We are Selling Certainty in an Uncertain World

Saturday evening I was watching “Two for the Money” and one of Al Pacino’s lines taught my attention. He said a great thing to his „disciple”:

“We are selling certainty in an uncertain world”.

I was so flattered by his words (and it wasn’t about insurance companies). They were selling a “certainty” to people making bets on different games. It was easy. You were specialized in a sport and you made a poor guy bet his last 500 dollars and get 50.000 dollars back. Easy, right?

Ehh…but what if we’re not talking about a movie anymore…what if we’re talking about how many advertising agencies or marketing companies know how to sell certainty? Certainty in an uncertain world.

When clients choose to invest an amount of money in an image campaign or in promoting certain deals they usually think twice about the amount of money they are willing to invest. Thus, after choosing the budget they start searching for agencies. But the problem here is that agencies stopped thinking twice about the money invested in campaigns. If it’s someone else’s money, get an outdoor, a radio spot, a TV spot, a website, some stuff here and there on a social network and the hundreds of thousands euros are gone. Win? “Well now we have to wait for the client to come through the door and give us the money”.

And now, my question for those managing the client’s accounts…would you be willing to receive some of the client’s money according to the impact you had among the clients? Or let’s not go that far and talk about bloggers…Would you be willing to be paid for campaigns according to how many clients you drew through your blog? I mean how many have bought from the store you have promoted? I mean how many readers honestly trust in your word to actually buy that product? Actually get paid by how many clients you bring on!

I honestly believe that when you choose this payment method it makes it your interest sending clients to the company you’re promoting as well as offering trust. And that company will certainly notice your transparency and trust, your service’s professionalism, and they’ll see you with different eyes and you can bet that in the future they will ask for your services again.

In my opinion, this is that selling certainty in an uncertain world means. I am tired of seeing money go to waste on campaigns based on “this is how we have to do, cause that’s how it should be”

I’ve heard the other day at a presentation of an image for a large company from Cluj, from the guy that made the image : “I chose the color brown because that’s what I thought would work. Don’t ask me why because I won’t have an answer. That’s how it should be.” Whaaaaat??? If you won’t justify my money, why would I give them to you? And there are more than few who lurk like hyenas around companies that are willing to pay large amounts of money to win their place in the hearts of the citizens.

If I were a company on the verge of investing a gigantic amount of money in a campaign I would ask the agency coming with the proposal:

1. Are your services certain?
2. Would you be willing to pay according to how many clients will you bring for me?

Think about it!