1. Follow the damned rules
2. Never help others break the rules
3. Help guide those who don't know any better
4. No matter what your excuse is for breaking the rules, it isn't good enough
5. It's all about the work. The only point of any strategic set up (and try showing the creative, the plan, or the content idea etc first and then show how you got there) is to help the client understand why you're recommending what you are recommending. Take the time to write less, they like value being added, you should be giving them insight they haven't considered, or reframing the brief in an inspirational way, but mostly, when they have 20 agencies, research partners and God knows what else, whatever agency you're in, it's more about helping them see the wood for the trees and compressing the hurricane of information they're flailing in, down to one clear task, or three clear principles. No one is sitting there thinking 'I can't wait to see the strategy' they want to see the work/the plan/the content etc. That goes for a strategic presentation too, they don't want chart after chart, they want you to get to a proposition/organising thought/task for communications quickly - that's the 'work' too. It's all about the work. Anyone who says otherwise is either and brandbabbler (as Ad Contrarian would say) or someone who charges a lot for process, rather than ideas and results.
6. Toughen the fuck up.You will sometimes have to work late. You will sometimes have to work on a weekend. You will sometimes have to get up early. Your finest work will get rejected. Your finest work will get approved and then killed when budgets get cut. The occasional long hours are the job. The unpredictability and rejection are just business. Your clients answer to a board who don't care about ads and think marketing isn't that difficult. Their business is subject to market fluctuations therefore so are you. A booked media plan will get canned, an ad will get banned unfairly, a client will change their mind. It's called life, no, it's called business. That said, presenteeism is even worse, see Rule 83.
7. Toughen up even more if you're a planner. 90% of creative's work gets rejected, this makes them slightly sociopathic, if you want crazy great ideas, working with weird folks is one of the things you have to deal with. Creatives deal with rejection all the time. Suits want stuff off their desk and deal with the sharp edge of client business. You always run the risk of being a barrier to the work a creative wants doing, or a suit getting stuff done on time. Few love a planner, the best you can hope for is being tolerated. Get hard.
8. Suits must toughen up even more. See above. No one likes you unless you get them extra budget, defend them from the client, get the travel stuff sorted our or make the tea and coffee. To quote Gordon Gecko, if you want a friend, get a dog.
9. Workshops should never, ever last more than four hours. After that, everyone is silently praying all this will end.
10. Workshops are a waste of time. Trojan horses of mediocrity to quote Adliterate. These are a way for people with bad ideas and little imagination to get really, really smelly ideas into the mix. Only workshop when you have no choice. And if you must have one, employ dirty tricks to get what you need out of it (see Rule 11)
11. Use workshops as major tool for dirty planning. If you have the kind of client, or stakeholder group who never approve anything unless it's their idea, it's time for a workshop. Just make sure you know what the answer is and structure the day and your moderation on helping folks think for themselves.
12. Creatives must reject the brief in all cases, no exceptions. Usually, it's because the brief is crap. Sometimes, it's because it's really great, but no creative will acknowledge this. A creative lives or dies by their ideas, that includes anything sort of strategic. Even if the brief is good, creatives must use the first review to make it look like a good strategy was their idea in the first place.
13. Ignore everything a social strategist says.
14. Media Owners and content partners must ignore the brief at all times. Three rounds of research the client has payed through the nose for, then going back and forth over the comms strategy, the usual tussle between agencies, the three rounds of creative. None of this matters because no one gets content like a media owner, no one else knows how to surprise and delight people like they do. So every presentation needs to have a major piece of work done by a strategist, with a killer insight, such as 'people look up to sports stars' or 'men like driving cars to escape'. Then the brand needs to be reinvented. All this needs to be wrapped up in mediawank language and take forever before you get a re-writing of the creative lexicon with stuff like 'lets go behind the scenes of sports stars training'. Or even better 'tell stories about why men have always loved driving'.
15. Anyone who isn't a media owner should always treat media owners with extreme caution. Never let them present straight to the client without leaving at least two weeks between you seeing it first and the presentation date.
