Survey: Selling Creative Work Virtually Is A Significant Challenge For Ad Agencies
We all know by now that the advertising industry has responded incredibly well to virtual, remote work. The day-to-day with clients is getting done, work is getting produced, and in many cases relationships with clients are improving. But one feature of the Zoomification of advertising I was curious about was perhaps the most important one. How has Zoom (and the like) affected agencies’ ability to sell creative work? So yesterday I posted a poll to my LinkedIn contacts, most of whom are in the advertising business and got some interesting answers that come with implications.
The survey.
The survey question was as follows:
How have virtual presentations over platforms like Zoom affected your ability to sell creative work to clients?
And the possible answers were as follows:
It's easier to sell work.
No change in difficulty.
It's harder to sell work.
It's much harder to sell work.
I added the fourth possible answer (“much harder”) to see if there was a degree of difficulty for some. Turns out, there was.
The results.
There were 159 responses within a day and here’s what I found:
It's easier to sell work. - 9%
No change in difficulty. - 40%
It's harder to sell work. - 38%
It's much harder to sell work. - 13%
Only a small portion of respondents—9%— thought virtual presentations made it easier to sell creative work. Not terribly surprising. But a majority (51%) said selling creative work virtually was “harder” or “much harder” to do whereas 40% said there was “no change” in difficulty.
Further insight and nuance can be found in some of the comments beneath the poll.
Mike Teixeira, Chief Creative Officer at Crackle PR, said this: “Great question. I voted ‘No change in difficulty’ but I will add one HUGE caveat. If cameras are OFF then it becomes way more difficult. I need reactions and expression to gauge if the work is landing emotionally.”
An interesting point because it speaks to the energy and information the presenter receives in a presentation. You can’t read a book if the book is closed. And you can’t read a room if the video is turned off.
Alasdhair Macgregor Hastie, Executive Creative Director of BETC in Paris said: “It's harder to sell great work, which often needs a bit more of a show. The day to day stuff is maybe easier. The rest no difference.”
Alasdhair is exactly right about the day-to-day stuff being easier. I hear that all the time when I talk to creative agencies. In many ways communication improved with clients during Covid because there’s was more face-to-face, not less. Sure, each face was on a computer screen, but still you have to give credit where credit is due.
Cudos to those who have seen no change in selling work virtually, but for those who think it’s harder, what to do?
Tips when presenting work virtually.
Presenting creative work virtually has been my business model with Ideasicle for 11 years, well before Covid hit. Interestingly, until it did and normalized video conferencing, I refused to present ideas with the video on. I thought it was too awkward to be presenting while also worrying about what I looked like on the video screen. So I only showed the slides and used audio. And it was totally fine because remember almost no one was using video conferencing for anything but big meetings between offices.
Then Covid hit, everyone started using video for even the smallest, inane meetings, and the awkwardness of the whole thing disappeared. Even I use it now when presenting ideas for exactly the reason Mike Teixeira mentioned above. I like seeing the client’s reactions as I’m presenting.
Now, all that said, here are a few things I’ve done to maximize the impact of virtual creative presentations:
Have your clients write down their first impression of each idea you present. Before every virtual creative presentation I remind the client, “You will never have another first impression with these ideas, so please write down your visceral reaction to each.” This strategy does three things: one, it reminds the client that time can kill great ideas (overthinking them); two, it gets them to commit on paper their first reaction for their own purposes; three, it gives you that valuable information (their real reactions) that is so difficult to gather from a Zoom meeting. I often point back to the client’s visceral reactions later on if they do start overthinking an idea.
Present more ideas, not less. The general impression of the creative presentation itself is reduced to a 13” computer screen in many cases. There is very little room for “show” as Alasdhair put it. So one way to amplify the client’s impression is to have more ideas to share. At Ideasicle X (with our proXy Service) we never present less that 10 ideas and usually more. And it typically turns into a healthy therapy session with the client because they now have tangible ideas to react to and you will learn a ton about what they like and don’t like as you hear their reactions.
Reduce each idea to its essence. One way to present more ideas is to reduce each idea to its bare essence and stop there. Don’t over-develop the ideas, don’t blow them out to every channel, just present the core idea and get a reaction. Once you know which idea(s) the client likes you spend energy blowing it out, but not until then.
Put more pressure on the ideas themselves. Given the fact you can’t razzle or dazzle the clients in the room with intangibles (posturing, charisma, eye-to-eye contact, etc.), there’s far more pressure on the quality of your actual ideas. Aim high creatively, of course, but also aim high in how you articulate each idea on each slide. Spend time crafting the language, the visuals, the pacing, everything.
Hope that helps, but please post your own experiences and tips in the comments below. There’s no end in sight to the Covid madness, so we may as well help each other out.
We’ve got work to sell.