In the past 8 years the AdLab has had some pretty remarkable success stories. Big brands, world-class agencies, and award winning work. The more that we work with real clients, the more that we realize how big a deal it is for students to be dealing with real-life issues on real, live, breathing brands. It’s quite the process and the lessons learned are invaluable. Most times it’s amazing, other times we want to know how and why we ever chose to work with these people.
Over the past year in particular we have seen some interesting lessons learned from difficult, pain-in-the-neck, just plain bad, clients. What the students have learned however is invaluable: always understand the client expectation, manage that expectation, and try and over deliver on that expectation FIRST, before you deliver what you think they should do instead; never burn a bridge; and it’s OK to fire bad clients.
That last idea of firing bad clients brings to mind a famous quote from Bill Bernbach about the value of working with people that are…well, people worth working with. He meant it regarding staff but I think the lesson is equally applicable to clients you choose to work with:
“When we started our agency, we had in mind precisely the kind of people we wanted with
us. There were two requirements: You had to be talented and you had to be nice. If you
were nice but without talent, we were very sorry, but you just wouldn’t do. We had to ‘make
it.’ And only great talent would help us do that. If you were a great talent, but not a nice
person, we had no hesitation in saying ‘No.’ Life is too short to sacrifice so much of it, to
living with a [fill in your favorite expletive here].”
Here’s to surrounding yourself with people who are talented and who are nice too. Life is too short and I for one am grateful to be in the AdLab working with all of you.
-J