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About "Adventures"

Adventures in Client Service

is refuge for people who deal

with clients, a safe haven to exchange

views freely and without recrimination,

and a source of useful advice that

helps you get better at what you do.

Ask me anything, Tell me what you

think, if you agree or disagree, and

why:

Adventures in Client

ServiceB Y C O N S U L T A N T , " A R T O F C L I E N T S E R V I C E " A U T H O R , A N D E X E C U T I V E C O A C H R O B E R TS O L O M O N

February 3, 2016

Where have all the women gone?

My wife Roberta was in New York a couple of weeks back, and while there

had lunch with her step-mom, Francine Wilvers. I tend to think of Francine

in the context of my left-the-stage father-in-law, the Art Directors Hall of

Fame member Bob Wilvers, but this is flat wrong.

Francine was a copywriter, a good one, a force in her own right, who in the

60s got her start at FCB, moved to Grey, went to famed Doyle Dane

Bernbach, landed in Marion Harpers super-duper special group, which Iheaded, left for Marshalk to be Creative Director, with a stop at BBDO

before returning to DDB. As Francine recounts, It was quite a run!

Francine is not the only successful creative person Ive encountered. I had

the good fortune to work with Christine Bastoni (at Digitas and subsequently

FCB), a writer of uncommon gifts who was an amazing visual thinker and

mesmerizing big-moment presenter. My creative director at Ammirati was

Shelley Lanman, much-beloved by everyone she met, not just for her talent,

but for her kindness, lilting laughter, and humanely dry wit. And Ive

worked for years with Kristi Faulkner and Sandy Sabean, a copy/art team

that understands whats wrong with the photo above, striving still to fix it.

So what iswrong with it? If youve been vacationing on a p lanet other than

Earth, or dont readAdvertising Age, you might have missed last months

shot of the magazines A-List agency leaders, populated largely by creative

folks. The disconnect: as Kristi and Sandy explain it, 85 percent of buying

decisions are made by women, yet 85 percent of creative departments are

populated by men, most of whom dont have a clue how women think, feel,

decide, and buy.

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Thats whats wrong with it: not enough women.

Francine had talent she also had help. At FCB it was famed creative

director Shirley Polykoff. AT DDB it was the legendary copy chief Phyllis

Robinson. As a role model there was Mary Wells Lawrence, founder of Wells,

Rich, Greene.

So how do we fix that picture? The answer could be complicated, but I

prefer simple: women need champions, people who will hire them, train

them, mentor them, protect them when needed, promote them, then

acknowledge them and celebrate their success. With the exception of a Bill

Bernbach or Marion Harper, both of whom apparently prized talent over

gender, those cha mpions should bewomen.

Your opinion might diverge from mine, but when the odd s are long, the

game on the line, the stakes at their highest, the women Ive worked with are

the people I would rely on most to see a challenge fulfilled, including this

one.

January 26, 2016

Remembrance of a thing past.

While I was in Boston last fall to speak at Hubspots INBOUND 15, I met up

with Jess Norton, who traveled from New York to attend the conference.

Jess took the scenic route, coming by way of Australia, having been accepted

by The Miami Ad School a s the first Australian to represent her country.

(Miami in Manhattan? Im sure theres an explanation.)

At lunch, Jess mentioned she wanted to interview me for her video log how

could I say no to someone who had traveled that far? so after lunch we

repaired to a near empty room at the Boston Convention Center for a Q & A.

There were three questions, all smart, thoughtful, and potentially revealing.

Sadly, my answers barely did justice to them. One reply, however, to a

question about, Words to live by, uncovered a long buried memory aboutmy Dad.

I spent my high school summers working for my Dads food brokerage

company. One day we drove from a sales call to his office at 2044 Chestnut

Street (in Philly) and parked the car in his usual spot, in a lot on Sansom

Street, a couple of blocks away. As we walked from the lot to the office, my

Dad turned to me and said this about the guy who ran the lot: You know,

Joe runs the best parking garage in the city hes does a first-rate job.

