When I was in high school, back before the Mesolithic period, I worked for a local furniture store. There were two general managers – one for furniture and another for appliances. These guys were famous for engineering free meals from the various sales people and manufacturers’ reps.
Late one summer morning while I was in the warehouse moving boxes the furniture GM called down on the intercom to talk to the appliance GM.
“Are there any sales reps down there in the warehouse?” he asked. The answer was no. “Well,” he mumbled disappointedly, “I guess we’re going to McDonald’s for lunch.”
This memory came to mind because I just finished reading the most recent issue of Advertising Age – the debacle of Wal-Mart and its recently sacked marketing executive Julie Roehm. Stories of a lavish dinner, rides in an English sports car and fraternizing with the agency all came together to spell ouster for the Wal-Mart advertising exec, not even at her desk a year, and adios for an agency – DraftFCB and their $580 million account.
For some clients this might not be a problem, but for Wal-Mart it was. They have a strict code of ethics when it comes to vendors.
The image of an ad agency that wines and dines clients has been around as long as I’ve been in advertising – 15 years. You will find it beyond the realm of advertising -- everywhere ever you find a vendor-client relationship. But it is especially prevalent in the advertising world. It is perpetuated on TV and in movies, and truth be told, it is expected by many clients and accepted as part of doing business by many on both sides of the fence.
Admittedly, there is some credence to the argument by many that it is necessary for agencies to interact with potential clients outside of the formal prospective agency/prospective client relationship. Equally as true, though, is that both sides also use this justification to ease their conscience about those three-martini lunches with the client. (By the way, the three-martini lunch has to be a myth. I can guarantee you that three martinis would put me under the table.)
There is a lot of posturing on both sides, including one of the competing agencies that was an also-ran, Ogilvy & Mather, who held a cook-out in honor of Wal-Mart. Given Wal-Mart’s stringent rules about client gifts, this too was a clear violation.
My advertising career has never included the lavish dinners and other excesses of the Wal-Mart incident. I have had clients ask that, rather than a gift, the agency contribute to a family that the client has adopted for Christmas. I also recall when I was with another agency and a prospective client subtly steered my partner and I into paying for an expensive Japanese lunch – and then never returned our phone calls.
Quite frankly, if a client requires that kind of treatment, Gonzo Marketers is probably not their agency.
But I can tell you what I did learn from the Wal-Mart saga. As an advertising agency, it is a good policy to check potential clients and find out what their policies are concerning agency-client relationships away from the business. If you have done your homework, you will have one or two contacts on the inside that can help you navigate through this kind of mess. After all, there are enough ways to screw up an agency pitch without being perceived as trying to coax the client into a serious ethics violation.
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