The Oldest Profession

In this excellent Advertising Age op-ed by Les Marguiles, he addresses the critical importance of the agency-client relationship, or increasingly, the lack of one.

I can boil my take on the piece by suggesting that those marketers who allow their companies to commoditize service companies' efforts deserve what they get in the shoddy product returned from those desperate firms who won a project based on costs and terms alone - and therefore see no long term opportunity with the client.

Conversely, and importantly, those service providers – agencies, consultants, what have you – who accept that their work can be commoditized and are therefore willing to forego basic standards of quality of service, creative, and responsiveness also deserve what they get from clients who take that unique value for granted.

I remind my small agency colleagues of the following exchange, often attributed to Winston Churchill:

Churchill: Madam, would you sleep with me for five million pounds?
Socialite: My goodness, Mr. Churchill… Well, I suppose… we would have to discuss terms, of course…
Churchill: Would you sleep with me for five pounds?
Socialite: Mr. Churchill, what kind of woman do you think I am?!
Churchill: Madam, we’ve already established that. Now we are just negotiating the price.