So many years have passed I cant say for sure if Joe actually was the guys

name what I do remember is my Dad praising someone who wasnt a

doctor, wasnt a lawyer, wasnt anyone famous or accomp lished. What my

Dad liked about Joe? He was the best. And the point he was making to me

is, it doesnt matter what you do, it only matters that you do it well. If youre

going to park cars, be the best car parker there is.

Cut to years later I now am a senior in college. My Dad, true to his word,

didnt blink when I told him I was notgoing to law school I was going to

graduate school in literature instead, with the goal of becoming a college

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professor. He didnt blink when I dropped out of graduate school short of a

doctorate to find my long and winding way into advertising. Im not sure we

spoke of the parking lot conversation, but I suspect he was fine with my

choices, as long as I was dedicated to excelling at whatever it was I was

doing.

Thats the point: it matters far less whatyou do, than howyou do it.

Thanks to my Dad, I dont pay much attention to what, but I care a whole

lot about how. And thanks also to Jess, who helped summon that memory

from the distant past.

January 20, 2016

Hello, its me.

(Non-spoiler alert: this is about as far from Adele, Lionel Richie, or Todd

Rundgren as it can possibly be.)

What I recall most from the movieHer is Scarlett Johanssons deep,

disembodied voice. But long after I watched the movie, an odd little fact

remained lodged in my head, probably because it wasso odd and seemingly

out-of-place: the movies protagonist, Theodore Twombly, played by

Joaquin Phoenix, makes his living writing personal letters for others.

Seriously, its true you cant make this stuff up.

I hadnt thought about this until I read a story in The New York Times,

called, From Robots With Love: Adapting Handwritten Notes to the Digital

Age. It talks about a start-up, a company called Bond, that built its own

writing machine, which can produce personalized notes for every

customer. Customers can choose from a variety of hand writing styles, or

they can have their own handwriting copied and digitized for $500.

As much as I welcome emails I app reciate anyone who takes time to get in

touch I love receiving letters, especially hand written ones. I wrote a post

on this, called My friend Rachel awhile back. Rachel hand wrote me a

note of thanks. Small gesture, big impact. The evidence: she wrote me more

than a year ago Im still talking about her note.

I wrote another post, called Message received, about another handwritten

note of thanks, this one signed by 16 people who attended one of my

workshops. It ranks among thebest acknowledgments I ever have received.

Im guessing it was relatively easy and simple to do just have someone

spend some time passing the card among colleagues but the impression it

made far exceeded the effort.

As much as I applaud the ingenuity and technical prowess of Bond, the idea

makes me uncomfortable, and heres why: how many of you have received apiece a letter that appears to be personal, but instead turns out to be just

another junk mail initiative? You open the envelope, full of expecta tion and

hope, only to see both dashed. Instead of being gratified, you become angry.

Sure, a company could fake its way to personal connection. In fact, the

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article cites the story of a Fortune 500 retailer that tested the service to its

best customers, who ended up spending, on average, $16 more each month

after receiving the thank-you note and returned 33 percent less

merchandise, proving that some people canbe duped.

I hate this.

This is what a near mass-produced, apparently personal note from Bond

feels like to me. Its a trick, a sleight of hand, an effort to fool the recipient

into thinking this is from you, only its not from you. Its the lazy persons

solution to personal letter writing.

The thing that gives a personal note its soul whether crafted by hand or on

a keyboard is the personal part. Even Theodore Twombly cannot

duplicate the substance, style, and feeling of someone else, no matter how

talented he is or how well he might know the author.

You have a voice. I suggest you use it.

#KTV

January 13, 2016

Experience never gets old

Last Friday I was on a plane home from New York, having spent the

previous couple of days conducting workshops for a trio of agencies that

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invited me to speak on matters client-centric. I confess I was beat too

much alcohol, too little sleep and not at all inclined to work while in

transit, or even to find escape in The New Yorker.

Instead, Deltas seat-back television beckoned. The movie The Internwas

enticing okay, I watchedSicario andBlack Mass first, succumbing to the

rough pull of action (everyone dies) instead of the gentle lure of comedy (no

one dies) and Im glad I got to watch it, even if it was the third of three

choices.

