A client once told me that I had a “helicopter perspective”, by which I guess he meant I had the ability to see the big picture. What he didn’t say was I was also rapidly developing the ability to go in a revolving door behind him and come out ahead of him. In other words, I was becoming an account person!
That troubled me. As does the entire subject of “perspective” I was lobbying so heavily for the other day. Because even perspective has to be kept in perspective. It isn’t seeing all the angles so you can bullshit your way through a meeting and come out with a conscience it should only take two or three single malts to Dry-Erase back to lily-white purity.
Perspective is about clearly seeing what’s going on at the moment, factoring in all that you know of the past and extrapolating as best you can what the future may hold. So you can give your client advice that has a modicum of net present value.
For example, you’ve heard the expression “looking through the wrong end of the telescope”? Well, I just went through an experience with a client–and it isn’t the first time–where he was looking through the right end of the telescope, but the picture he was getting was all wrong. What he was telling me was that he wanted his brand to follow in the footsteps of Apple, Nike or any number of other marketing icons. Certainly a laudable objective. However, what he was failing to see was how long it took those brands to attain that stature. Unbeknownst to him, his “telescope” was not only compressing physical space, it was also compressing time. And that “perspective” can lead to no end of heartache.
Many people have said it, but I heard it first from Marty Puris when he described his agency, Ammirati & Puris as being “an overnight success ten years in the making.” That’s how things work, in life, advertising, sex of the mutually rewarding variety, you name it. They take time and often a lot more time than the average person initially had in mind. But advertising, more’s the pity, is not one of those devices like they had on the bridge of the Enterprise that can simply beam you where you want to be. (Actually, that’s lucky for some clients or I would have long ago beamed them to a place not well known for its sunsets or sunrises.)
Which is why I would suggest that any client with this sort of lofty objective in mind go back and take a look at what Apple or Nike was doing 20 or 30 years ago. To get some perspective, and see just how long it took these brands to get where they are today. Not so these clients will then abandon the mission. But rather, so they realize what a painfully slow, methodical trek getting there is bound to be.
Honestly, I wish some of the telescopes clients are so found of looking through were like the trick ones the Little Rascals had. You know, the kind where after you take it away from your face it leaves a black smudge all around the eye you had pressed to it? That way they could look in the mirror and see the only thing that trying to compress a 30-year accomplishment into 3 months is likely to get them.
