Phil Lynagh is regional managing director at Tag: MENA
“If acronyms could be dangerous, one in particular scares me the most. From briefing to fulfillment this little four-letter monster wreaks absolute havoc. Imagine the scenario: client briefs agency and wants creative work ASAP. There it is. The monster is out there. It begins.
The agency has no pre-agreed timelines for delivery and agrees. Confusion is now unleashed. Why? Well, the client is secretly thinking ASAP equals five days turnaround and that would be brilliant, but refuses to let the agency know because they may take six days if he tells them five. The account manager scampers back and briefs the creative team and she says ASAP. Now she’s thinking three days would be splendid but doesn’t want to let the creative team know that, otherwise they’ll deliver on the 23rd hour of the third day and she can’t manage that.
Meanwhile, it’s all hands on deck in the studio, the brief is circulated and half read, the midnight oil is burned and the work is delivered by 11pm the very next evening. Our account manager is delighted and decides a precedent has now been set: “Look what the team can do in under 48 hours when they put their minds to it,” she thinks and arranges to present to the client in the morning. Our client is astonished with the speed of turnaround and decides this is the only way to go from now on as it appears that 48 hours is all the time the agency really needed all along. The agency presents and client is disappointed, “Did anybody read the brief?” he laments. “If you needed more time you should have told me”. Re-briefing ensues and the work is presented five days later.
The agency is now tarnished with the spectre of late and unsatisfactory delivery having not met the deadline, the same deadline so skillfully not communicated to them at all in the first place. The client misses a couple of insertions, relationships are strained and ultimately the agency gets the boot. The morale of the story is time is our friend, as long as we know how much of it we really have. ASAP is everybody’s enemy.”
ROFLMAO