Manners aren’t just some quaint notion; they have a direct influence on how business is done

In response to Derek Jones’s article, “Is it a struggle to build digital agency relationships?“, Brian Jacobs, founder of Brian Jacobs and Associates, explains why we need to “drop the attitude and pick up the ideas”…

Writing here a few days ago, MediaTel’s Derek Jones reported on conversations with senior sales figures, who were complaining about “the greater difficulty now of building sales-buyer relationships in the digital world as technology takes over.”

I think this is a greater problem than might at first appear. I also think it goes beyond the frustrations felt when the phone remains unanswered, and the emails are ignored.

Let me say upfront that I am a fan of media agencies (having spent most of my working life in them, I could hardly be anything else). I don’t think that there is any other branch of marketing services that has embraced change so readily, and so enthusiastically. Today’s media agencies are well positioned to play the central strategic role as the client’s trusted advisor in all matters to do with communication – and many of them fulfil that role well.

But at the same time, many of the newer, digital people in our business are poorly trained in business practice, are not good at selling ideas, are narrow in their specialisms and their professional interests, and many are simply lacking in curiosity. They might claim that clients are not interested in new ideas – but to be honest that is a cop-out and a reflection more of the experts’ inability to sell than the marketing generalists’ unwillingness to buy.

I spent over 35 years in full-service advertising agency media departments, and in media agencies. I have sold a fair few ideas to clients. I have spent a lot of time around clients, and I think I have learnt something about what they want and expect.

These days I spend a lot of time in media agencies. Certainly I talk with senior managers, but I also meet with many line digital specialists. I say ‘meet with’, I should more accurately say ‘try to meet with.’

At some point over the last 10 years, media agency people seem to have forgotten the value of outside advice. Many of them have also forgotten their manners – and that matters more than perhaps they realise. Manners aren’t just some quaint notion; they have a direct influence on how business is done. We all prefer to deal with people we like and respect, and it’s difficult to like and respect someone who erects barriers by failing to communicate.

But there’s a deeper worry for agencies than some old guy going on about manners. For many years now, the agency focus has been on dealing. However much they’ve invested in research, tools, planning systems and the like, the fact remains that most clients still refer to them as ‘media buyers’, and much of their new business comes on the basis of promises on deals to be delivered.

But times are changing – not least because the generation of supreme deal makers is coming to an end, on both sides of the fence. Plus – perhaps as significantly, the technology exists for machines to do the deals, meaning that there is less and less need for human intervention (as Derek’s piece points out).

So what will happen? What will happen is that agencies will start (again) to sell ideas, rather than deals. This is a good thing – ideas are worth something; ideas differentiate one agency from another; ideas break through the clutter in a way that cheap never can. The technology isn’t so good on ideas.

Where will the ideas come from? There is no monopoly on good ideas. They come from anywhere, from anyone. They are certainly not exclusive to the guy in the agency.

I learnt from experience that media owners, and other suppliers, have many good ideas, and if I, as an agency guy could take their ideas, and shape them to my client’s needs I would save time, and generally be seen as someone adding value.

Good ideas have a habit of finding their way to the client anyhow. And when that happens the client may well start to question just what exactly his agency is for – if machines are sorting the deals, and external media owners and expert suppliers are coming up with the ideas, what’s left? Not a lot, I would venture.

And what if there aren’t enough hours in the day to come up with all these ideas, to see all of these external experts and sales guys? To be frank, I don’t buy the ‘we’re so busy’ argument either. Like anyone, agency people are good at spending their time on the things they want to do, or feel comfortable doing, which all too often aren’t the things that move the client’s business ahead.

So – pick up the phones. Answer the emails. Go to thought-provoking conferences. Build the relationships. Look outside your bubble at the world of the client. Drop the attitude and pick up the ideas – they are worth a lot.