Big Ideas are Rare. Good Clients Don’t Have to Be.

I’ve often said that all great creative starts with the client.

But it takes more than a well crafted brief to jump start the brainstorming session and inspire greatness. More often than not, it’s simply knowing the client believes in you.

It’s a given that every client wants the best. They want their agency to turn a basic brief into magic, and in turn come up with a concept so on the mark that even the guys in Finance can’t wait to put spend behind it. But I wonder if many of them realize just how important they are in helping to make that happen. Do they know they have the power to spark creativity?

“The creative process can be torturous. Self doubt, a dearth of obvious ideas and the weight of a looming deadline can test the best of us — but when you know your client believes in you, really trusts you, I’ve found that another creative gear kicks in”.

Part of being a professional means you always rise to the occasion and give your very best no matter what the circumstances, but something greater happens when the environment is truly collaborative and the clients support unwavering. From my experience, you dig a lot deeper.

Big Ideas Emerge

Brand history, SWOT analysis, sales force insight, competitive breakdown, the most well written brief in the history of marketing — all integral to coming up with the Big Idea. But what’s often missing from the list is the strength of the relationship between agency and client. It goes well beyond friendship or mutual respect, it’s more like an unspoken pact and a clear realization between both that in order to achieve the very best, each needs to give the other their very best.

Big Ideas are rare and magical things. They have the power to not only launch a brand, inspire a sales force, amaze a target audience and drive the sales curve up, but also shine a light on how magical and rare the relationship between client and agency can be too.