Judged on thirty nights

In a lot of this region the agency review is in the diary for this week, and it is a review of a year.

Twelve months of work, and the meeting will be about one month of them. Not by anybody's decision. By timing. The wrap numbers are fresh, that month is the tallest bar on the chart, and every person in the room lived through it at home as well as at work. The other eleven months are a folder somebody would have to open first.

So the relationship gets graded on the month in which the agency controlled the least. The auction was at its most expensive and every competitor was standing in it. The dates were set by a calendar and confirmed by a sighting. Whether the film landed depended on a drama nobody in the agency cast, in a slot nobody in the agency scheduled. A brilliant month and an ordinary one can look much the same from either side of the desk.

Then the incentive follows the grading, the way incentives always do. An agency reviewed on this month spends the other eleven getting ready for it. The strongest people are moved onto it in December. The better ideas are held back for it. September gets whoever is available, because September is not on the exam. Nobody decides that in a meeting either. It is what a review does to the year standing in front of it.

And the client gets precisely the year it asked for. One month with everything in it, and eleven that were never going to be discussed.

A client who reviews one month is buying one month, and paying for twelve.