Friday, May 8, 2009

Self-respect and advertising?

If you've been in the advertising business for a while, you'll know 'self-respect' and 'advertising' make for strange bedfellows. There have been instances when clients squeeze the living daylights out of you, get what they want and scoot without paying the dues. And what does the agency do? Just pester them for the monies, at best. Nothing more. (No stinker people, we're in advertising and they are clients for godsake.)

Now, if you thought that's sad, here's more. When the same client re-surfaces back and calls for a pitch, other agencies still run for the business (knowing fully well that they haven't paid the previous guys). So much for self-respect in advertising.

But I guess the scene is a bit different in the US. When the Belgian brewing giant InBev decided to abuse the client-agency relationship, it's been reported widely. And there's also been a public outcry at the way they run their business. Read this article to know more. I'm sure we can learn a thing or two from them.

Posted by Murali.

1 comment:

anantha said...

totally agree. we are an industry without balls. we've been sodomised so many times by so many clients and yet we don't learn. like the black book, we must introduce the black list and publicly name notorious clients who don't pay up. may be the way to do it is to a fake ipl player kinda blog. cryptically and anonymously.