We all give terrible feedback. Here's Why
If you are a marketer, most of your day revolves around giving and processing feedback.
A typical loop (perhaps at a traditional consumer company) looks like this:
Falling behind targets -> Commission market research or get feedback from customers on the missing pieces -> Receive and process qualitative and quantitative feedback to build a hypothesis -> If the hypothesis can be resolved by communication or branding or activation exercises -> Send brief to relevant agency -> Receive multiple iterations -> Approve one -> Take that live -> Measure feedback (or interactions)
While the above is campaign-specific, you are constantly:
Giving feedback to servicing (on turn around time, expectations), content (on deliverables), planning (on strategy), media (on optimization).
Receiving feedback from customers (angry tweets and internal escalations), leadership (this actress’ last three films flopped, can we kick her out as brand ambassador), sales (this creative is too indirect), packaging (You have to cut down creative copy by 60% because X regulation needs to go up on the design).
I am not cribbing. I aim to say two things:
Agencies that get snubbed on a third re-work have no idea of the number of ambiguities and pressures that brand teams work with internally. It is so institutionalized that there are a million meme pages on this (the terror in kitty’s eyes below).
Senior leadership at agencies rants about this publicly on LinkedIn but have you ever seen a brand CMO do that - they won’t - because the locus of control that agencies have is only and only around managing feedback.
I saw a marketing manager at a unicorn post about how the entire Tanishq fiasco on love-jihad only affected the brand and the brand manager not the agency, not the media team, no one who comes and cries about being a partner in an agency pitch. Yet, if the film had been praised as ground-breaking, where would the awards have gone?
I am not saying this to diss the agency brethren. I am just saying that as an agency - you have one stakeholder giving you feedback, as a client you have everyone giving you feedback.
Clients who get annoyed at agencies don’t know how toxic work environments can be and how poorly paid most overworked employees are. Creative work by nature is draining and the unstructured environment with a million floating pieces makes it worse. Not to say that clients have fantastic workplaces but most marketers have blips and not constant hammering of pressure.
Yet, clients and agencies dance around realities instead of having transparent conversations (clients don’t want to lose clout, agencies want to pretend all is hunky-dory). Therefore the gap between expectations and reality widens.
The best analogy that I can think of feedback in the agency-client ecosystem today is:
Shortlisting a restaurant (agency) after painstaking effort only to reach there and find out that your exclusive server (servicing manager) is talking to three tables simultaneously. You place your order (brief) to the server verbally, asking to make a portion of pasta, the server goes to the kitchen and comes back and says can you please write that down for me, so you scribble it on a notepad and send it back. Then the server comes back with the Head Chef (Creative Director) and you repeat what you said and already wrote.
Now the Head Chef goes back and starts working.
He comes back with a bottle of olive oil, boiled pasta that was al dente 10 minutes ago, and a jar of sauce, and condiments separately. You get irritated and the Head Chef and the server and a few minions (exhausted copywriters and burnt-out graphic designers who never go back home) explain to you that your brief said you wanted a portion of pasta but not assembled pasta with everything together.
You get pissed and call the manager (some head of client servicing or such) who consoles you, passes a bread basket, and takes the brief once more that you have repeated thrice. This time you get a plate of pasta but 45 minutes late (because the manager wanted to work on it personally with the head chef). You can’t go to another restaurant because you either pre-paid (via a retainer) or don’t have the time anymore or you are just too exhausted. You gulp down a plate of pasta. It’s Penne Alfredo and not the Fettucine you had ordered in pesto.
If it tasted horrible, you dealt with it and went through another cycle at the same restaurant or somewhere else.
If it tasted great, the same dish became a signature special that the restaurant won PR awards for.
So if you are in marketing (on the agency side), I implore you:
Ask insanely detailed questions when you are being briefed. The quality of your life depends on you being able to draw out what is in the brand owner’s head. Many agencies are great at asking for data, internally sharable reports, brand assets but can almost never strategically draw out the brand manager’s psyche. We only know what we tell you NOT how much you understand. Summarize your understanding and run it past us!
You will succeed when the brand team succeeds - and you cannot make that happen by:
Being strategically off (You have to know the industry and product - too many insights that agencies give is based on hearsay from a cohort of consumers).
Being off on execution (Screwing up timelines and reporting, even for that assh*#e client who sends feedback on a Friday evening for something they want on Monday is a no-no).
Being personally off (in terms of attitude and level of skill-set, you are the one who has chosen to provide a service!)
We know agencies are barely surviving and everyone’s over-worked, under-staffed but a service is a service at the end of the day.
If I continue this analogy on the client-side. Imagine while you are in the restaurant, you are also being told that the pasta you ordered was the expectation from you last year and now everyone on the table wants phad thai instead.
All your efforts are f*%ked.
While this was happening, five people who were at the nearby table loudly spoke of how they could have ordered better and if the size of the basil could have been larger.
So if you are in marketing (on the client-side), I implore you:
Be good. Remember that providing great feedback is a super-skill that they don’t teach you in a management degree where people management is focused on internal organization behavior. It is something you learn so track how you give feedback (especially in writing).
Be bad. It’s ok to be thought of as a horrible person if it serves your purpose of getting the Phad Thai miraculously or the correct pasta through. At the end of the day, you are doing your job. Just like the restaurant is by serving a second-rate option the first time because they know you will want to push the envelope. So it’s never personal. This is something old-timers know yet makes younger people constantly feel burdened in the early stage.
Never be ugly. Out of all your stakeholders, it is the voice of your customer that matters. Tie your purpose to your feedback. Eg: Increase logo’s size is bad feedback. Increase logo’s size because our brand recall study shows that customers don’t register the logo when inundated with creatives on social media is good feedback.
To conclude, if you are on the client-side or the agency side - refutation and counterarguments are probably your best bet due to the subjective nature of creativity.
Here are a few book recommendations for this: