Serious question, looking for thoughtful insight.
“We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams.”
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Good question. I have this auto-reply to wacky notes:
“I have examined, weighed and judged you and your behavior and have found you sorely lacking in qualities that are worthy of my respect. I have these qualities at this point in time, but you do not. I humbly recognize my superior moral strength and your weakness, my consistent moral behavior and your inconsistency of immorality. I forgive you your trespasses. We will henceforth have a relationship based on the recognition of my benevolence in the hour of your neediness, my generosity in the face of your guilt. You will find some suitable way to be dutifully grateful from this day forward.”
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I don’t know why I didn’t hear back from them. Must be politics or something.
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Non-native speaker here but, my high school debate teacher taught us about shit kicking e.g.
”I am terribly sorry of my poor English but, I think my worthy opponent didn’t understand me.”
Maybe a variation of that. Or, ”Well, that’s an idea personally I think will not work as there are better options. But you are entitled to see that it doesn’t work, so let’s put in the required hours”
Then you always have the upper hand to say ”Told ya!”
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hmm.. I’m Dutch… I’ll just tell them their feedback makes no sense.. some might think that’s just blunt and disrespectful, we think it’s honest and efficient…
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Or do that fake conciliatory thing:
“I apologize for my error.
I should never have agreed to work with you.”
(Or is it ‘should have never’?)
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I’ve long since given up. I’ll do my best to make something look nice/cool/correct in the first pass, but once the clients give me feedback I will gleefully wreck things at their request.
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I always come back to this from Phil Tippett’s reddit AMA when I get in those moods:
”If your idea of managing artists is just pointing out what’s wrong and making them fix it over and over again, you end up with artists who just stand around asking “OK lady, where do you want this sofa? You want it over there? No? Fine. You want it over there? I don’t give a fuck. I’ll put it wherever you want it.”’
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No. There isn’t. Because you shouldn’t.
There are only 3 good things that can happen when working on a project.
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You can have a great shot.
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You can have a great spot.
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You can build a great relationship with your client.
Unless you don’t need the work, which, is rare these days. #3 is the single most important to build. In other words, what you know and who you are pales in comparison to the power of relationships and trust. We’re not artists. I mean, some of might be. But mostly we are craftspersons, working on someone else’s intellectual property for someone else’s client.
Spending over a year now working internally at an agency, there are a kajillion reasons for everything weird to happen. Agencies are complex ecosystems with hundreds if not thousands or tens of thousands of employees.
So, my advice, is to lean in, understand why, and be the best creative partner you can be to help solve client’s problems. If you can make their lives a little better yours will be too.
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I haven’t had interactive client sessions for years. I am rarely asked to be on zoom meetings. They tend to keep me within arms length and an email gap with most clients, so my answer would be yes, but I am unaware of the details.
I agree, and also with what @andy_dill said. We often get instructions that are vague and ambiguous, so we need to make fast creative decisions that are sometimes accepted or sometimes kicked to the curb, but maybe at least they served the purpose of getting a reaction and possibly a decision from somewhere up the line. Whichever, we roll with the decision and do our best with it. Nothing personal. Falling on swords is . . . well, career suicide. Sometimes the best one can do is put in a bit of extra effort to demonstrate why their idea sucks, but showing a client you’re willing to work with their dumb-ass idea will get you far more mileage than fighting them.
EDIT: Sometimes they’re right.
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