When Client-Consultant Relationships Go Awry

How sad that Yoly Ong’s reaction eclipsed her explanation for the flop that was Pilipinas Kay Ganda.

As I explained in this post written before Ms. Ong’s reaction –you may give your clients the best recommendations your expertise can provide but if the client refuses to follow or even consider these, there’s not much a consultant can do about it. It’s their company and money, not yours. They answer to the Board and shareholders, you don’t. You don’t run this country; the Aquino administration does.

I wish Yoly Ong simply wrote down the explanation she gave to Stella Arnaldo sans the hysterics she made on her Philippine Star column. Maybe, if she did, people who are clueless about the client-agency process would understand exactly what led to the now infamous tourism controversy. Who knows, maybe they would’ve been more forgiving had she tried to explain instead of going on the offensive.

As it is, she wrote a piece that struck many as bitter, arrogant and kinda weird with all its implications of a conspiracy against PNoy’s government by pro-Arroyo groups aka Gruesome Malicious Army in Yoly Ong’s world? Is it remotely impossible to accept that people just truly hated that tourism campaign without even thinking of GMA?

That Logo

Campaigns and Grey has a foreign parent, the Grey Group. I doubt that the Grey Group would allow any of their foreign partners to risk their own global reputation by plagiarizing something so blatantly.

In advertising, they call “getting inspiration” from the Polska logo for Pilipinas Kay Ganda as a peg. In most advertising materials, I provide agencies with a peg so that they understand better what I’m trying to convey on my creative briefs.

I’m not a graphic artist nor am I the most creative or artistic person on earth. There’s a picture in my mind of how my marketing material should look like but, often, I cannot express that picture in ways my agency would understand. So I provide them with a peg. It is not for them to copy but it is for them to – you got it! – draw inspiration. That way, they can take the photo from my mind and translate it into a material that I feel will best help achieve my marketing objectives.

The logo of Pilipinas Kay Ganda is a design cliché. If you search on Google images for tourism logos, you’d find quite a lot that share the same look, tone and feel. Any country that offers beaches and a tropical climate to tourists almost always carries the same logo design elements – colorful and funny looking fonts, waves, sun, coconuts.

But why did Campaigns and Grey create such a crappy logo? Probably because they were limited also by the client’s creative guidelines.

Admittedly, Campaigns and Grey should’ve done better as far as creative interpretation was concerned. But when a client tells you he wants a smiling sun and tarsier on his logo, there’s not much creative freedom you have considering client also happens to be the President of the Philippines.

And this is why clients (including myself) should really keep our hands off the creative process once it’s in the ad agency’s hands. Because what we know about design can only fit our thumbnails.

I’ve had millions of arguments with clients about the design of their marketing materials but if a client has decided to use orange (and never mind that it’s blinding orange on a neon blue background), the possibility of you changing his mind is very nil. At best, you can block the production of the offending marketing material but even that is a long shot.

When client has made up his mind, client has made up his mind. End of story.

Rushing The Process

Again, this is not unusual for clients. Today, they will tell you they want a new product launched in 6 months. At your next meeting, your 6 months has turned to 3. You work like a nut trying to beat your 3-month deadline. Then, as you’re about to produce your marketing materials, client either revises the Final Artwork (FA), changes his mind about the design altogether or just puts the project on hold indefinitely.

It is not unheard of for clients to already have a brand name and no product in sight. Others already have logos mounted on giant billboards only to remove those later because consumer feedback towards it was horrible. Some have thousands of marketing materials produced and, yet, never used.

I’m not surprised that Campaigns and Grey did not know the launch was going to be a grand one. Clients rarely tell their agencies exactly what their companies are doing. Heck, they don’t even tell their marketing consultant everything so why should they tell their agencies anything? It’s a very James Bond attitude that is typical of clients.

The Budget

People are horrified at the approximately P3.5 million price tag of the launch. In events marketing, that amount is nothing if client wants to produce a grand affair.

Food and drinks alone will eat a huge chunk of your budget. If it’s a glitzy affair like a launch where all of the clients’ business partners and VIP friends are invited, the open bar with many pricey drinks can run up to several zeroes already. If you had hors’ d’oeuvres created by any top chef, you can bet that those tiny canapés will put a giant crater on clients’ pockets.

Then, there’s the production crew itself which is separate from the events crew. How much is the cost of an AVP nowadays? Easily P300,000. You don’t get that for free just because your agency created your other marketing materials. Clients pay for every adaptation of the creative design they approved.

It’s a launch so you need performers. How much is the talent fee for well-known entertainment personalities these days? These people are not going to come to your launch without getting paid. I know of a major company that paid P420, 000 to a well-known TV personality to host their marketing roll-out which lasted only 4 hours. Yes, Virginia, P420k for 4 hours and he read everything from a cue card.

So, yeah, while P3.5 million is an amount that can feed several poor communities already, it’s an amount many companies are willing to incur for their product launches especially if that product is expected to generate a lot of revenue.

Yoly Ong should have just said: “This is what happened. We take responsibility for our share of the fiasco. We apologize for it.” Period.

Labels: ad campaign, advertising agency, client relationship, consultants, marketing campaign, marketing consultant, Pilipinas Kay Ganda

Marketing Confessions of Sunny whispered 11:33 AM
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