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David Ogilvy’s tips on how to be a great advertising client have been working their way around the Internet.  They are so simple, yet so profound, I thought it worth a quick adaptation for PR clients.  To wit:

How To Be A Good Client:

1. Emancipate your agency from fear.
2. Select the right agency in the first place.
3. Brief your agency very thoroughly indeed.
4. Do not compete with your agency in the creative area.
5. Coddle the goose who lays the golden egg. (provide enough time and resources to do the job well.)
6. Don’t strain your advertising public relations through too many layers.
7. Make sure your agency makes a profit.
8. Don’t haggle with your agency.
9. Be candid and encourage candor.
10. Set high standards.
11. Test everything.
12. Hurry. (Profit is a function of time.)
13. Don’t waste time on problem babies (Back your successes and abandon your losses.)
14. Tolerate genius.
15. Don’t under spend. (The surest way to overspend on advertising public relations is not to spend enough to do the job properly.)

~David Ogilvy in Confessions of an Advertising Man

That was easy.  Thanks, David.

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