On the Campaign couch: I want to switch from PR to advertising

That while agencies earn their keep by enhancing their client’s brands, you’ve been entrusted with stagemanaging their AGM, which their chairman sees as the most important manifestation of the corporate brand: the brand that shareholders own, analysts analyse, recruiters scrutinise graduates contemplate, unions challenge, financial editors dissect and parliamentary select committees summon at the merest whiff of misdemeanour.

 

If you have a feeling for all this, and have the nous and the contacts that can help steer corporate brands safely through the treacherous shallows of capitalism, then you have a lot to offer. Agencies probably think that you spend your time issuing ill-written press releases and pouring out prosecco.

 

If this is true, I can’t see why any agency should want to add you to their overheads. But as a knowledgeable guide to the grown-up world, not just of marketing but of business, you could be invaluable.

 

Our biggest client is launching a wine brand in his spare time. He is asking for significant time and effort from our agency to come up with a brand and strategy for no financial reward. He also keeps asking me to invest. I see no market for his as-yet-non-existent brand – how do I decline without offending him?

 

Difficult. The more you remind him that he’s abusing his position and cheating his own company of time and attention, the more sanctimonious you’ll sound. And you certainly shouldn’t invest – or at least not cash.

 

But you could turn this into a valuable agency training exercise. Tell your client that you’ll happily take this business on – but on your own terms. You’ll staff the account only with volunteers. Each of those volunteers will be granted an agreed number of phantom shares in the non-existent wine business, so that they can feel they’re working for themselves.