Bad Reputation
One of my very first bosses gave me a very good bit of advice. There are only 50 or so people in any given industry, she said, so make it a point not to piss too many of them off. Todd Defren of SHIFT Communications (see, I know it’s all caps!) has a tale of a unnamed Boston area PR firm asked by a client to hand over its work products to the new agency - SHIFT. At a hand-off meeting, a VP of the incumbent agency decided to act like an asshat.
No big surprise, I’ve worked in agencies and have known plenty of asshats. But Todd makes a great point about the consequences of acting like an asshat.
Consider how badly this one dumb move could hurt their business.
- The client will never again consider calling that agency.
- The client contacts present during the hand-off meeting won’t ever call them into an agency review, when they invariably move on to their next gigs.
- I will never recommend this agency in instances where we might have a newbiz conflict.
It gets worse. We talked about their poor attitude in an HQ staff meeting:
- 50-odd PR people in the Boston market now consider this agency to have a “black mark” against it.
- They won’t ever interview there as prospective employees.
- They won’t ever think to invite that firm to compete for their business, if they ever take an in-house marketing post.
All because some agency VP got pissy about turning over a few memos and databases.
Pissy, arrongent behavior is a given in most PR firms. It’s nice to see it’s not treated as a given all of the time.
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Comments
Asshat — never heard that.
I tend to go with “assbag” which I suspect has a similar meaning.
The point is well taken though - if you lose business don’t act like a putz. When I’ve had clients leave I always wish them the best, invite them to contact me any time and offer to help them in any way possible. It’s gotta leave a better taste in their mouth and who knows when the paths might cross again…
Wish that loyalties and memories ran that deep, but let’s face it. If Asshat’s company develops the next “Subserviant chicken” campaign and lines the office shelves with Big Apples and Silver Anvils, those clients will knock on the door again. In this consumer driven economy, the consumerism doesn’t limit itself to toilet tissue and mobile phones, that attitude applies to all service industries. No matter how smart we’ve become, how well we play in the sandboc, how passionately we learn our clients’ businesses - at the end of the day, we’re still only as good as our last hit.
The Cluetrain hasn’t hit all the stops yet. And might not *ever* hit every station. It’s up to us, when we ride the train, to choose whether we HAVE to go to Grand Central and deal with that chaos, or if we can get to where we need to go from a smaller hub.
“Asshat” - damn, wish I’d thought of that one! I was leaning towards “shitbird” but it felt a little too coarse.
p.s. - thanks for the all-CAPS.