Sacred Cows: Why Agencies Are Afraid To Tell Clients The Truth

(MENAFN- PRovoke) I am a liar.

In fairness, I thought we all were - my PR colleagues and me.

It was only during an offbeat brainstorm warmup that I learned otherwise.

“Before we begin,” I said enthusiastically to a conference room full of eager ideators,“let's go around the room: When was the last time you lied, and about what?”

The participants shifted uneasily. Out of seven people, four said they“never lied.” (Odd, given they each did weekly timesheets.)

Only upon challenging the most fervent truth-teller-asserting that the world's only non-liar was born in Bethlehem-did she yield... sort of.

“I mean, like, I've lied,” she reluctantly admitted.“But, you know, like, back when I was, like, nine.”

Her apostles nodded earnestly.

It wasn't that our office Mother Teresa was lying about not lying. It's that the small compromises with truth that come with agency life had become so routine she no longer thought of them as lies.

Mother Teresa enthusiastically pitched Microsoft's new Lumia smartphone to dubious reporters, hyping its“game-changing” technology even as all of us, including the client, knew the poor-performing phone was already on life support.

Call it survival lying: the things we say-or don't say-because telling the unvarnished truth could cost us something. A client. An account. Maybe even a career.

In his book“Why Do People Lie: The Psychology of Deception and the Practical Truth About Human Behavior,” author L. E. Leake explains that“Most people do not lie because they are bad-they lie because they believe the truth will cost them something they cannot afford to lose.”

Like a client. Like a career.

Mother Teresa's value-her very job-relied, in part, on getting media coverage for non-news.

Collectively, the pressure to achieve, to bill, to take on more, to win and to never fail sends our survival instincts into overdrive. Add to that a reported industry layoff rate 82% higher than other industries, and you've got a perfect storm for survival lying.

During a Zoom meeting with a major-as in huge-toothpaste brand, our key client absurdly declared,“I think we can all agree that consumers know the difference between a [client brand] smile and a Crest smile.”

“Wait, what?” I blurted, failing to hide my incredulity, while the rest of the team sat in silence-some even nodding.“Can you explain that?” I asked.“It might help us with the creative.”

My phone became a pinball machine. Ding!“Let it go!” a colleague texted. Ding!“It's not worth it!” texted another. Ding!“Remember how much they pay us!” reminded a third.

I let it go.

Technically, that wasn't a lie. Neither is accepting a concept-killing client change, doing work out of scope or launching a campaign you know isn't particularly good. But they come from the same instinct: don't challenge the client, don't admit something isn't working and don't say the thing that might put the relationship at risk.

Eventually, keeping clients happy becomes a free pass for acquiescence-and, when the stakes get high enough, fabrication.

Like it or not, we're all graduates of The Client Theater of the Performing Arts, displaying extraordinary acting chops when it comes to appearing fascinated by the most mundane things: Colgate's Oral Health Month, Bank of America's financial clinics, Royal Caribbean's Chief Dog Officer.

All that deep conviction, enthusiasm, passion and soulful devotion clients see from agency teams? Some of it is real. Some of it is performance. That's part of the job. The problem starts when performing enthusiasm becomes pretending something is true when it isn't.

Marlon Brando said it best:“Lying for a living. That's what acting is.”

Awards offer an obvious example. Exaggeration in award submissions became enough of an issue that Cannes Lions introduced Global Integrity Standards governing the accuracy and legitimacy of entries.

Survival lying isn't going away. Its perceived value-measured in payrolls, livelihoods and egos-is often greater than the perceived risk of an overstated claim. Like painkillers, however, survival lying can be a gateway to more perilous choices, where truth isn't just bent but bludgeoned. One minute you're claiming 9 billion media impressions, the next you're using AI to fabricate a CNN news clip.

There is an antidote to survival lying. It's called guts.

Better to explain upfront that a client's expectations don't match its budget, that its programming isn't strong enough or that its product simply isn't news than to dutifully roll out a $250,000 dead-on-arrival campaign and then try to survival-lie your way out of the woeful results.

That also requires agencies to ease up on their“billable or die” approach to business and reconsider perhaps the biggest misconception of all: that keeping clients happy is the goal.

It isn't. The job is to give clients counsel worth paying for. Sometimes that means telling them their idea isn't good enough, their expectations aren't realistic or their assumptions are wrong-even when they don't want to hear it.

Happy clients should be the result of great work and good counsel, not the objective that determines what we're willing to say.

Until agencies make it safer to tell clients the truth, agency people are always going to, like, you know... lie.

Jeremy Baka is co-founder and creative strategist at Missing Hat Co. and previously spent 25 years at BCW, now Burson, most recently as chief creative catalyst, worldwide. He is co-author of The Book We Wish We Had.

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