Publishers – Is it OK to accept an ad and then criticize it?

“It strikes me as bad manners for a magazine to accept one of my advertisements and then attack it editorially – like inviting a man to dinner then spitting in his eye.” – David Ogilvy

I know where Ogilvy is coming from and yet I also know that he would have had another point of view had he been the publisher, ad manager or editor of the magazine. No reputable publisher wants his or her product to suffer through mediocre content. I don’t suppose it matters in top shelf tat but I can imagine quality publications hoping to maintain a certain standard.

 However, it’s not an easy one to call. We are obviously very grateful for the business and whilst I would never be critical of content directly to a customer I have sometimes been inwardly disappointed with some of the efforts that have come our way. However, I can imagine that it is not necessarily the fault of the creative professional. I have been in unenviable positions myself where you are caught between a rock and a hard place.

 For example, you might persuade your client that the best way to advertise his product’s growth in popularity is to illustrate that growth by way of an extending product. However, instead of allowing you to be creative and show a person with extending arms and the headline “Sooooooo Big”, your client wants to fill every available millimetre with technical specifications. From my point of view, it’s not the best use of a brilliant opportunity.

 We like to enjoy our work and we always get a big kick out of it when our customers come up with top class ideas that really combine well with our products – the NHS condom scheme extender card; the SGP Blast Off Sideshooter and the Wiley Bobbing Duck are good examples. As for Ogilvy’s opinion; yes, we agree, it is bad manners to attack a customer’s work and so we adopt another maxim: “the customer is always right – even when he’s wrong”!