When Josh Lane, co-founder and chief operating officer at the full-service independent agency FerebeeLane got an MBA in entrepreneurship, one of his venture capital professors told him, “You’ve got to realize that all money is not created equal. Even though they both may be $100 bills, the strings attached to them (or the people attached to them) make them very unequal.”
The business wisdom still resonates with Lane. Having worked in the ad business for nearly 30 years and in 2003 founded his eponymous agency, Lane’s been exposed to his fair share of client vitriol.
“You do realize we own you,” Lane recalled a client once said.
Now, that moment fuels his policy that similar verbal harassment isn’t tolerated at FerebeeLane. Still describing resignation as a “last resort,” Lane and other agency leaders carefully laid out three questions agencies should ask when deciding whether its time to fire a client.
Profitability, culture and quality of work
Agencies must consider to what extent the partnership is profitable, Lane said. It’s not about account size, but careful scrutiny of whether the client honors the payment terms it agreed to upfront. In other words, is the client a trustworthy guarantor? Also important is accepting that RFP processes alone can’t be comprehensive, so sometimes partnerships that seemed promising can go awry. “You can only know so much,” Lane said. “You don’t actually know the truth of the situation until you start working together.” Agencies should be wary of clients suddenly flip-flopping on payment terms after a project kicks off.
Considering whether a single client is impacting an agency’s internal culture and straining its employees is another crucial step, according to Lane. “One of the biggest things you can do is you can put your money where your mouth is and say that’s a bad relationship for these people, and so we need to resign,” he said.
Steve Miller, svp, creative director and partner at the Toronto-based creative agency, Fuse Create, said it comes down to ‘fit.’
“That’s kind of a nice word meaning they were assholes,” Miller said. “And we don’t want to work with assholes.”
One of Miller’s former clients scheduled meetings at the end of their workday, knowing their agency team based in another timezone would have to dial in after hours every time. Not long after that, its team heard a new voice on the line while presenting slides to the client.
“We hear this voice you’ve never heard before,” Miller remembered. “The voice says, ‘Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop.’ And we were like, ‘Okay, what’s what’s the matter?’ And they said, ‘I give this presentation a three out of 10.’” It turned out to be the marketing vice president, a crucial brand side decision-maker the agency team hadn’t even been introduced to.
An education in process
Lane sees his agency as a growth-stage up-and-comer that’s becoming more selective of applicants and it seeks bigger creative jobs. Knowing that creative talent will enjoy working on successful projects, Lane would consider severing ties with a client that shifts its targets so frequently that the account’s creative quality and team morale tank in tandem with one another.
