‘Never compromise your quality to please or help people. If they respect you and appreciate your giving them work to do, they will deliver to your standard as agreed so that your client doesn’t dump you; and they get to get more jobs from you’
I WORKED at a smaller agency for nine years before joining Ogilvy and that was where I learned never to compromise quality no matter who is involved. If you deliver a quality job as agreed to either in a brief or contract, be sure you have become a fan and I will recommend you all the way. I have suppliers and production firms I have been working with for almost two decades and they understand that as long as the quality remains number one, and prompt delivery stays number two, they would always be top of my contact list. Not rocket science!
While working on Union Assurance in 2010, we got a brief to design and print corporate folders. These are folders the marketers use to share fliers and forms with prospects when they are out to get more business. The brand color is a unique blue shade that needs to be carefully achieved in color separation; those were the days when DI and 3D printing were very expensive and not too common.
The printer we commissioned to was a mentee to my boss and he has been working for the agency even before I joined. When he delivered the job I and the creative team checked everything one by one to be sure it is according to the approved design. The rule in the agency was that all delivered jobs must be checked and approved before the printer is paid the balance. In this case, the color separation was not too good, and the folders had different shades of blue. It was a NO for me, and I rejected it.
My boss was a nice and compassionate man with over two decades of advertising experience at that time, and he just couldn’t comprehend why I would be so mean to reject a job of over 500 copies. In his words, ‘Teju you will cause war between countries if you are made a diplomat. The job is not that bad so, go and deliver to the client”.
It was an early stage of my career, and I was blunt and confrontational. It doesn’t matter to me who you are or who recommended you, if the job you delivered is bad, I will reject it with no pity or diplomacy.
At that time and even to date, what mattered was the integrity of the agency and I didn’t care whose ox was gored. Maybe I would have managed the situation differently now or been more diplomatic “the British way” as Fiona my boss at Ogilvy would say, but what happened after delivering to the client made me realize I wasn’t mean after all.
Two days after the delivery, the client sent an email rejecting the work and the agency had to bear the cost of reprinting. For me, we shouldn’t have allowed it to get to that, but I understand my boss’s perspective of being human and considerate. I have a lot of respect for him and admire his personality because if he says he is done doing business with someone, that person must be bad. Unlike me, he is highly cautious.
Never compromise your quality to please or help people. If they respect you and appreciate your giving them work to do, they will deliver to your standard as agreed so that your client doesn’t dump you; and they get to get more jobs from you. Scratch my back I scratch yours, isn’t it?
*Olateju Ogunyomi is a Marcoms professional and behavioral analyst. She left Ogilvy Nigeria in 2020 to start her own agency. She is an APCON member and was a member of the AAAN women in Advertising committee, and the AAAN Event committee. She is currently the CEO of Aspora Nigeria Limited, a Digital Marketing, Strategy, and Consultancy agency.
Comments are closed.