You know the story after many years as a senior company executive, Ben

Whitaker (played by Robert De Niro), a now retired, aging widower with too

much time and too little to do (a luxury!), returns to work, accepting a

senior intern position at an upstart digital company run by a hard-driving

but mostly clueless executive, Ju les Ostin (played by Anne Hathaway).

This is pretty formulaic you can imagine how the pitch meeting went

with jokes running to lame instead of lau ghter, with the movie rescued by the

acting (not bad). The point of this feel-good, coming-of-age fable: you can

be smart,but you are not necessarily wise. The Anne Hathaway character is

smart the Robert De Niro character is wise.

I was thinking about this because of an article I saw in last months New

York Times, called Small Business Owners Devise Creative Ways To Keep

Top Workers. The story quotes a 2015 survey by the National Federal ofIndependent Businesses, which reports 80 percent of employers reported

they had difficulty finding, or could not find, the talent they needed.

The problem is notmoney: In a survey of 11,000 employees by the staffing

company Randstad USA, the main reason cited for quitting was a lack of a

career path or growth opportunities.

Let me see if I can connect the dots. Entrepreneurs, which presumably

includes people who own and run advertising and marketing service firms,

cant find enough talent. If they are fortunate enough to find good people,

they struggle to keep them, given they cant promote them as quickly as the

employees would like, if at all.

What to do?

One of my New York visits was to an agency called o2kl, populated by a

small band of big-agency refugees. Smart people, experienced people, adult

people who get it right the first time, not the fifth time. Advertising needs is

more firms like this, with people who care less about salary, title, and office

politics, and more about serving the needs of their colleagues, and, most

important of all, their clients.

This is not the first dance for the o2kl folks, so why did they want me to visit?

As knowledgeable as they are, there are things even they need to be

reminded of, and thought Id might be able to help.

I love, trulylove, spending time with shops filled with incredibly smart

people, relatively new to advertising, driven to succeed on this trip that

meant the folks at DCI and AKA, both laden with staffers who fit the

description. Ive dedicated myself to helping them get better at what they do.

Ive even written a book about it, and this post, and this other post.

But what I really hope for is that some of these shops are sufficiently

enlightened to know that being smart is not enough it requires you to be

smart andwise. Wisdom comes from having done this before, not once, not

ten times, but lots of times.

There is huge advantage to adding to your shop people with a bit of mileage

on them if you dont have them, you should get them.

The Internstag line says it best: Experience never gets old.

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How to brief a colleague.

When most people think of the New Year, they think of year. When I think

of the New Year, I think new, as in new business, new clients, and new

colleagu es. Given my last two posts looked backto the year that took its

leave, I figure its time to lookforward, and what better way to do this than

with a p ost about how to brief a colleague?

Let me start with notion number one: you never will be able to deliver great

work without team members as fully invested in a clients success as you are.

And one of the keys to achieving this begins the moment a colleague

someone new to the agency, or an incumbent switching from one account to

another becomes part of your team.

Let me add notion number two: turnover in the agency business was bad

even before the financial meltdowns of 2001 and 2008. Now hardly a day

goes by without one agency colleague walking in the door while another

walks out. New folks need to be briefed on that account you will work on

together.

If you buy into these two notions, then you likely agree briefing colleagues is

important. But how to do this?

There are two ways. The first is to focus on the product. Useful, to be sure,

but in reality, price-of-entry stuff. Youre expectedto know the clients

products and services, and should be deft at analyzing, summarizing, and

synthesizing them for your colleagues.

Product knowledge will take you just so far. Where you really earn your

paycheck is with the second way, meaning your knowledge of and insight

into the client people you serve, and the corporate culture they operate

within.

By all means spend time on the clients products or services. But be sure to

then spend more time on how your client contacts behave, what they care

about, how they interact with each other and with all of you.

What a re your clients hopes, dreams, and aspirations? How do they feel

about the work youre doing? How do they feel about the process to get

there? Have there been mistakes there always are that you need to

address, and how did you address them? Are the clients open to breakfast,

lunch, or dinner with the agency? Are there things outside the office they

care about? Their children, for example, or maybe sports. Do they have a

hobby or passion they pursue?

