate, it takes strength to be gentle and kind - but it's worth it.
Follow that through, care more, be generous, be kind do the work.
Be more Hanks.
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