February 2012 - Otis Regrets... or not

The ultimate great client… my dad

My dad died a few days ago, peacefully, at the age of 96. As we prepared for the memorial service, I talked to a number of people who had worked with him over the years in his capacities as director and editor of the Southern Methodist University Press, publisher of the Southwest Review, and book editor of the Dallas Morning News.

I knew about his own personal trial during the McCarthy era: an SMU prof had published an anti-Communist screed with tones of anti-Semitism, my father responded with a critique in one of his publications, and the professor tried to get him fired and succeeded in getting him and colleague Margaret Hartley up before an tribunal by University officials on charges of disloyalty. They were cleared.

But I was reminded of countless other incidences of editorial backbone as when a Methodist bishop complained about the galley proof of a short story containing a good amount of street language. “Bishop,” my father responded, “you don’t talk that way and I don’t talk that way, but the character in this story talks this way so I’m going to publish it.” And he did. He never brought these incidents home and in most cases he never even mentioned them.

He was my own editor a few times for high school papers, critiquing punctuation or grammatical decisions which I felt to be negotiable. I never remember him actually suggesting I change the meaning of any passage but I know he did—so subtly that I did not realize he was doing it or so persuasively that I thought the change was my idea. In that sense he was the ultimate great client: standing up for the integrity of the editorial matter because his responsibility was to make it as good as it could be while retaining the author’s voice.

Thank you Daddy. Rest in peace, Allen Maxwell.

Happy birthday to my Prius battery

Marketing readers of this blog are probably unaware that there is a very active ongoing discussion, in the form of comments on several posts and reposting on car enthusiast blogs, about how long batteries should last in hybrid cars and what the manufacturer should do if they die prematurely.

Two years ago last month, the battery in my 2001 Prius quit, 8 months out of warranty but with just 70,000 miles on the car. I paid $3700 to replace it and lobbied Toyota Corporate to refund it without success. Two years ago this month, the good people at San Francisco Toyota informed me that they had gotten authorization through their retail dealer rep to refund the replacement cost in full.

I hope the two research physicians who purchased my Prius soon after that are enjoying their car; I expect it has many more years on its new battery. I hope that Toyota has gotten enough positive consideration to repay their investment in my vehicle; I expect that they have. And I hope that Doug Donnellan, who was then the manager of SF Toyota, has gotten further promotions; he is the kind of proactive, go-out-on-a-limb executive every company needs in these times, or any times.

If you want to know more about my Prius battery, the comments at the bottom of this post are a good place to start.

It’s halftime in America

I just about wet myself the other night watching the spot during the Super Bowl. Very gutsy that Chrysler would spend God knows how much to run a 2 minute spot that could only run … during halftime in a single football game. After watching I had tears in my eyes and was about to run out and buy a Chrysler 300.

But reviewing it today a couple of nits. Clint Eastwood does not have the Detroit cred of Eminem, even though “I’ve seen a lot of tough eras, a lot of downturns in my life.” (I wondered if he actually was born in the Motor City and looked it up. No: San Francisco, CA.) And honestly as the spot began I was thinking it was a Clint Eastwood voice imitator (he was there but in shadows) and by the time he showed up I was almost irritated that it really was Clint. And of course the parallel to the Hal Riney “It’s morning in America” Reagan ad was a distraction for anyone who remembered.

The observation that “the fog of division, discord, and blame made it hard to see what lies ahead” was also a calculated risk on timing which I think misfired. Carl Rove says that’s a political attack which is for sure protesting too much. The producers were simply going for a chord of empathy, assuming we would be in the midst of hard times when they made the spot but the economy seems to be looking up so it doesn’t ring true for at least one viewer.

So, I still prefer Eminem’s spot last year. But I still think I will buy a Chrysler in the form of that little Fiat that morphs into a giant woman dressed in red and black in another Super Bowl spot.

How to be a great client

I recently started working with a great new client. The relationship is so enjoyable and productive, I wonder why all client/creative relationships can’t be this way. If you are a client, here are a few things you can do to make this happen.

1. Care about your job. If you treat your advertising as just another mechanical process that you get paid for, it’s hard for your copywriters to get enthusiastic. The truth is that what you are doing for your company is terribly important because, like Roy Chitwood says, nothing happens until somebody sells something and your efforts are what make the sales begin. Believe in what you are doing and it will show and I will work harder for you.

2. Get your shit together. Nothing is more disheartening to me than to have a bunch of stuff dumped on me that my client hasn’t read and isn’t familiar with when I ask questions. If it’s not important enough for you to review and organize the source material, why should it be important to me? That overused word “curate” is relevant here. Like a museum director, you should curate the research documents so I can discover each one in proper context. And, needless to say, you should include a creative brief.

3. Set realistic schedules. Given enough money, yes I can meet that tomorrow morning deadline. But there’s a hidden price for that. I need time to explore options and if you always begin with an impossibly short deadline (doesn’t matter whether it is your own disorganization or client pushback, the net effect is the same) you will lose valuable creative development time while paradoxically paying more. It’s also much less satisfying for the copywriter or art director because they know the finished product might have been better if they had more time.

4. Provide constructive feedback. Don’t say you don’t like it. Don’t unilaterally rewrite it. Instead, tell me in as much detail as you can what you think of my copy and why. This particular great client couldn’t decide which of my headline approaches (long vs short) worked best so they put them in layout so we could both look at them together. Now I am falling all over myself trying to do the best possible revision.

5. Defend the work. Don’t come back and tell me we have to water down a marketing statement or replace strong copy with jargon because “sales won’t accept that” or “this may be too edgy for our reader”. You clearly outlined the project and any sacred cows in the creative brief (you did write that, yes?) and if the end product follows that direction your responsibility is to sell it internally. It is my personal hunch that push-back from sales is a sign of fear: they aren’t confident in their ability to do their job so every effort to support them is looked at with suspicion. Don’t get sucked into this zero sum game. Confidently defend your marketing decisions because you believe in them. (See #1 above.)

6. Say thank you. If you follow the above steps you will get a pretty amazing creative result so don’t forget to say you are grateful. And don’t be surprised if your creatives are just as grateful and continue to do their best work on your behalf.

7. Pay on time.