It’s a familiar tale.

Valued agency proposes two ad treatments to an important client with a strong recommendation about which is best.

Client team respectfully prefers the other route.

At stake, a more effective ad, but also the health of the client-agency relationship.

New Zealand Skincare company Essano was creating a new campaign for a facial skincare range recently launched in Australia and their highly regarded agency (The Ideas Shed) had delivered a “terrific” campaign with some alternate headlines.

GM Marketing and Innovation Sarah Koppens and her team were leaning towards the agency’s second option but, “we didn’t want to be one of those clients that simply overrules the agency on the basis our hunch is better than theirs”, she said.

“They do great work for us and are an important part of our team so we wanted to hear from consumers and enable us all to learn –  and of course, there was also a 50:50 chance that their recommendation would be the winner!”

“So we turned to Stickybeak and put the two approaches to a representative group of female consumers in Australia and within 24 hours we had our answer.”

“Equally importantly we had a great follow up meeting with the agency where the consumer was effectively in the room with us all and we could move forwards together with the sort of certainty that only customer feedback can provide”.

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