16. If you work in media agency, take every opportunity to make a creative agency work with a media owner of other content partner. It will complicate everything, but the comedy you will see unfolding totally makes up for it.
17. Ignore everything a brand consultant says. Everything. They get paid to come up with a hallowed document that will change everyone's fortunes, only for you to find it's just a few words in boxes that no one can get any decent work or direction from.
18. If you are short of money, get into brand design. Getting paid thousands to change the pantone reference of the logo, or change one word in a strapline no one cares about is perhaps even easier money than brand consultants.
19. Just call yourself a planner. A strategist, provocateur (really!!!), The Invention team.....it's a stupid title, but let's not look like brand consultants when it comes to branding ourselves.
20. A planning type must put deliberate mistakes in every piece of work. No one likes a smart arse, and by definition, a planner is a smart arse. Also, people are always more likely to like something if they think they helped make it. So put a deliberate mistake in the brief - media/creative/media owner/cross agency whatever and the TV buyer/creative/overpaid 'strategist (hahaha) at Channel 4 even more overpaid 'strategist at the social agency will happily correct you and think they own the damn thing. Same principle in client presentations.
21. Anyone using the following words in any situation will be henceforth known as a complete dickhead. Ideation. Interface. Visioneering. In fact anyone caught using overlong words will have a drink spilt in their lap. The more complex your language, the more people think you're a complete twonk (and less intelligent).
22. Never ever comment on another agency's work in cross agency meeting. If you are asked, always be positive, or if you are good at damning with faint praise, do so with caution - for example, 'I love the idea of a partnership, it's great when we all have to roll our sleeves up and work with a new partner, that's the thing about really great campaigns, you can't get around having to do more work, but it's well worth it'. Of course, in private, it's tempting to slag them off but clients really can't be arsed dealing with agencies that can't get along, who are always trying to get more work at the expense of someone else. By all means, stab people in the back, but don't let ANYONE know that's what you are doing.
21. Whatever time you want to give the client to approve stuff, double it. That's life.
23. Creatives/media buyers and anyone in production can lose it as often as they like. Planning and account handling folk can never lose their temper and slowly simmer. If you need to vent spleen, take up an active sport, buy a punchbag or, even better, just deal with it. This is just the way it is.
24. Never ever wait until the day before the presentation before you show the stuff to your boss/CEO or whoever. In fact, don't show them it unless you really must. They'll change something just because they can - and since they are now better at bean counting, dealing with politics and cooking the books, they won't be any good at actual advertising any more. Just use them to charm the client now and again and make sure they don't say anything daft.
25. Be nice to the head of client services. They have been put there to keep them quiet and pacify them for the fact they'll never make CEO or MD. In fact, the only reason they are still here is because their one skill is making clients like them.
26. Give up the suits. Of course, creatives should never wear suits, but strategy types shouldn't either - just never look as casual as creatives. Suits should consider giving up the suits too, clients really don't care that much. Of course, one or two do, but with these exceptions to the general rule, only the suits should worry about wearing suits. It's just the way it is.
27. Never ever cut corners with coffee or tea. Obviously, this goes for client meetings. Tea made in the pot, coffee in a cafetierre is a minimum, but respect each other too and make the effort to do it right. No fucking instant coffee, no substandard tea bags. Never pour any tea or coffee unless it's brewed for at least three minutes. If you want weak tea or coffee, just get some hot water, as weak tea or coffee are just water pretending to be something else. Warm the milk if you're making coffee, never warm the milk if it's tea.
28. Surround yourself with quality. This relates to the quality of the hot drinks, but also your sound system, your books and so on. Quality stuff will rub off on you.
29. Get out of the bloody bubble. Marketing folk are not normal. It's not normal to want to make transient stuff that makes people want to buy stuff they don't need. But the folks we're trying to persuade to buy stuff they don't need, they require us to understand them. So get the fuck out of your office, out of SOHO, Brooklyn, Madison Avenue, The Northern Quarter or whatever cool postcode you're in and go be with real people. As a minimum, once a month: Go to a popular shopping mall and a supermarket. Consume some popular media you think is beneath you. Go to where your target customer is and try and talk to some of them.
