Who wrote the wrap

I have written the post-Ramadan wrap report from an agency desk, and I have read it from the client's chair, and it is not the same document from those two seats.

From the agency side it is a renewal pitch. Nobody says so, and nobody needs to. The month is finished, the fee conversation is a few weeks out, and the person building the deck knows both of those things. So it opens on the strongest chart, spends four slides on reach, files the campaign that struggled under learnings, and closes on what could be done with a larger budget. Every number in it is true. The document is still an argument.

From the client side it reads as a report, because it looks like one. Template, period, summary, an author who was in the work every day. That makes it feel like the closest thing to the truth available, and it gets filed as the record of the month.

The gap between those two readings is where most of next year's decisions get made.

So I read a wrap for the slide that is not in it. Nothing about the fortnight the creative was late. Nothing about the audience that never worked and quietly stopped being mentioned. Nothing about the offer somebody argued against in February and ran anyway.

Then I ask for that slide first, before anybody presents anything, and never in the same meeting as the fee. An outsourced team can only be straight with me if being straight is not being priced while they speak.

A month with no failure in it did not happen that way. It got written up.