(this post is a feed post from my comments on reddit)
r/Entrepreneur
I was in marketing in asia. this is very common, so in future mitigate for it not only in contract, but with deposits – even if its not standard try and come up with something that works – e.g. stage payments based on sign offs.
now, if you wanna screw them, then any work you have produced that they have used is your work, they have conducted theft. so you can demand that they take down any thing you produced.
if they don’t you can proceed to publish a very detailed post on linkedin with screenshots and publicly shame them – though i caution this would be a nuclear option.
Focus on other clients, you’ll get burnt from time to time, just move to the next opportunity, refine your internal policies and processes to prevent yourself from being exposed the same way in the future.
here’s another one i use to get when i was in agency-land in China – client would literally ping-pong revisions over and over and over again driving everyone nuts – i got the client to agree, once one step was approved, no-backies unless you pay a hefty fee, and then sequentially got each part of the creative approved – mood board – approve; colours – approve; fonts and copy – approve; visuals approve; final touch -approve — once the client agreed to the process, there was still ping pong- but to a much lesser degree and at least everyone knew they won’t have to go back to square one.
as a side note, the best comment i ever heard was a criticism from a client who wanted ‘flames’ in a picture of a grill, they dint have money for photos, so what we did was find the creative for the same brand in other countries then take that as the base for the flames, i’m gonna remind you year, the creative was approved, by the same brand in another country and the china brand manager came back with the response ‘ the flames are not fiery enough’
How to deal with the anxiety from a bad client?
byu/This_Wrap3075 inEntrepreneur