Clients that bash up their agency, as they get lousy creative work, remind me of a saying an elderly supply history teacher at school used to say. He would say: "When you point one finger at someone, you point 3 at yourself". (If you don't understand this: physically when you do a pointing action with your hand, 3 of your fingers are pointing at you).In my view, we as clients generally get exactly the copy we deserve. So if your copy is lousy you could be at least 3 times more responsible for it than the agency (as shown by people moving accounts and still get appallingly bad ads).
You get the copy you deserve when:
(1) The very best people with the best ideas in the agency want to work on your business. It never ceases to amaze me that so many marketers as clients seem to brow beat, use muscle and treat agencies with distain and "command and control" type management styles. This will never bring out the best in people, especially creative people. You need to stroke them, you need to invest time and love in the relationship. Like dating, you will never have a fulfilling relationship with infrequent and fractious dates. That only comes with quality and deep time spent to understand each other. You need to work on the basis that the best people in advertising actually do want to sell product, as it brings in more business and more money for them in the end. Many marketers I have worked with and observed seem to assume agency people do not actually want to sell products to consumers. If the people on your account don't want to sell product in the best way but only do what you want, then they are not the best.
(2) You give your agency an impossibly tight brief with absolutely no room to move. One that is ruthlessly single minded with one clear benefit will give you the best advertising you can imagine. A very tiny and clear brief (preferably so clear and so tight you can write it on the smallest of post-it notes) which seems to box the creatives into a corner will mean the only way out is to create their way out. Give them a vague brief with many different benefits and reason why, they will pick and chose as they want and you will always be unhappy.
(3) You actually take some risks, but always make sure you know what risks you are taking and why. It may be that the copy does not look like everyone else in your category - something that may be the best thing you could ever do. But when taking risks make sure that you never compromise on the ability to stop consumers and ensure they remember who you are and what you are saying. Break that rule and you deserve the total an utter disaster you will get from the millions you spend.
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