• by Jan Zlotnick , December 9, 2008

Want to know how to succeed in a sucky economy? Listen up. No, really. I thought I was a damn good listener. At least at work. But I was wrong, and my ad agency just got an earful for it. We learned a life lesson for this pre-New-New-Deal (aka No-Deal) economy.

Here's the great big secret: Listen to your client.

That's it? That's the Next Big Thing from the mountaintop of Gladwellian gurus in Tibet or TriBeCa.

And when I say, "Listen," I mean really really listen as in the mantra: RRL: rrrr...rrrr...lllll. Believe me, I've just been there. I pretended to listen, but really just waiting to talk, to leap into action, to sell. And why not? You and I were born ready, right? Ready to shift into pitch gear, into got a great idea gear. That's what we do.

And the longer we spend "listening" to our client's problem, the longer, like an ice age, we wait:
1. To present the ideas we already have in our award-winning heads.
2. To make and place the ads.
3. To bill the client.
4. To get paid.
5. To cash our checks to pay our bills.
6. To spend a couple hundred bucks again on a Saturday night. OK! We'll share an appetizer and entree (but not drinks) and skip dessert for a hundred, with tip.

So don't tell me about listening. You and me, we listen just fine! Right? Hmmm. Not fine. Not now.

With apologies and a grateful nod to "Purple Cow" author Seth Godin, what clients want right now from agencies is a big swollen Purple Ear. Yeah, let that blood flow to the goofier part of the anatomy that sticks out like satellite dishes from both sides of your dome. We need to be Purple Ear Zen Masters! (Heck, you may even start RRL'ng to things at home. "What a Dad! What a Guy!")

The good news is your customers are listening better in this economy. Just look at their bloody ears. Raging purple. Straining, yearning, lusting for a stroke of your listening genius. It's like they took the erectile ear-dysfunction equivalent of Viagra. And you didn't. Poor them. Imagine their shriveling disappointment when you launch prematurely into your Big Idea. Auris interruptus? That's what happened to us. Like a drunk looking for a drop from any available open bottle, there we were, wide-eyed, idea-salivating, hot-media-flashing to our client, a small and very smart, well-run bank in Greenville, South Carolina. (So smart, it long ago decided against exposing customers' money to Fannie or Freddie or sub-prime mortgages.)

"Hey, are you really listening?"

The marketing director asked as we started spewing ideas we were eager to implement. It was a loud wake-up call. We put on Purple Ears and started RRL'ng. The client's story went like this: Countybank wanted to tell their customers about a new business-banking product, The BizKit. They said their world was part of--but not responsible for--Wall Street's financial quicksand, which was sucking up everyone associated with all things banking. In turn, our client listened to us with Purple Ears about trying not to get sucked under by such bank-marketing speak as "the fundamentals are sound" and "your money is safe and secure with us."

Resolution

Do something nobody else in the category was doing. We offered customers not more banking bullshit but biscuits! A simple "Hey, how's it goin'?" in a Southern locale where breaking biscuits over coffee is a message of trust and security. We solved the problem. And the media came as its own reward for RRL. Local billboards, online and print, direct mail, radio and TV directed users to a microsite that took orders for hot, fresh Countybank-delivered biscuits and coffee. Biscuits that brought a smile and a welcome lightness to a neighborly conversation that happily distracted, from the day's headlines--if only for a moment. In that conversation, the pull (not the push) of an introduction to Countybank's BizKit services. And we did this fast and with a newfound respect for the bank's and the market's intolerance for the usual agency fees and production and media costs.

Agency Life Lesson

Whatever the economy, whatever the curve ball, do your job:  Solve your client's problem. Don't solve your own problem by spending their money. And don't create a message that will just add more muck to the suck of a quicksand economy. Go pop your ViagEar and get a hear-on for what's really being said--through Purple Ears.