30. Do not believe any research that was done anywhere but where people are buying or using what you are selling. People lie, they lie to themselves. The only useful research is done in real time, in the jungle rather than the zoo.
31. Get better at traditional research than researchers. Know thine enemy.
32. Make friends with traffic if you're in a creative agency. Make friends with all the PA's. They know everything that is happening. Everything.
33. Don't count the powerpoint slides. Sometimes 100 slides is okay, sometimes 5 is perfect. It depends on your pace,style and what you need to deliver. Rehearse and time the presentation, rather than count slides.
34. Never get so pissed on a works do you can't remember what you have said. Trust me on this.
35. If you must have to drink with the client, stay at least two drinks behind. Never go home before them, unless you're a lightweight. Better to be thought of as no fun than try and sleep with them, tell them how much you hate your spouse, or call them a c***t.
36. Edit everything you do three times. It will be too long and not watertight first time. It will be better next time around. Only at the third round will it be acceptable. It's just the way it is.
37. It never gets easier, you just have more to deal with. The more important you get, the more shit you have to deal with. If you're a junior, an account director should make it look easy because they need to instill confidence in you and their clients. They will be crying inside close to a deadline as much as you, they just get better at dealing with it...and deal with more.
38. If you're under 30 stop moaning about how much money you are not making. No one makes much until they reach 30, and even then, they won't be paid as much as a lawyer or banker. If you want to make serious money, start and agency and plan to sell it (and you're soul).
39. The size of an agency is inversely proportioned the quality of its I.T. That's just how things are.
40. Look at your job very hard every two years. if you're bored, if you're stagnating, or if you are underpaid, consider looking elsewhere. Never move for the money alone, I know too many people who left a great job to become highly paid malcontents in places that weren't right. If you're bored or stagnating, see if there is something you can do about it, if not, jump....your bosses will probably be wondering why you are still here anyway.
41. Respect the past. It wasn't much better, but most of what you think is the latest thing has been done before and better.
42. Ignore awards papers. In awards land, everything works, the process is simple, there is always a catastrophe and a flash of insight that came from nowhere. Awards papers never reflect what really happened, not even the original strategy. IPA papers are just the ones where the client would pay for econometrics. Creative awards are designed to impress creative directors, not real people. So when you get a case study that says the strategic leap was imagining the brand was a woman, rather than a man, you know what to do don't you?
43. Don't become mired in the past. Culture changes, markets change, the trick is to move with the times and keep what was great about the past. Every great brand (agency brands too) tends to fail when they stop moving forward, or forget what made them great in the first place. Yes, that is a contradiction, deal with it.
44. It isn't the death of TV.
45. It's not the age of whatever you think it is.
46. If an agency with a reputation for being ruthless, formulaic or really dull wants to hire you, if that kind of thing suits you, fine. If not, run for your life, they will never, ever change.
47. If client wants you to shake thinks up and challenge them with more original thinking, yet have a past of more 'hardworking' ideas (insert euphemism here), unless there is a new CEO or CMO, run for your life if it's a pitch. They will never ever change. If it's an existing client, make sure you have a formulaic plan B, that's what they'll buy in the end.
48. If you work in a media agency you need to be able to drink. This is just the way it is.
49. if you work in a social media agency, you need to be able to sell snake oil.
50. if you work in a creative agency, you need to be OK with drinking yourself to sleep occasionally.
51. Everyone who doesn't work in marketing thinks they can do your job. That's just the way it is.
52. All deadlines, no matter how long you have, shall be ignored up until the day before when everyone shall spring into action and do two weeks work in two days.
53. The senior person buys lunch. Always.
54. Never, ever, sleep with a client. It always ends in tears. Trust me on this.
55. Work is to be measured by quality, not quantity. That goes for how long your hours are, the length of any document, the number of slides or any work you are doing.
56. The purpose of pitching is to win. It's not a time to tell the client their brief is wrong, or stick to your guns on challenging work. You don't know them yet. Read the brief, follow the brief, give them what they will want to buy. It won't be what eventually gets bought or booked anyway.
