“Yeah, I meant to talk to you about that…,” said my Group Account Director with distinct exasperation in his voice. 

About a week prior, I sent a lengthy email in response to a client complaint. As far as I was concerned, the client had set us up to fail by shifting the goalposts a week before Christmas. We were about to break up for the Christmas holidays, and he’d decided a very technical project fraught with difficulty had to be completed by the last working day of the year. 

I’d warned him in advance that what he was asking could be done but the whole project should wait until the new year. We were going to be running on a reduced team and if anything went wrong, I couldn’t guarantee we could fix it before it became a real problem. 

But no, he insisted it had to be done before Christmas. He understood the risks and was willing to go ahead. 

So we pressed on. 

He then went incommunicado for the rest of the year, and although we encountered difficulties, we finished the job. Only, as I predicted, it didn’t work.

Who Could Have Possibly Predicted This…?

January came, and he complained. 

Big time. 

One star reviews, emails to the sales-lizard that sold the campaign, hassling the MD of the company…

“Hang on…,” I thought. “We spoke about this. I told you this was a very real possibility, and you accepted those risks. This very aggressive email I received feels a little uncalled-for.”

So I replied calling him out. I reminded him that this project was actually out-of-scope and we were doing it as a favour to him. I reminded him that I’d strongly advised this whole thing be pushed back until the new year. I reminded him that he’d responded to none of my emails or phone calls over the past three weeks telling him of the difficulties we had encountered. 

I was to-the-point verging on blunt, yet at all times professional. 

And nothing I said was wrong. I even referenced parts of an email chain where he’d confirmed he understood the risks. 

As you may expect, the email did not go down well.

An Inconvenient Truth

People don’t like hearing things how they are – they’d rather choose a convenient lie over an inconvenient truth. This client wanted us to be at fault because the reality for him was that the project was actually his responsibility. His job was on the line, and he knew he was going to screw it up if he tried it himself.

But if he could make it seem like we screwed it up, maybe he’d be off the hook. 

He wasn’t prepared to accept his responsibility (the inconvenient truth) – rather, he wanted to purport the convenient lie of “not my fault.”

Now it was my Director’s turn to try and fix the relationship, and while he understood my email was factually correct, he perhaps would have taken a different tone. 

Cue the exasperated “Yeah, about that…”

But… Why?

I wasn’t rude. I wasn’t offensive. I wasn’t unprofessional. I wasn’t (as far as I was aware) being passive aggressive, although I can appreciate that quoting someone’s emails can come off as passive aggressive. 

But that’s what emails are for. They are a digital paper trail to work through issues exactly like this. 

The client had pushed their luck against all advice and it had backfired on everyone involved. I didn’t have the time to cuddle the client through their own mistakes, particularly because the client had come at us all guns blazing as though we’d forced him into carrying out this project. 

So I told it how it was. Why was everyone so unhappy?

A Problem With The Industry

It’s no secret that the advertising and marketing industry does not have a reputation for honesty. In fact, it was only 2023 that advertising executives clawed their way out of the top 10 least trustworthy professions in Australia, replaced by varying degrees of CEOs, politicians and, of course, real estate agents. 

I’ve working in digital for long enough to know that marketers frequently take advantage of client’s comparative lack of knowledge to sell them inappropriate services or cover up poor performance with jargon and big numbers. 

I couldn’t, and still can’t, be bothered figuring out how to put lipstick on a pig. As far as I was concerned, doing so wasted everybody’s time, and didn’t get anyone anywhere worth being. 

No. I was going to highlight the problems as I saw them, and put together a plan of exactly what I was going to do about it. Then I was going set reasonable expectations and put my plan into action. 

You might be reading this thinking “Well, what’s wrong with that?” Maybe you think that if you were a client, you’d love your agency to find its own mistakes and opportunities, and work on resolving them without you needing to hassle them.

But you know what?

Clients hated it. 

No matter how good my plan was, as soon as I said that something could or should be better, they’d immediately start hitting the big red “CANCEL” button on their desks. 

Stark Raving Mad…

We’ve all heard Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity. Doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results. 

But sometimes, when the planets aligned and Mercury was in retrograde, a rare breed of client would thank me for my honesty.

They’d approve my plan, and I’d go into action. More often than not, my plan fixed things. And clients were happy. 

I wondered, “Why can’t it all be like this? Why is honesty met with threats & anger but bullsh*t seems to get sales across the line?” 

Furthermore, when honesty is met with such negativity, why are clients surprised when their agencies aren’t truthful with them?

Once More Unto The Breach, Dear Friends…

So I kept going, and in doing so I gradually earned a reputation among my peers for bluntness. Again, not rudeness. Not aggression. Not attitude. Just not fluffing things up unnecessarily. 

And I kept getting mixed results. Some loved it, more didn’t. But almost all the clients that took the time to see where things went saw better results. 

The first step towards fixing the problem is acknowledging you have one. To me, that’s the crux of what I was doing: acknowledging problems.

Digital marketing isn’t a silver bullet. You don’t turn on Google Ads and start cashing cheques the next day. Even the best looking creative on Meta falls flat on its face. SEO can sometimes grind to a halt and emails can only get you so far. 

It’s never going to be good news 100% of the time. Sometimes, you’re going to have to reverse, flip, switch, change direction, shift priorities, and generally work at it. 

Expect it. Accept it. Deal with it. 

The Stark View

When I finally jumped into my own agency, I thought about what my point of difference was going to be. 

Honesty?

Transparency?

Integrity?

These are all words agencies use to describe themselves. Even the dodgy overseas agencies filling your spam folder with promises of “much good SEO” for $50 USD each month use these buzzwords. 

But the shoe fits. I was honest, perhaps to a fault. For me, honesty brought better results in the long run, and someone who doesn’t appreciate honesty will likely never be the source of a fruitful relationship. 

I was transparent. If a client didn’t understand what something was, I’d explain it and give them a frame of reference so they could understand their campaigns like I did. 

I then did what I said I was going to do – integrity.

So I thought about the name. Stark Digital. 

Stark.

Adjective. Severe or bare in appearance or outline.

OK, look up the definition of Stark and it isn’t all positive. But you’ll see mentions of blunt, simple, and without decoration or anything that is not necessary. 

Without decoration or anything that is not necessary.

Getting the basics right. Building campaigns that just made sense without all the unnecessary complexities. No scattergunning out ads to anyone with a pulse hoping someone will act positively. Constructing functional campaigns & getting them working reliably so we could safely build on top of it and scale. 

In essence, Simple Digital Marketing… Done Well. 

That’s what Stark Digital was going to be. That was going to be my agency’s identity. 

As a point of difference, that was still a little too subjective for my liking. So my objective point of difference is that I can do everything myself. 

But let me clarify something: I can do everything myself, but I don’t. There are downsides to being the only one holding all the cards, and those downsides impact both me and you (the client) eventually. But my knowledge of how each platform works means I know whether that platform is appropriate for you. And if it is, I know how we can use that platform to get better results for you. I translate between you and other marketing specialists because I can speak the language of both worlds. 

That’s a stark contrast from what you get with other agencies. 

See what I did there?

The Call To Action

Now you know where the name came from, what do you do with that information? 

I suspect this article isn’t for everyone, and if you hated it, then I suggest we may not work well together. Thank you for reading, and I wish you all the best with those convenient lies.

However, if you’re reading this and thinking “where have you been all my life…” then let’s chat. 

It may not seem like it, but I’m really quite friendly & approachable. 

Just don’t send me shitty emails on my first day back from Christmas holidays.