Tell Us We Suck

Don’t worry, this isn’t some lame, “I love my #haters,” millennial YouTube star crap about how people who say mean things to us are what keeps us #motivated to #grind. Because that’s dumb. No sane person should ever want to prove anything to some YouTube comment section troll. That’s about as useful as singing a song to a tree.

Granted, we’d prefer to not hear that we suck. (Again, we’re sane.) But we’re not going to sit around and have hurt feelings about it either. (This is the “no butthurt” company culture we have going on here.) When a client sends us their concerns or problems with a campaign, an ad, a social media post, or whatever else, everyone on the Rock Candy Media team thinks two things:

1. Let’s do better. Now.
2. Awesome. The client is engaged.

The second point might sound weird. If you’re wondering why a business would hire an ad agency or marketing agency and then not be fully engaged with them, well, uh… we have wondered that too.

We want to hear from our clients. All the time. Any ad agency, marketing agency, or design firm should. And the clients who send us ideas or get back to us with feedback — positive and negative — are the ones who succeed the most. The Rock Candy Media marketing team is full of the most talented people in Austin, but none of us are ever going to know more about your commercial real estate business, financial firm, medical practice, e-commerce brand, etc. than you, the client, will. It’s the collaboration that lets us grow with our clients.

Multiple times a day I call my marketing team and/or my graphic design team into the conference room to throw out ideas, brainstorm on new campaigns, or how to make ones we’ve already thought of better. That’s because I only hire smarter than me. If my ideas suck I want my people to tell me. The same goes for my clients. I take on clients I admire. My clients have incredible businesses. I want to work with them. So I, and everyone else at Rock Candy Media, wants to hear from them.

To be clear, this isn’t me telling you my team and I need to be micromanaged or babysat. We are absurdly self-sufficient. The Rock Candy Media team does the work of ad agencies and marketing agencies twice our size. And twice as well. We are all on the short list of ‘best advertising agencies’ right next to GSD&M . But one of the ways we’re able to work so efficiently is by staying engaged with clients. We always want the ‘why’, whether it’s good or bad. Our CEO always says “It’s the clients that give you bad feedback that are more invested in you. It’s the clients that are so quiet that you need to worry about.”

So yeah, if you need to, tell us we suck. It’s WAY better, and more useful, than hearing nothing at all. Feel free to let us know. We’re happy to hear it. And even if it does lowkey hurt our feelings a little bit, this is Austin, I’m sure we’ll all be able to find somewhere to grab a drink and get over it.