Assistant Brand Manager on the Cap’n Crunch brand, Jason Dolenga, riffing on Seth Godin’s post, “How to live happily with a great designer”:
Too often, freshly minted MBAs (me included) come to a new marketing role thinking that the way they are going to make their mark is by questioning every little point, color selection, and design decision made by agency creatives. Unfortunately, things all go terribly wrong (for the person nit-picking) when a junior marketer starts picking work apart in meetings. I learned quickly that this was not the way to go, and learning to trust the creatives literally changed my relationships and credibility with our agency partners overnight.
The lesson here is that if you want great creative, trust the creatives to bring it. If you are frustrated with not being able to copywrite every line of that ad for your brand, or you want to change the color just because red is your favorite, quit your job and go become a copywriter or an art director.
In other words, show some respect and you will get what you need.
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this should be required reading for every client and more importantly, every account executive. it’s a simple thought really. you hire a professional to do a job and then you actually let them do their job. unfortunatley, there is so much self-loathing in the ad business, that no one is willing to stand up to difficult clients and actually say this.
I like Mr. Dolenga’s attitude — and, more importanly, I like his cereal. Cap’n Crunch rocks.
And yet. . . what kind of world do we live in where somebody actually holds the title of Assistant Brand Manager for Cap’n Crunch? No disrespect to Mr. Dolenga, but it sounds like something out of Terry Southern.
hey, even cap’n crunch has a staff of minions with various titles on his ship.
hey, even cap’n crunch has a staff of minions with various titles on his ship.
This is the first blog post I’ve ever printed out. This is going in my binder. Filed under “Client training”. Thank you.
Oh, and HighJive, this isn’t the first time I’ve seen you double post. 🙂
Thank you so much for the link. Good to know that people are listening.
Todd, your “Hallway Test” piece is already in my client-ed folder.