The Ram-Lakhans and Jai-Veerus of advertising

If you walk into an empty advertising agency past midnight, it won’t take you very long to figure out which department sits in which part of the office. There will be desks adorned with posters of bands and actors, printouts of rebellious phrases, dialogues from films or song lyrics, hand-written one-liners and poems on blank pages with tea cup marks, unwashed coffee mugs, empty cigarette packs, quirky ashtrays and colourful pictures. These desks belong to the ‘creatives’, the self anointed geniuses who write advertisements.

Then there are desks with plenty of sticky notes, printouts, pending invoices, hard copies of excel sheets and an occasional bonsai or a money plant that has almost curled up and died from ignorance and the air-conditioning running on full blast. In short, the most messy and unorganised desks on the floor. These, of course, belong to the client servicing executives – the formally dressed, perennially stressed individuals who are casualties of the crossfire that is a result of the unrealistic demands of the precious clients and the laidback attitudes of the ‘eccentric’ creatives.

Why such a divide in the same office, you ask? It’s because client servicing executives are seldom left with time on their hands to wrap up work, leave aside cleaning and decorating their desks. So while members of the creative team tackle a task at their own sweet pace – after being distracted by YouTube videos, games and, of course, decorating their desks – the client servicing personnel spend their entire day dealing with tough-to-please clients, drafting a dozen emails and anxiously waiting for approvals.

While an ad agency is made up of a lot more people – creative directors, illustrators and production teams – the relationship between the copywriters and client servicing executives, who in the real world are the two opposite ends of a pole, is the most fascinating. They are part of one team but always at loggerheads. With unreasonable deadline demands from both ends amidst pressure from clients, there isn’t much room for affinity.

“Tere client ko bol kal nahi milega ad. There’s too much work, dude.”

“I don’t care I need the copy, NOW. Wait all night if you have to and finish the work.”

“It’s your client, you figure it out. I have commitments this evening.”

“YOUR ideas were bombed. You have one more day to figure out fresh ideas.”

“I’m sorry the client has asked for it. You need to come on Saturday and finish it. Once done, mail it to me.” (Saturdays, in most agencies are holidays)

“When I don’t answer expect a call back. Don’t call a million times.”

“Yes, sure. Expect one more thing from a creative. I must be completely out of my head to expect you to do anything. Oh, wait. I’m not crazy, I just don’t have a choice!”

“Nice line, I’ll use it somewhere.”

“You work for an ad agency, you sell. You can show your creativity when you write the invitation for your baby shower.”

This mach mach, as they call it in the ad world, is a result of self conditioning and at times a very systematic brainwashing. The creatives have convinced themselves that client servicing does nothing but wear fancy clothes, talk in fake accents and draw a higher salary to merely do a postman’s job between client and a copywriter, and that there is no tangible output they bring to the table. The creatives are convinced client servicing executives are slave drivers and have no understanding of creativity. 

Client services on the other hand think “creativity” is overrated. They think creatives are lazy individuals who have cooked up the mental block excuse to shrug work, and that they don’t realise they are not Kafka or Shakespeare, just people who make a living by writing to sell products.

Tiffs between copywriters and client servicing personnel are a common sight. I’m not sure how agencies even manage to bring out ads for clients and execute last minute campaigns. It just happens, I suppose. I, however, have come across a few client servicing and creative pairs who, between all the gargantuan egos, tantrums, unrealistic deadlines, client pressure and the desperation to perform, have managed to not just iron out their differences but also be great work buddies. Turns out, it’s not rocket science.

Shraddha Jain, 29 and Dhanashree Shinde, 27 are one such example. Whilst at Setu Advertising, Dhanashree, a servicing executive was won over by Shraddha’s enthusiasm and willingness to stay back at strategy meets and planning presentations, despite being a copywriter. Although her job description didn’t demand it, she went the extra mile.

Shraddha Jain and Dhanashree Shinde

“Shraddha never restricted herself to just penning lengthy copy or one-liners. She believed in being a part of the job right from cracking the client brief to strategising and coming up with a solution. We’ve both gone beyond our roles. While she has helped handle the nitty-gritty of my job, I’ve helped her crack copy too,” says Dhanashree.

Having worked together at Orchard Advertising in the past, Austin Dsouza, 29 and Siddharth Ravindran 28, have an interesting story to share. Now a copywriter at Rediffusion Y&R, and the manager, composer and guitarist with the band Twist to Break Seal, Austin thinks the clash of copywriters and servicing executives is a very 1947 thing.

Austin Dsouza and Siddharth Ravindran

“As copywriters, we need to understand that servicing also belongs to our team. They are our link to the client and Siddharth has been that great link for me. He has also been very considerate about my passion for music, and my band,” says Dsouza.

Siddharth probably gets this respect from Austin because of the way he approaches his job. “The job of a servicing executive does not end at briefs or mails. Helping the creatives in their strategies, giving them insights on jobs, rushing to their rescue when they are stuck with copy and being considerate about their load of work is also required. Our copy guys are not copy-vending machines; they are much more than that.”

Rajeshwari Shrinivasan, 30, Creative Director, and Mohnish Devnath, 29, Group Account Director at a multinational advertising agency say that they have a love-hate relationship and, interestingly, they would like to keep it that way.

Rajeshwari Shrinivasan and Mohnish Devnath

“Rajeshwari and I have had innumerable arguments and clashes over our creative jobs. But at the end of the day, we arrive at a creative decision that suits us both. Copywriters need to look at their servicing counterparts as more than just servicing personnel. Only then will they begin respecting their role in your team. Rajeshwari does exactly that,” he says.

Rajeshwari, while agreeing with Mohnish, adds her own two cents, “As a team, we know what’s exactly required to function mutually. Mohnish is open to exploring new ideas, to argue with the client when required and give the creatives enough space to work. At the same time, he knows where to draw the line of leniency with his own team members.”

The older generation of advertising perhaps has a lot to learn from the select few young advertising professionals, who are considerate, have understood the difference between self respect and ego and have cracked the perfect balance between creativity and functionality. It’s finally a step in the right direction.

Handbook for servicing:

* Be considerate, the creatives have other client deadlines too.

* Hear them out. Never underestimate their creative calibre.

* If the client is being unreasonable, the creatives don’t need to be punished for it.

* When an idea is bombed, it’s not just a creative failure. It’s the team failure.

* Your job does not end at mail boxes and presentations.

* When creatives say they’ve hit a mental block, believe it. Take some time out and brainstorm with them.

* Sitting in office till 2 am is not a part of their job description or contract. They do it because they take their jobs seriously and because they take the client, you deal with on an everyday basis, as seriously as you do.

The Copywriters' Handbook:

* The servicing executive works for your team, not the client’s.

* Less ego, lesser the wait. It will surely help you avoid late-night shifts.

* Always, always be accessible and responsive at work. Computer games, cricket, YouTube videos, Social Networking can wait.

* Always demand realistic deadlines. Buffer time is good, but not when it’s 48 hours.

* Creatives are not the only ones under pressure. Servicing executives also have the deadline sword hanging on their heads and they are the first to get a firing from the client when the agency misses the deadline.

* For your clients, you and the servicing work on the same team, the day they find loopholes to your management, you too shall bear the brunt.

* The client pays a hefty cheque to the agency, they think they can get away with being unreasonable. They’re possibly right but that’s besides the point. You need to remember that it’s not the servicing’s fault.

A writer by profession and a copywriter by chance, Rachel Pilaka is a copywriter at Setu Advertising, and Content Lead at Underscore, a content development agency. She is in awe of the changing faces of the advertising world and is still experimenting with the medium. She tweets at @CuttingPilaka.