Are Communications People Tough Enough?

There was a very interesting scene in the season premier of MadMen. Be prepared for a spoiler you haven't seen it yet! During a meeting with a client who was trying to market a two-piece bathing suit for modest people, Don Draper had enough and threw the potential clients out of the office. A lot of my fellow PR and Corp Com friends admitted to enjoying what Don did and wishing they could have done it themselves.

I bring this up because it focuses on the concept of toughness and doing what's right in Corporate Communications. I will also stick my neck out and say hurray for Don Draper. He went to his clients with an intelligent and well-thought marketing campaign. He obviously knew the market better than they did and when they balked at his proposals and he saw they were being stubborn for no reason than to be stubborn and closed minded, so he ended the relationship. Granted, it was for the sake of television he threw them out of the office, but ultimately, he did these people a favor by pointing out how deeply flawed their brand premise was. We can only wonder if they got the message or just went to another agency who was happy to smile, cash their checks and do what they want regardless of how wrong it is.

Now of course standing up to a client, be it internal or external is always worrisome and dangerous. Many people think that by giving us a check we surrender all intelligence and basically become some type of puppet for them to manipulate. Others, think that since they have hired a communications professional or a team of pros, they need not worry anymore about the issue of communications.

Sadly, there are a great number of communications professionals who tend towards being more reptilian than mammal. They will also do what is solely in their best interests and will tell the client what they want to hear and will focus on personal advancement to the exclusion of all else that makes for an effective and dynamic team. For some reason, the communications community focuses on people who make us feel good and tell us what we want to hear than the ones who tell us what we need to know.

Put it into a different perspective, if you're 30 pounds overweight, smoke and eat the wrong things, do you want a doctor who will keep telling you all is well and that you look great. Of course not. Now doctors HAVE to tell you the truth but communications people SHOULD do so. It is interesting when communications are direct and honest because there are two initial reactions generally speaking. The first is that the executive or client jumps back like they have received an electric shock and the look on their face is like they've been given a dose of some terrible medicine. The second reaction is that usually within 24 hours one of the snakes in the grass will offer reassuring words that all is well and try to endear themselves to the client.

We all need to understand and agree that pleasing a client is not the same as servicing their needs. Just as we need to say no to a child to help their growth we sometimes need to say no to a client to help them grow. The stock answer by the appeasers is that clients can always find someone else to do the job if you're too harsh, mean etc. That is true, but if they can find a communications pro who is willing to be bold enough and offer them the honest opinion which will make the brand stronger than the organization will be the better for it.

The question we need to ask as communications professionals is are we willing to do what is right or what is expedient? Are we going to be a profession bound by some type of ethics and guidelines or are we simply going to collect a check and do a job that requires the minimum amount of both risk and morals. These are tough questions we need to think about in our profession because the past ten years have been so brutal that survival skills have trumped good management skills. The next ten years should either be really interesting or quite scary.