On corporate culture, what is it like to work at the company? Is it a morning

place, an evening place, a weekend place, or all of the above? What are the

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politics like? Are competitive companies a threat, and if so, in what way? Do

staffers believe in the product/service and its mission?

If you make a list of every client person you serve, identifying the things they

care about, then adding key cultural components, Im guessing youll fill up

more than a few pages with notes and observations. Thats the point thats

how you truly add value.

Last suggestion: do your briefing as a conversation, several if needed, and

not as a presentation. Most of your colleagues will tune out of a presentation,

but a good conversation, preferably over lunch or a drink?

Now you have their attention.

December 29, 2015

Be defeated, or be determined.

In the spring of this year my then-agent, Jim Donovan, received the

following from my publisher:

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After two editions, eleven printings of the second edition, more than 40,000

copies sold, and 12 years of being in print, I receive a form letter yes, a

orm letter, addressed to Dear Sir or Madam! telling me Kaplan is no

longer interested in my book, The Art of Client Service.

After much g nashing, spewing, sputtering, and whining, I emailed Jim,Well need to find another publisher, only to have Jim remind me, Robert,

I am no longer representing business books, and cant be of much help to

you.

Great. Not only do I need a new publisher, I need a new agent to find me a

new publisher.

I had a new book in the offing, which I raced to complete. That done, I

wrote a detailed, 30-page proposal promoting it. I researched agents,

targeting roughly 20 who claimed interest in books like mine, who I then

approached with an email that had this in the subject line: A book with

40,000 copies sold, in search of an agent and pu blisher. Even with the

lousy grammar the book wasnt looking for an agent I was my note

drew attention. A bunch of agents emailed back.

One of the bunch was Jeff Herman, author and compiler of an annual

directory indispensable to anyone seeking to get a book in print, called,

Writers Guide to BookEditors, Publishers, and Literary Agents. To me,

Jeff Herman was god.

God took an interest, and pretty soon Jeff supplanted Jim as my agent. Now

all Jeff needed to do was find a publisher. That should be easy, right?

Easy it is most assuredly not, but among the people Jeff queried with an

email was Richard Narramore, a Senior Editor at John Wiley & Sons, the

person most responsible for seeing that Luke SullivansHey Whipple Squeeze

This, and Jon Steeles Truth, Lies, and Advertising, found their way intoprint. Richa rd is one of the few people in publishing who knows,

understands, and (I think) respects advertising books. And hes one of the

very, very few who has had success with them.

Richard was interested. Not interested in my newbook, mind you.

Interested in my old one. Would I be interested in revising and issuing a


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largely revamped third edition of The Art of Client Service?

It took about, oh, one nanosecond to say yes. I wrote a new proposal Jeff

negotiated a new deal with Richard I wrote a new draft, expanding the

book from 37,000 to nearly 60,000 words, revamping its organization along

the way, and, I hope, addressing what I felt were shortcomings with the

soon-to-be officially out-of-print second edition (two days from now).

What began as a dead-end, no-hope outcome evolved into something

unexpectedly positive: I traded in a nearly anonymous agent for one widely

known and well-respected, and exchanged a second-rate publisher a

minor company that is little more than a printer masquerading as a

publisher for a bigger, better, vastly more able alternative.

The new book will be out April 5 of the coming year. I will welcome its

arrival, and hope all of you find it truly helpful as you strive to get better at

client service.

As you look back on the year thats about to end, you could dwell on all the

stuff that went wrong the clients lost, the pitches failed, the work less than

stellar but I would encourage you to think about whats possible for the

new year, and focus on how you will accomplish it. At one time or another all

of us will face a choice: be defeated or be determined. You know where I

stand on the matter.

That, to me, is the best way, the only way, to say goodbye to 2015, and hello

to 2016.

Have a great holiday, everyone, and if youre going to be out and about,

please be safe.

December 22, 2015

The spirit of the season.

