Ads that do no more than pay the Bill

It's been a little while since my last post, but I have renowned chef and restauranteur Bill Granger to thank for giving me just the jab in the kidneys that I needed to get back me into the blog seat.

On this particular occasion, Bill was not plugging his latest book but rather his love for Poliform kitchens – and I'm not surprised given that Bill's one of the few people that could probably afford one. But what grated about the ad that I saw (one of a series of ads including the one shown above) was the complete lack of imagination when it came to the copy.

My Poliform kitchen combines the best ingredients – elegance, functionality and quality and it's not as expensive as you think.

I'm all too well aware that clients often set incredibly tight deadlines, but surely the agency in this case had the time or creativity to do more than simply copy–and–paste the brief into the ad? But then if you don't know what you're doing, even the best ingredients can leave a bad taste.

On the record

I was rummaging through my record collection at the weekend, and it inevitably got me thinking about album artwork.

For me, part of the romance of records is simply a question of size – 12 square inches have always trumped the compactness of the compact disc. And from Factory Records and the work of Peter Saville to the team at Stylorouge at the height of Britpop, I've forever been fascinated with this pivotal point at which music meets design.

In the 60s, Warhol led the way with his multimedia aesthetic and the help of the band he was managing at the time, The Velvet Underground. And by the time 1969 rolled around, it made perfect sense to Mick Jagger of The Rolling Stones to ask Warhol to design their next album sleeve.

And so he did. In fact, here's the letter he wrote Warhol to brief him on the project.

Do whatever you want.

Please write back saying how much money you would like.

Take little notice of the nervous requests to "Hurry up".

Not exactly your typical brief, but then Jagger wasn't looking for your typical response.

And here's the result, complete with working zipper for that added touch of sexual tension (not that you can quite tell from the visual, sorry).

If it's true that you do your best work for your best clients (have a read of this post for more on that matter), then I'd certainly say everyone could do with a Jagger or two at some point in their career.

Heads or tails?

Managing relationships is always an important factor when it comes to doing great work – and I've always found that I've done my best work for my best clients. However, whether or not you have a great relationship with your clients can often seem like a lottery. As with most things in life, there's two sides to every story, but there are things that you can do to ensure success does not come down to the flip of a coin.

So it pains me to write that I managed to find myself at the whim of fickle fortune only this week. Developing creative work without a clear brief for a company where the key decision maker felt unable to explain exactly what was expected – I think the notion of "something abstract" was as far as we got. Juniors were sent to review progress on the decision maker's behalf, each of whom had only a limited handle on their manager's expectations. And, of course, we had barely enough time to crack the idea.

To make matters worse, we weren't actually the first team to get this non-existent brief. We were the fourth. But no one had thought to consider whether the way in which the relationship was being handled was the real issue, not the quality or character of the creative work.

Unsurprisingly, it seems we didn't crack the idea. Although, I think it would be more accurate to say that we didn't crack the relationship.

To use a sporting analogy, developing any solution for a client is always a combination of playing both the man and the ball. The world's finest sportsmen are not only incredibly skillful but they are also well versed in the nuances of their opposite numbers. And they will not only play to their own strengths but also to their opponents' weaknesses.

It's slightly different in our arena in so far as we need to play to our strengths and then also to the strengths of our clients, ideally with a cumulative effect rather than one where they cancel each other out.

All of which points to the simple fact that you need to understand your client in as much detail as you understand their brief.