{"id":1616,"date":"2022-08-18T11:51:49","date_gmt":"2022-08-18T10:51:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/?p=1616"},"modified":"2022-08-18T11:51:49","modified_gmt":"2022-08-18T10:51:49","slug":"lessons-from-a-career-part-three","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/lessons-from-a-career-part-three\/","title":{"rendered":"Lessons from a Career &#8211; Part Three"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>At the beginning of this year, I said I would use the Cog Blog platform to publish some lessons learned over the course of my career. My plan was to do four posts over the year, one a quarter, to try to stick to one key lesson per post, and to use examples. I have been at this a long time (over 50 years) and would have to be a complete fool not to have picked up a few tips along the way.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p>March\u2019s Part One (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/lessons-from-a-career-part-one\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">here<\/a>) was about respect for others\u2019 expertise, and recognising that no-one, not even you, can be expert in everything.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>June\u2019s Part Two (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/lessons-from-a-career-part-two\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">here<\/a>) was about curiosity.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This time the theme is collaboration, and the benefits of working together.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I spent a large chunk of my career at Leo Burnett. At the time Burnett was an independent company, owned by its employees. This was of course way before Publicis bought the agency.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There existed a strong culture which incidentally continues to this day amongst Burnett alumni. Leo himself fostered this \u2013 when I joined, I remember being shown a speech he made called: \u2018When to take my name off the door\u2019, which was all about respecting each other and the work we all did.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Burnett (the man) was a great one for aphorisms. One that stuck with me was: \u2018No one of us is better than all of us.\u2019&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As the ad business started to fragment into different specialisms, leading eventually to the emergence of the media agency sector, so collaboration became less a \u2018nice to have\u2019 and more a necessity.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Leo Burnett (the agency) was one amongst many to realise that as the marketing budget was larger than the ad budget, expanding the&nbsp;service offering into areas like packaging and in-store was a promising idea. This was called ICS, Integrated Communication Services (I probably got that wrong \u2013 someone will correct me).&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I was&nbsp;part of the team that presented ICS&nbsp;to Cathay Pacific, a client known to be both loyal and innovative. We used seatback&nbsp;anti-macassars as one example of an owned medium that would benefit from inclusion in our integrated plan.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>We were asked for our experience delivering designs on anti-macassars. Had we ever worked with suppliers of these things before? We hadn\u2019t. We tended towards the arrogant in such matters of detail.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I see&nbsp;the anti-macassar story as being&nbsp;less about an opportunity and more about a land-grab. Let\u2019s say Burnett had been awarded the anti-macassar brief and we had messed up (quite possible given our distinct lack of specialist knowledge), then the client\u2019s trust in the agency would have been eroded.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Trust is an invaluable commodity, why would you risk it by taking on something about which you clearly know little?&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Why spoil the ship for a ha\u2019porth of tar?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>If on the other hand, we had contacted Cathay\u2019s anti-macassar supplier and found a way of working with them to incorporate our big advertising idea into their product then not only would the client have benefited but the agency\u2019s status as a trusted and collaborative partner would have been enhanced.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The best ideas can come from anywhere, including media vendors. I sometimes invited&nbsp;creative teams to present certain campaigns to key vendors. There are rules to doing this.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Pick the client and be sure that you can deliver. We had a wonderful client in Perrier who were always up for innovative ways of using media channels. There is nothing worse than talking big to a vendor, then expecting them to&nbsp;spend time on an idea that never had any chance of going anywhere.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Trying and failing is fine; talking your influence up and then never taking the idea forward is insulting.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At the end of the day no-one knows more about a media vehicle than those selling it; use their expertise and share the credit.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Even today too many buyers seek confrontation and&nbsp;delight in displays of one-upmanship.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The best know that \u2018no one of us is as good as all of us\u2019 and live by that mantra.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The best clients know this too and encourage a sharing culture amongst their agencies. The worst foster a culture of anxiety fuelled by threats of reviews.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Being less confrontational and more collaborative is good for business. Everyone\u2019s business.&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At the beginning of this year, I said I would use the Cog Blog platform to publish some lessons learned over the course of my career. My plan was to do four posts over the year, one a quarter, to try to stick to one key lesson per post, and to use examples. I have [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1616"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1616"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1616\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1617,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1616\/revisions\/1617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}