Saving my client from a very bad idea

A CLIENT decided to spring on me a consultant who’d cooked up a strategy for my shop to carry out. It was a terrible idea, doomed to fail. This was not a question of opinion. A competent consultant would have known that marketing history is littered with failure after failure of this very strategy.

I was aware that sanity didn’t have much chance of prevailing. The client was enamored of his new consultant, the consultant thought he knew my area better than I, my concerns would be seen as a case of Not Invented Here Syndrome, and the consultant was adept at interrupting and thus derailing objections before an opposing case could be properly built.

I could have shut up, executed the strategy, and charged quite the fee for the work. Of course, in the wake of inevitable, costly, and embarrassing failure, the consultant could blame my shop and not his strategy. Yet it was not the threat of blame that motivated me to resist. My motivation was to spare my client this folly.

To make my case, I would need to secure the floor. So, on my shop’s dime, I created a slide show. (These were pre–PowerPoint days.) That would give me that advantage of a darkened room with the focus on me and my message. Then I called a meeting with the client and his consultant. 

A few slides in, the consultant rocketed to his feet, as I knew he would. “Don’t tell me what you can’t do,” he said. “Tell us what you can! After all, how good are you guys?” I replied, “You’ll have your say. Please sit down and let me continue.” Remarkably, he did. I proceeded with a brief, organized, evidence–based analysis that laid bare the folly.

I finished, the lights went up, and I turned to the client. “We’re your ad agency,” I said, “and we’ll do as we’re told. But our best recommendation is not to proceed.”

There was silence for a beat or two. Finally, the client said, “You never stop surprising me” and killed the strategy.

Then the consultant said something interesting. “I wish you’d been around when I was CEO of my last company. Maybe it wouldn’t have gone under.”