Remember “What Women Want,” that movie with Mel Gibson (before he imploded and went all Mayan on us) about a guy who accidentally obtains the ability to hear what women are thinking? Well, this posting has nothing to do with that.

There is a parallel in agency life to the plot of that movie, however. Most us wish we knew what our clients really want. Slack Barshinger staffers got a chance to experience the next best thing yesterday. At a staff meeting, we heard from a guest speaker who has looked at life from both sides now, as it were, and he shared some of the perspectives he’s gained.

In his talk, Stephen Ban, chief marketing officer at Nuveen Investments, Inc., referred to himself as “a real-life client who used to be in your shoes.” If there was one point you needed to take away from his presentation, it was that the relationship between the agency team and the client team is the key to success.

While he has been on the client side longer—most recently at T. Rowe Price and Aon Corporation before joining Nuveen—Ban also spent several years rising through the ranks at Ogilvy & Mather earlier in his career.

His presentation, “Five Lies, Five Truths and Seven Things to Think About,” offered a fascinating look at the impressions client and agency people have of each other and, in his experience, which ones are and aren’t true.

The “five lies” are really misperceptions that exist among client and agency folks. For example, many agency people think that clients believe agencies are full of lazy prima donnas and all they want to do is win awards. On the other hand, clients often have the impression that agency people think they are full of boring bean counters, that they all have bad taste and, worst of all, that they are all like Mr. Spacely from “The Jetsons” and are always a heartbeat away from firing their agencies.

Ban made a point of saying that the craziest thing is for agency people to think their client wants to fire the agency. He pointed out that for clients, changing agencies is a hassle, it’s expensive, it’s risky and it’s disruptive to the business. Most clients want a successful relationship.

The “five truths,” on the other hand, are suggestions that might be hard to swallow for those on either side. They are:
• The client’s objectives and yours will be different
• Someone will hate the work
• Someone will think the marketing budget can be handled better
• Bad relationships will lose business more often than bad creative will lose business
• The agency will likely be late and over budget

The “things to think about” are really Ban’s suggestions to solve the problems that the “lies” and “truths” represent. Among them:
• Be innovative—Be different; that’s one of the reasons the client hired you
• Be prepared—Present great ideas and present them with budgets and timetables
• Be a student of your business—Understand how your agency makes money
• Do your homework—Understand your client’s industry, competition, etc.

Above all, Ban said, clients want the agency to be proud of its work, like working on the client’s business and put its best people on the business. What clients really don’t want is to have to re-educated new team members because of turnover; know more about the marketing process than the agency; or deal with missed dealines, blown budgets or sloppy work.