Agencies must give recommendations, not ideas, says Weber Shandwick’s global CCO
The Stockholm-based global chief creative officer at Weber Shandwick, Tom Beckman, says the creative industry has lost the distinction between ideas and recommendations.
“I don’t care much for ideas”, he told Mumbrella while in Sydney for Mumbrella’s Audioland last month.
Beckman speaking at Audioland in May
He joined the audio conference as an international keynote, sharing the strategy behind his agency’s audio-led campaign for Visit Sweden.
“If I want ideas, I go to my kids. I would never pay for that. But, for some reason we think that the product [agencies are offering] is ideas, and we go to clients with a buffet of ideas, like, we can do this, or we can do that.”
“Ideas are cheap,” he continued. “Recommendations, on the other hand, are when you walk in with the one or two things that are your recommendation based on your experience, your knowledge, and your know-how of the industry.”
Beckman said that the value of providing recommendations had already been acknowledged by consultants, who are “getting paid much more” for walking into a meeting with a recommendation, while agencies act like “order takers”.
“Especially in the UK and the US, anything that the client will say, the agency will be like: yes ma’am, let’s do that.”
Beckman urged agency talent to “put that brave foot forward” and provide recommendations that have been developed through valuable expertise and research.
“There’s a lot of money at stake and potentially a lot of gravitas and a lot of reputation at stake,” he said, offering the caveat that it’s easy to “fly in and say all of these fancy things and fly back to safe Sweden where it’s illegal to fire people” and he’ll be safe.
Core to the delivery of recommendations, he warned, is a solid relationship with the client, and importantly, their trust.
“Usually the first lesson you learn in consulting is that you get an assignment, you do your homework, you go back to the client, you tell the truth and you get fired,” he said. “You have to earn the right to tell the truth. You have to earn the trust. And it is a trust game that we’re playing.”
Catch the full conversation with Weber Shandwick’s Tom Beckman on this week’s Mumbrellacast from the 15:21 mark.
Is that an idea or a recommendation?
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