A recent online debate between advertising gurus John Hegarty and Steve Henry on the value of tissue meetings has prompted me to throw our experience at WPN into the ring.
For the uninitiated, tissue meetings are meetings between agency and client to present and discuss creative ideas prior to the official presentation.
At WPN we often use tissue meetings as part of the pitch process. On a very basic level, they allow us to make sure we have correctly interpreted the client’s pitch brief. Ok, we should have done this anyway, but with a client who is largely unknown to us, there is always plenty of scope for misunderstanding.
Sharing your thinking with the client early on also encourages them to share the ownership of the ideas. When this works out well, it means that when you go in to present on Pitch Day, you are not alone. You already have people rooting for you on the other side of the table.
But tissue meetings can also help cement relationships between the agency and potential client. Because, as much as we may like to think it’s all about the work, more often than not it’s about the chemistry. Tissue meetings are a chance to hang up our jackets and our titles and get down to the job in hand. They give both sides a realistic taster of what it might be like to actually work together in a way that no creds presentation can.
But why keep a good thing just for pitches? Recently, we have introduced tissue meetings as part of our normal creative process with one of our existing clients. So far it’s been a positive experience on both sides. It has injected a new energy into the creative work because we no longer feel constrained to present only ‘safe’ work that we know the client will be able to run with. By showing a wider range of creative ideas, we get to push the boundaries of the brief, the brand and even the budget.
A side benefit of presenting more ideas is that it can sometimes generate more business for agency and client alike. Clients will often favour more than one idea from a tissue meeting and, rather than throw out original and exciting creative, will look for other ways to use their second or third choices ie by adapting a cold mailing idea into a donor mailing or an insert.
Tissue meetings are a great idea. But agencies be warned. You should never use them because you lack confidence in your creative work or decision making – you should only present strong ideas and should always be prepared to make recommendations to your client. And never insult the client by running tissue sessions merely to give the impression that you value their input – unless you genuinely intend to collaborate with and listen to your client, forget it. And clients, if you really want to see what your agency is capable of creatively, why not suggest the occasional tissue meeting? You might be amazed at you get back…
