Fifteen clients, one Friday

Take an agency floor in the last week of November. Fifteen clients, one team, and every one of the fifteen is peaking on the same Friday.

I have sat on that floor. From the client side it looks like a contract: a retainer, a scope, a named team, a service level. From the floor it looks like a rota with more names on the left than on the right.

A senior planner can hold two accounts properly through a peak. Three if nothing breaks. The rest of the fifteen are held by whoever is free, and the people who are free are the people who are junior.

The date of the brief decides which client gets whom. The fee has nothing to do with it.

The client who briefed in September has a plan the senior planner built, media booked before the auction went up, creative signed off in October, and a change log with nothing in it. That client will have the senior planner's attention on Friday and will barely need it, because the work was done when there was time to do it.

The client who briefed on Monday, with last year's deck and a new discount, has a plan built overnight by whoever was still in the office, media being bought at the most expensive prices of the year, and creative that is still moving. That client will have a junior's weekend, and will need far more than that.

The junior will do a good job. I was that junior. But the client is paying a senior fee for a senior team, and on the one day the whole year is judged on, the senior team is somewhere else, because the somewhere else was ready.

Agency capacity at peak is not bought in the contract. It is allocated on the day, to whoever needs it least, and the client who needs it least is the one who used it in September.