57. Marketing books should be read with caution. Marketing books are usually written by people wanting to sell their services and based on bad evidence, or evidence that supports an argument that sells books rather than client products and services. Always have your own point of view and read stuff about what your clients are selling. That should always include the annual report.
58. Follow the money. Get to know the clients finance officer, they know more about what the business thinks it needs. And find out who really makes the decisions, in one case for me, it was the CEO's son. Once you know who it is and what they like, shape your sell to this person. The greatest work you ever did was probably something that never got bought.
59. A great idea is a great idea. Legend has it, the Cadbury Gorilla was in a creative's draw for years, waiting to be post rationalised for the right brief. Always keep great ideas on file, you never know.
60. Post rationalisation isn't a crime (as Russell Davies would say) it's a valid way to get great ideas made. Never sell great ideas if they are not right for the brief, but if it's great and it's right, no one cares if the strategy came before or after apart from the strategist.
61. Process is a smokescreen. Any kind of agency flails around, drinks lots of caffeine, panics and eventually something good emerges and it gets developed just in time. A process is to to give clients the illusion of professionalism, it never works like that in real life.
62. The only way to get a good idea is to work hard. Flashes of inspiration are rare, great work usually comes from getting a bad idea quickly, and then working out what is wrong with it.
63. Never kill an idea by speaking before thinking about it. Our industry is supposed to be about originality, and our first reaction to new stuff is fear and rejection. You're first response will be wrong, live with it for awhile - and shut up.
64. Never encourage anyone to kill your ideas before they have chance to think. You present something, you're desperate for approval like a little puppy , bouncing up and down, desperate for appreciation. But if you ask someone what they think, before they have had chance, they'll say something they don't mean, and to keep face, will stand by it through thick or thin. Well done, you've just killed your own work.
65. Have the courage to change your mind. We're all wrong sometimes. It's not weak to admit you're wrong, but agencies can be very macho and all about winning the argument. Don't win arguments, win pitches, do great work, go home.
66. Have the courage to stand your ground. Sometimes you know you are right. Just know when you want to pick your battles. A client I trust once told me what they want is to be listened to, to have their feedback taken on board, but also for agencies to have the courage to say what they think and recommend what is right, but be aware the decision is the clients at the end of the day.
67. The start time of a day is fluid, just as the end is. That's just the way it is.
68. No one cares about the 'brief' as much as it's author. The creative director cares a bit, because it's make them feel like they still matter when they insist on changing a word in the proposition. The client likes to sign off the brief sometimes to make them feel creative. The planning director likes to sign off the brief because they can change another word and claim the thinking if it becomes next year's award winner. Creatives like arguing over the brief because it's fun toying with you before they ignore it completely. The TV buyer likes you doing a brief because they can refuse to work until they've got said brief, and recover from the heavy night out with Channel 4 (which is why the brief will get ignored if they can't put Channel 4 on the plan). The suits like a brief because they like the illusion of holding creatives/media buyers/media owners to account. Of course, everyone ignores the brief and does what the hell they like. Which is why you should write one brief for the briefing and another after the first review, based on the work people like. No one will notice, they hardly read the brief anyway.
69. Have fun for Christ sake. You're not in an agency for a quiet life. You're not in it to be super rich. You're there because this is what suits your talents and, more importantly, you like being around interesting people. If you're not having fun, the hard work will get too hard. If there is no banter or good conversation, what the hell are you in an agency for?
70. Develop a thick skin. Agencies get through the day with a very sharp humour and wind each other up mercilessly. It's just the way it is.
71. if you work in a media agency, you'll find everyone swears more than they should. Get used to it.
72. Be nice to everyone. It's too hard for politics as it is, but more importantly, the industry is too small and an enemy will probably end up as your boss or your client.
73. Lighten up. We are not doctors, none of this really matters.
74. Forget the babble. Reach as much of the market as you can, as often as you can, say something about what you do or sell in a way that cannot be missed, try and get talked about, continually remove reasons not to buy.
