Communications professionals of the world, let me entreat you to join me in acknowledging our collective responsibility to be more than yes men (or women, as the case may be) when clients come to us with ideas that could benefit from more thought and planning.
So often in my career I have witnessed professionals shrug somewhat indifferently and say, "Well, that's what the client wants." End of discussion.
That's the easy way out, dear colleagues. And it's also missing a tremendous opportunity.
Certainly, nobody wants to offend or alienate their clients! (That's where tact and diplomacy come in so very handy.) It's infinitely more difficult to dig deeper and discover the root of the idea, but this is also precisely where the best solutions can be found, where we can do our most creative, strategic work.
After all, our clients presumably come to us for our expertise and counsel. As an industry, we do a disservice to our clients and to ourselves by taking the easy way out just to avoid a difficult conversation.
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