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A couple of months ago I received this email:

Good morning Mr. Solomon,

I am Vanessa Martini, a 22-year-old girl who studies, works and livesin Italy. I am writing you this email because I just ended a three-year

university course in languages for translation and interpreting and

now I have to plan my thesis, which consists in the translation of part

of an English written book. I would really like to translate your book

The Art of Client Servicesince I just started to work for an Italian

start up company as international sales & marketing assistant and I

think this is a great book I can learn a lot from. So I just thought to

contact you and ask for your help in case Ill find some difficult

passages since Ive never studied marketing before.

Hope to hear from you soon,

Many thanks.

Vanessa Martini

I wrote back:

How nice to hear from you Vanessa!

Im very flattered youve chosen The Art of Client Servicefor your

thesis, and will be more than willing to help you with any sections you

find troubling, although I confess your English is vastly superior to my

Italian.

If I can be helpful to you, I surely will try my best.

Regards,

Robert

Not in my wildest dreams did I ever imagine a student wanting to translate


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my book as part of their academic work. I wondered why. The New Yorker

cartoons perhap s? The short chapters possibly? An easy read maybe?

Who knows? Regardless, so began my friendship with Va nessa, who grew

up in a small town North of Venice called Schio, developing a passion for

languages by traveling with her parents on their business journeys.

I asked Vanessa how she discovered the book at the company where she

works, she manages the English and Spanish Facebook pages of their

products, and Im looking for clients abroad. Thats the reason why I read

your book, since Ive never studied marketing before and few months ag o I

had to face clients all alone for the first time!!! The Art of Client

ervice really, really helped me understand so many things.

People have on occasion asked me why I wrote this book. In my lame

attempt to be mildly amusing I responded, Because no one else did.

But as the 2nd edition of The Art of Client Service is coming to an end my

publisher, Kaplan, tells me they are out of stock Amazon is pretty much sold

out and with a new edition from Wiley on the horizon for next early next

year, I am reminded why I reallywrote the book.

I wrote it for Vanessa. I wrote it for the community of readers that took

something positive from the book and shared what they learned with others.

I wrote it for all the people who were kind enough to tell me how it helped

them in some small way.

In the spirit of the season, this is what I recall now, and what I appreciate

most.

If youre travelling to see friends or family for the holidays, travel safe.

X`(3


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December 18, 2015

Robert,

Read your post,Race to the Bottom. From a small market perspective, the

value of an agency is a function of a clients perception of the service

provided. There are clients that see an agency as merely a vendor delivering

a commoditytake the input, make the ads, place the mediaat the lowest

cost possible without regard to bottom line ROI. Those clients will never

benefit from all that a good shop can d eliver. Then there a re those clients

that see their agency as an inner circle confidentan imaginative team of

people that can study the market, identify the weaknesses and formulate

paths to gaining share. Thats when lasting relationships evolve that can

take a client to the top of their category with an ROI that makes everybody

happy. Just saying.

Rick English

December 15, 2015

The race to the bottom.

This week marks a year since The New York Timesput an end to its daily

Advertising column. Im guessing no one much cared that it came to an

end, but I confess I sort of miss lead columnist Stuart Elliott, even at his most

silly or inaccurate (he never really understood the business to begin with).

I was what you might call an advertising addict, or to put it more bluntly, a

unkie. The Timesdaily column had insinuated itself into my daily ritual,

supplementing my weekly fix ofADWEEKandAd Age, and when I could

get my hands on it, The Delaney Report.

Absence of a Times column notwithstanding, news of P&G switching media

agencies warranted a story last week. Okay, its a pretty significant change,

moving billions of dollars in media spending from Publicis to Omnicom. But

what struck me in the pa pers coverage was this quote:

At the same time, advertisers have put increasing pressure on ad

agencies to offer more services for less money, pitting them against one

another in what many industry executives say amounts to a race to the

bottom.

Hmm did the journalist covering the story, Sydney Ember, sneak

unannounced into my DMIX speech, The Past, Present,and Future of

arketing? Gary Beck was there, as were John Hendricks and Sandy

Sabean. Even my wife Roberta played corporate spouse and made an

appearance. But Sydney Ember? I dont recall meeting her, but it sure

sounds that way. Heres a quote from my talk:

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&

But they [meaning, the big agencies]are playing a losing hand.

