What are the challenges in selling creativity to clients?
How challenging is it to sell creativity to clients? Are they open to ground-breaking work, or do they prefer to go by the tried and tested? India’s advertising honchos respond.
Rahul Sengupta, NCD, TBWA/India:
When there is some kind of ground-breaking work… there are times that there are no industry examples that such work would be ever done… So there is a task or challenge that to convince the client to sell such works relating to creativity.
Satbir Singh, CCO, Euro RSCG:
There are so many campaigns that are running and I would say that there are exceptional works and works that are below average. So, if asking that if it’s a challenge to sell creative ideas to the client, my answer is yes or no. There are many examples of commercials that are on air, which in my mind, should not have been approved by the clients. And on the other side there are great ideas, which are approved by the client.
KV Sridhar, NCD, Leo Burnett:
I don’t believe that clients do not buy great creative ideas. Most of them do approve good ideas, provided we solve their problems. On the other hand, I feel that the agencies aren’t really producing ideas that are high on creativity.
KS Chakravarthy, DraftFCB+Ulka:
Agencies often end up on the winning side by convincing the clients about the ideas they come up with. Advertisers understand creativity, and at times, if they feel that a mass idea is not convincing enough, we ask them to go take them home. All in all, it’s not a challenge to sell ideas to clients. Also, it depends on the relationship you share with them.
Madan Mohan, EVP – Publicis India:
I think clients are very open to creativity, but many a times the benchmarks of creativity are different, hence it does become a challenge. One way is to make them recognise the merit of the idea and the benefit that they would reap.
Arijit Ray, EVP & Head Mumbai, Mudra:
There are clients who believe in creative communication solutions. Sometimes it happens that some clients equate each communication with a host of communications available to just one solution. So, for agencies it then becomes a challenge for giving the client the whole package of a 360-degree approach.
Rahul Jauhari, National Head of Creative, Pickle Advertising:
There have been inventions around new media avenues in today’s age. However, the clients are just focusing on more of traditional media and thus convincing the client to utilise and create communication towards new mediums is a task. It’s a challenge thus to convince the client to create communication towards the ever changing media avenues.
