By Steve Miller, FUSE Create, Partner-Executive Creative Director
Advertising likes to think of itself as a product business. It isn’t. It’s a service industry, plain and simple. We serve our clients. Yes, we produce ‘products’ – ads, content, experiences – but the real value is in the process, which is the service. (And to be clear, service does not mean servitude.)
Anyone who’s worked as a Cash Supervisor at The Gap, a Retail Sales Associate at Telus, or scooping ice cream for seven years, as I did, has heard the same directive: make the customer happy. Advertising should be no different. Early in my career, on the account side, I was told exactly that; my job was to make sure my clients were happy.
Twenty-six years later, I think that’s wrong.
Or at least, incomplete. Because “happy” is a low bar. If we’re honest, it’s also an easy one to clear. Want to make a client happy? Give them exactly what they asked for. Stick to the brief. Don’t push too hard. Don’t challenge too much. Deliver on time, on budget, and with minimal friction. Everyone walks away satisfied.
And yet, that’s precisely where the problem lies.
What clients want isn’t always what they need. And if our role is reduced to order-taker, we’re not adding value, we’re just executing. The better mandate, the more meaningful one, is this: make your clients look like heroes.
Because heroes get promoted. Heroes get trusted with bigger budgets. Heroes drive the kind of agency business outcomes that lead to long-term partnerships, organic growth, and the referrals agencies actually want.
But making clients look like heroes is harder than simply making them happy.
If you’re only aiming to keep your clients happy, you’re likely leaving better work, and bigger career-defining moments, on the table. Making your clients look like heroes requires more than compliance; it demands a bit of edge. It starts with interrogating, not just accepting, the brief. And it certainly doesn’t end there. Here are three ways to do it:
Push back on timelines, budgets, and even feedback
Pushing back can feel uncomfortable, but that’s usually a sign it matters. Done in the interest of the brand, that discomfort tends to convert into credibility. Sometimes the work needs a few more days to move from good to great. Sometimes a modest increase in budget unlocks a broader plan, another market, or a more meaningful impact. These aren’t easy conversations, but they’re often the ones that elevate the outcome. If you’re actively managing expectations and grounding your perspective in better results, very little should be off the table, especially when the upside serves both the work and your client’s trajectory.
Be persistent in selling a recommendation
Not every recommendation will land, that’s just the reality. Campaigns, music, strategic territories – clients pass on agency reccos all the time. But when you genuinely believe in an idea, it’s your responsibility to advocate for it. That might mean one more thoughtful follow-up, or a sharper articulation of why it matters. The nuance is knowing where persistence becomes pushiness. That line isn’t fixed; it’s shaped by the client relationship. The better you understand your client, the better you’ll read the moment. The key is to stay strategic in your argument, measured in your tone, and respectful of their time.
Put “great” work in front of clients—proactively
If you want clients to buy great work, you have to normalize it. That means going beyond the ask. Share a Cannes reel. Spotlight standout work from your agency. Curate sharp examples from their category. It doesn’t need to be elaborate; it just needs to be intentional. When clients are consistently exposed to a higher bar, they start to reach for it. And when they do, they don’t just approve better work, they get credit for it, which is ultimately the point.
None of this is easy. It takes time, effort, critical thinking, persistence, ingenuity, patience, and a fair amount of bravery. But that’s the job. As Teddy Roosevelt famously put it, “Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty…”. Great work, meaningful work, rarely comes from the path of least resistance.
And that’s the tension at the heart of modern agency life. We can optimize for comfort, or we can optimize for impact, but rarely both.
If we choose comfort, we get “happy” clients. Work that checks the boxes. Creative that meets expectations. A minimum viable product that keeps things moving but rarely moves the needle in a powerful, exponential way.
If we choose impact, we push ourselves and our clients outside of that comfort zone. We embrace a bit of friction. We accept that progress can feel uncomfortable. And in doing so, we elevate the work and the people behind it.
Because in the end, the goal isn’t a satisfied client who got the marketing equivalent of a pair of khakis. It’s a client who gets promoted because the work surpassingly worked. That’s what builds trust. That’s what drives retention. That’s what fuels growth.
So no, don’t just make your clients happy, that’s table stakes.
Make them heroes.
