Okay, let me set the scene here. You are weeks into your creative project and its progressively getting more frustrating. That's because you are working with a client who's hell bent on their own agenda, (bad) ideas or personal tastes. And worse still, they don't seem to be taking on-board your expert advice, leaving you feeling a little bruised and your confidence evaporating. Should you simply 'give in' or is it possible take the lead back and re-establish your team as the expert guide?
The problem is, if you decide to fold your cards and give the client exactly what they want (even if that means a bad project outcome) it's likely you'll eventually lose that client anyway. That's because when you lose the position of being the expert practitioner they hired, it erodes your client's trust and respect in you and the team you rep. When that happens, don't be surprised when the break up letter arrives in your inbox; even when you've done exactly what they want.
Taking back the lead in the project is not an easy task, but it is an essential one.
If you can work your way back into a position of expertise, not only will you regain the trust and props from your client, you'll likely keep that customer for a lot longer, providing recurring revenue for the agency over the long haul. In fact, research suggests research suggests that the average agency relationship is 3.2 years, but the top 40 agency relationships have lasted over 20 years. I'd argue in the small or medium agency, a decent % of relationships last 12 or fewer months and leading your process is even more critically tied to maintain client relationships.
There's a long list of things that can derail a creative process but what's more important is the steps you can take to get things back on track. The quicker you can master the art of leading a project back to health, the better your agency will do (and the faster you'll rise in your career).
Catch the fall
The very first thing you need to do as account or project manager is to recognise when your project is starting to sway off course. In creative projects, some of these signs could be:
You've presented multiple rounds of a strategy / design / messaging etc (pick any) and the client keeps returning back with vague or unhelpful feedback, leaving the project going around in circles
The person you are dealing with client side is very focussed on what they like personally and not what will resonate with the core audience
The client is deviating from the strategy, even though they agreed to it earlier in the project, causing everyone to feel confused and a little bit lost
Communication is becoming more strained, emails are becoming more blunt and to the point
The client is giving very direct, 'do it this way' instructions on how they want a piece of creative to look
It's actually pretty easy to get sucked into the vortex of bad client behaviours
AM's & PM's are helpful people by nature. We want to please and deliver epic results for the client, BUT it's very important to stay vigilant in any creative process, looking for signs that the client is trying to wrestle control. The quicker you can identify or detect the client trying to lead the process:
The easier it will be to turn the relationship back around in your favor
The less budget you will burn
The project won't be so dire that it cannot be resuscitated
The easier future projects will be - you set a precedent
Take a breather and assess the situation
If you've been on the ball enough to work out the project is not going to plan, it's time to buy some time and work out what's causing the issues. Don't try to solve the immediate crisis with delivering more work to bandaid the issues (it's tempting, believe me we've tried throwing hot fixes plenty of times). Let's be calm and cool handed;
Do your own assessment of what you think is going down
Ask your team to provide their insights (dev's, designers, copywriters, agency principal)
Define the issues, then narrow the list to major sticking points
Once you've done this exercise, bring the team together and talk about how you can move the project along, how you can get the client to adopt your idea or creative and how you might nip bad client behavior in the bud.
If your project is on a tight time scale it's more difficult to pump the brakes and might take a bit of courage, but ultimately it's worth it because you care more about the end result, not the arbitrary deadline.
Importantly, pull the strategy back out and make sure you've delivered in accordance to these standards. If you are good and you are in the clear, it's time to book a call (yes a call, not an email) and start the recovery process, starting with educating the client.
Educate to move things forward
Over the last decade, we've been involved in tonnes of projects at ply.studio and the biggest contributing cause to a process going AWOL is the client coming in hot to a project with not a lot of understanding about how we do things and why we do them that way.
You've been honing your craft for years and have deep expertise (which is why the client hired you in the first instance). This can sometimes mean that the knowledge you take for granted might be completely foreign to the client (this might be their first rodeo). With some simple eduction, you may be able to break through to them and have them accept the creative direction they were just rejecting a moment ago.
We don't need to educate our customers to know what we know, but we do need them to understand some fundamentals.
Let me give you an example;
We recently did a web project and about a week into the process, the client asked if we could skip the wire-framing step and go right into design. The reason is they were trying to save budget and use it towards something else. It's tempting to say yes to keep them happy but if I'd agreed to this request, I would have committed the first cardinal sin of project management;
Thou shall not deviate from the creative process that one knows works
The second reason I declined this request was because a power shift would have started to occur. By undercutting our process, what am I saying the client? I'm saying by default that we don't believe strongly in our process. And if I make this concession now, I'll probably make other concessions down the track.
Instead, I spent time on the phone understanding why the client wanted to skip the wire frame step and what it really came down to was that they had very little idea what a wireframe was and how valuable it was to our process to deliver the result they wanted. I showed them examples of other wires we had completed, talked through the process and explained the theory and benefits. The client had an 'aha' moment, where the knowledge transferred and they 'got it'.
By educating the client, not only can you get them back on board with your creative or direction but you'll also gain respect for your knowledge and it's likely that the client will feel very positive about how helpful you've been.
Have a polite disagreement. Really.
It may seem counterintuitive to maintaining great relationships but having a little tiff early on in a relationship is actually pretty healthy. If the client is trying to take control of a project, it's the ideal time to lay the cards on the table. The quicker you can get to a place of transparency, the better. And by transparency, I mean not just the client being able to speak freely. I mean your agency team also voicing the truth without fear of reprimand (and BTW, these are the types of clients you should aspire to).
When your project has hit a pothole client-side and you 100% back your idea or concepts (because they anchored in strategy and have been well research & executed) then you really need to go into bat for your team's work. That may also include saying you do not agree with the client feedback or proposed direction.