75. You are there to sell things. You are not there to build brand meaning or change culture, these things MAY be a means to sell things sometimes. If you want to make people laugh, be a comedy writer. If you want to do culturally significant stuff, work for HBO. You do need an appreciation of what makes people laugh, what moves people, what they like, what they hate. But all this is in service of making people want to buy things......which tends to be as simple as being the one they've heard of that sort of feels right. And no one cares about the brand positioning apart from brand babblers.
76. Celebrate the introverts. The people who rise to the top in fast paced, sink or swim agency life, tend to be the charismatic people who are super confident and own the room. We support their decisions because we want to believe them. But while there is merit in acting quickly and then refining as you go along, their is little room for the quietly spoken, the ones who don't win by speaking first or being the loudest, the ones who think a little more, question things and don't naturally think they are right. Let everyone speak and bloody listen to them. The job is more complex than ever, don't fall in love with your first idea, listen to everyone, the more eyes you have on a project, the better it will be...as long as their is a benign dictator overlooking everything.
77. All agencies will try and fight over the core comms planning. That's the way it is......and can be healthy if everyone listens to each other.
78. Creative agencies can't do media. They just can't. If you want to do media, start a media department.
79. Media agencies can't do creative...but think they can.
80. Digital agencies will never be unbiased, only let them do digital.
81. Media owners can't do ads, yet. They think they can, but do not them do comms strategy or creative strategy.......just brief them right based on a good idea.
82. The term 'native' shall henceforth be banned..........it's a bloody advertorial.
83. Hard isn't the point, the point is great work. I once had a boss who told me she liked recessions because she could push staff harder. If a company is making profits through their people doing 14 hours days, it's not a business, it's a workhouse. Don't fall for long hours and bleeding for your craft as a badge of honour - tired us stupid not genius. Don't impress people with how tired you are, wow them with you work.
83. That said, don't pretend is was easy. We judge quality by effort as much as outcome - so show you've cared and put the work in. You'll be doing a favour to your industry, good work is hard, the more we pretend it's easy the more we make others feel inadequate.
84. Keep the mute button on. It's always wise to think before you speak, having to push the off button first gives you a precious few seconds to avoid saying anything stupid. Ensure one meeting in three you talk with the button still on, it makes the people who can't work out the difference between on and off better about themselves.
85. Never belief agencies who say they are a great place to work, even the ones who have won awards. The ones that shout the loudest tend to be covering up the most problems. Talk to as many people who worked there or work there, get a true picture before it's too late. You may find the number of Nespresso machines, team lunches and away days in inversely proportioned to the day to day enjoyment of the actual job.
86. The same for agencies with lots of PR for diversity. You'll probably find behind the smokescreen lots of hierarchy and 'we always done it this way'.
87. There are only three questions to ask in a creative review. Is is on brief? Does the work make us rethink the brief? What is the ideas. This depends on a decent brief in the first place and creatives who can have ideas instead of visuals.
88. Always speak last whenever you can. Let the loudmouths speak before they think, give yourself time to work out what you want to say - the final work is always more powerful. Also, if you've nothing to say, you can go with 'What she said'. Don't be fooled by senior people asking the team to first. They're not being collegiate or kind, they just don't know what to say yet.
89. Don't take any LinkedIn guru seriously unless they've actually done the job they claim to be an expert in. By all means, break the rules and all that, but you need to understand the rules before you break them, even these rules.
89. Obey the rules
May I ask your opinion on what you think of this reasoning behind an agency founder choice of location for his office? It's in a market town that's mainly residential (quite affluent though). I asked him whether it's because the location is close to certain clients or client industries, he said it's mainly because it's closer to home (his home is in the same market town). He said it makes sense to him.
I understand that you deliberately picked a northern city, outside of London, for your base but your reason is to get closer to real people on the ground.
But I just feel there is no clear career path for the agency above with the founder's mindset? Or am I being biased (towards London)?
Posted by: Brenda Hoco | May 24, 2023 at 10:44 AM
Excellent rules. And no typos.
Posted by: John Dodds | May 29, 2023 at 11:54 PM