6 weeks later

Earlier in the year, a good friend pointed me in the direction of what is both a very curious and very productive social experiment in branding.

It's called 6 Weeks, and it's a project by a chap called Paul McCrudden.

Paul took it upon himself to measure the amount of time he spent with brands over a 6-week period (on his blog and using Daytum). And then – and this is the best bit – sent each of those businesses an invoice for his time.

,

£531.25 to Transport For London for time spent on the Tube.

£17 to the Royal Mail.

£97.75 to Sainsbury's.

And a host of others, including £25.50 to his local café, the Squat & Gobble. Who actually replied with the gift of a voucher.

As did Cranberry, EAT, Little Chef, Pizza Express and Pret A Manger with a variety of offers – and even actual payments.

Personally, this is my favourite branding idea of the year.

It prods and pokes the relationships that brands build with their consumers. It questions the value of those relationships. And it asks brands to recognise the value of not only their portfolio of products but also their share of consumers.

Paul's also gone to the trouble of publishing this summary below so that you can get the full story.

From Paul's perspective, the opportunity lies with better understanding PR and, in particular, social media. But I actually think there are bigger issues here that are fundamental to the role of branding in the 21st century.

But hey, it was his brilliant idea, not mine, so what do I know? All I need to do is get my invoice in the post.

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.