10092: Risky Business Is Bullshit.

At Advertising Age, High Wide & Handsome CCO Mark Wolfsohn asked, “Who’s to Blame When an Ad Incites Anger?” The column was partly inspired by the recent Popchips debacle starring Ashton Kutcher. Wolfsohn opined that a key to adpeople’s roles as advisers involves assessing the client’s risk tolerance. That is, you ought to know your client’s comfort level for gambling on concepts. This premise, while logical, deserves a “No Shit, Sherlock” response. Anyway, Mark Robinson of Ridgefield, Connecticut, provided a comment more thoughtful than Wolfsohn’s entire essay:

Advertising agencies are in the “judgment” business. No matter what form the execution takes, we are essentially selling our judgment (about the market, about the consumer, about the product experience, etc.) to our clients. And we operate under the fundamental principle that clients ought to trust our judgment; they ought to do what we recommend. And so, in my opinion, the notion that there is some risk-taking algorithm that should be factored into the process, that there is a consideration of “How [much recklessness] is permissible?” just feels like ad agencies attempting to dodge their professional responsibility.

It sounds to me like the agency is saying, “Yeah, we gave the client bad advice, but the client was comfortable with that, so it’s really their decision, not ours.” It’s hard to respect that kind of accountability standard.

There’s another (less obvious and less discussed) point to be made here, however. When agencies produce advertising that provokes consumer anger and disapproval due to perceived cultural and racial insensitivity, more often than not it is because the agency failed to employ a diverse staff of marketing and creative professionals. The agency failed to have anyone at the table who could have — and would have — sounded an alarm that the agency was pursuing a terribly bad idea.

It is hard to defend the business model that agencies sell expert judgment to clients when the agency has substantial gaps in its expertise, which lead to substantial gaps in its judgment.