Caught between the avarice of their holding company parents and the

savings-at-all-costs procurement people, they will be forced to cut their

staffs, reduce investment in the people they do keep, and watch as

more senior clients grow frustrated with their junior agency

counterparts, and put their accounts into revolving-door reviews.

What does this picture look like? Thats right its a doom loop.

Doom loop. Race to the bottom. Theres not much difference. What both of

us are talking about is failure.

For me, its not financial failure. The holding companies will survive, as will

their agency offspring, cutting costs to prop up margins. And I wouldnt

under-estimate the big, traditional shops. They have the skill, they have the

scale, they have the process to compete for and win clients.

No, what I mean is a failure of imagination. For that, we need to turn to all

of the inventive leaders of shops not burdened by paying tribute to their

financial masters, free to pursue choices and take risks in their clients

interests, to build relationships that lead to stellar work.

You know, the kind of agency you aspire to work for, or even better, create.

mY9vX 7

December 8, 2015

Dont look back.

Today marks the 400th time Ive sat at this computer, writing a post. It also

is the 5th anniversary ofAdventures in Client Service.

Time to reflect.

The numbers tell one story: a year ago there were 11,000 visitors to

dventures today there are more than 14,000, a respectable 30% increase.

Readers seem committed they read an average of a page-and-a- half on

each visit. Nearly half are repeaters, from which I infer they find

something of value in return for their effort.

To put the data in context, these numbers are incredibly modest, especially

when you consider there are bloggers enlisting hundreds of thousands,

millions, or even tens of millions, of loyal followers. I am assuredly not

among them.

Its a good thing, then, the numbers dont matter much, at least not to me.

I initially was trained as a direct marketer, taught to care less about

monologues to the masses, and more about connecting one-to-one. In that

spirit, I write not for the nameless and anonymous, but rather for the known

and acknowledged, readers like Lisa Lefebvre, Rick English, Wagner Dos

Santos, Pete Van Bloem (with me from the beginning), Ann Ross, Tracy Ott

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Next page

Wallingford, Toni OBerry, Ann Pichette, Tom Score, John Heenan, Richard

Eber, Braden Russom, Vicki Brackl, Ken Ohlemeyer, David Vining (also with

me from day one), Philippe Augy, Cindy Sims, Mark DiMassimo, Jorg

Deckerhibbel, Robin Raff, Matt Orlando, Mike Slosberg (hugely helpful

when it mattered most) , C layton Hove, Patrick Mannion, Mary Stibal (my

oldest friend in the business), Michael Emerson, Darrell James, Nir Bashan,

and Chris Sledzik.

Some are clients who became friends, others are friends who became clients,

all are fellow travelers who share a view that serving clients well in the quest

to create superb work is a never-ending challenge.

It was Toni OBerry who suggested that, in addition to my blog, I consider

posting on LinkedIn Pulse. I followed Tonis wise advice the beauty of Pulse

is it tells you who is reading your posts are doing, something much harder to

assess with Google Analytics. Ive published 25 times on Pulse the post that

enticed the most readers was The Bozeman connection. The post that

attracted the most likes was Owning it. The least popular? My last

effort: Short selling. Perhaps the title fell short, or my content is wanting,

given how important the subject is.

Of the 54 posts I wrote this past year, the one I like best is called, Is account

management dead? I am drawn to it because, in spite of its doomsday

question, it serves as a compelling affirmation of why all of us remain

committed to client service not as a job, but as a calling.

On occasion I have a tendency to dwell in the past (like Troy Aikman, in that

beer commercial), which explains why I still recall my friend Lisa Lefebvre

recommending I start a blog. As grateful as I am to Lisa for her persistence,

I prefer to not look back. Yes, there are five years in the rearview mirror, but

Im hoping there are (at least) five more on the road Im travelling.

If all goes according to plan and ambition, youll travel with me, making the

ourney smarter, with me the willing beneficiary.

Thank you for staying with me.

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