I am sure I have written about this in the past … but one thing that really gets my goat is this term, “It’s Just Business”
As far as I can tell, this roughly translates into, “I’m going to fuck you over, but you shouldn’t take it personally as I like you really!”
What a load of bullshit …What upsets me more is when people act in this way because they believe this is what makes them look like a ‘serious business person’.
Just recently, we got asked – at incredibly short notice – to help a client out in developing their brand core idea.
When we presented back our concept to the key client, he said it was great and asked us to present it to his local country managers – with the acknowledgement that he would fully back us in our proposal.
Jump to the presentation and it was a blood bath of comments – some justified [requiring a few minor changes], some totally without merit.
What happens?
Because the client is too frightened to make the tough call [because he feels it could upset and alienate his mass of junior, less experienced colleagues] he has kicked out our idea and gone with a concept his team has come up with … an concept that is weak, full of category cliché’s and not addressing the fundamental issues affecting their business.
When I told them [and showed them] what they were going to do was fundamentally wrong for their business, I got told to ‘… not take it personally’.
Don’t take it personally? Of course I take it personally …
I can live with the fact they may not like the idea we developed for them … I can appreciate that people of less experience are going to be more risk adverse than those with a wider body of practical knowledge … … I can just about accept a person in a senior position ultimately mad a decision based on what would make him look good to his team rather than what would be right for his business … but I will never, ever, ever accept that our hard work – work we spent ages in developing, validating and demonstrating – is something that can be simply cast aside without a decent explanation.
That ISN’T what serious business people do.
Serious business people give genuine, well thought out reasons behind their actions … they don’t just brush off people’s hard work with a phrase that is used to hide behind their lack of decision making process and/or backbone.
I’ve been lucky enough to have worked/still work with some rather successful business people … Richard Branson / Steve Jobs / Anita Roddick / Lachlan Murdoch … and not once did they ever use that phrase, even when they were adamantly opposed to our point of view.
Clients have no right to say their agencies aren’t focused on their business needs when in too many cases, the client does not make the decisions that will positively change their fate.
Agencies [well, the good ones] are not suppliers … they help companies grow by helping them connect to the ever-growing, ever-cynical consumer … and if clients don’t like the answers the agency gives, then they either [1] shouldn’t ask the question or [2] give a decent reason for not agreeing because as far as I am concerned, life’s too short for me or my company to waste time on the ‘timid’ of business.