By that point, however, Mr. Bruce (and his brother, Duncan Bruce, who was also at Chiat\Day) had built up a relationship with Mr. Everett that helped give him confidence in their counsel. After a lot of debate, Mr. Everett’s boss approved the campaign, but not without some strong words that gave them a final moment of pause. “He said the following to the agency: We’re gonna let you do this campaign, but if this thing flops, first we’re re-evaluating us in terms of why did we let you do this. And then we’re going to re-evaluate you,’ ” recalls Mr. Everett with a chuckle. “But the fact that we did trust them, we had success with the first campaign.”
Here’s where you might think you’d wandered into the Life section. Because when I called up Shelley Brown to discuss the importance of long-term relationships, I asked how long she’d been with a couple of clients. She couldn’t remember. Then again, she said, she also couldn’t remember exactly how long she’d been married.
“I don’t really think it should be about the date,” she said. “It should be about: Are you working as a team, day-in and day-out?”
Wait, I asked – was she talking about her own marriage, or Zig’s relationships with clients? “I’m speaking about all partnerships,” she replied, “because fundamentally this is about people working together – as partners, collaborators, members of a team. And that kind of relationship has to be sustained on a daily basis, it’s not something you can top up every once in a while and then ignore for a bit and then, ‘Oh, it’s the anniversary, I’d better show up with a great new campaign’ – or flowers, as the case may be. It’s something you have to work at all the time.”
Zig hit a bump last year when Molson, its client since 2004, felt that the positioning for its flagship brand, Canadian, wasn’t working as it should. Its TV commercials depicted a tribe of drinkers who adhered to an unwritten code of Canadian masculinity. Sales were down; Molson brought in a whole new marketing team.
Still, Ms. Brown says, “When a really strong agency-client partnership is in place, and together you come to the conclusion that the strategy needs to change, that has obvious implications for the campaign, and some of the children have to be sacrificed.” Together, the clients and agency hammered out a new positioning – Made From Canada – that brought focus back to the beer itself. New TV spots made their debut shortly before the Olympics.
Like any relationships, agency-client bonds sometimes fray to the point that interventions can be necessary. Shelagh Stoneham is currently vice-president of brand and marketing communications for Rogers, but a few years ago she was on the agency side at BBDO. One day she was assigned to an account that the agency had been informed it was in danger of losing. Omnicom, the parent company, sent in a consultant – a marriage counsellor of sorts – who sat down with members of both the client and agency teams to try to get to the source of the problem, then brought the two sides together to hash out the problems.
“They provided an independent perspective,” Ms. Stoneham said. “As a result, there was an open dialogue on both sides. Within six months, the relationship was outstanding.” And in this story that began with the tale of a divorce, here’s a happy ending: one of the commercials that BBDO produced for its almost ex-client went on to win a Marketing magazine award.
