Hasta La Creative!

There are three calls in this business that no one wants to get from a client: “Sorry, we’ve decided to go in a different direction.” “The budget has been cut.” “I’ll be retiring at the end of the year.” Not long ago, I got the last one from Joe, the CEO of a prominent community bank in Cambridge, Mass., where we’re located. At a time when we pursue global dreams and fly 3,000 miles at the drop of a dime to pitch new business, it feels almost anachronistic to have a client in your own backyard.

In fact, proximity defined the relationship from the start. Following the roller coaster of a review and a suspenseful wait for a decision, I got a call from Joe, who asked if he could drop by to talk with me. I told him that I’m happy to walk the four blocks to the bank, but he insisted on coming over.

Running through the superstitious logic that we all do when we’re trying to predict the outcome of a pitch, I decided that we must have lost. Joe was too nice of a guy to tell me over the phone, or to make me walk to him for bad news. Sitting in our lobby in his grey banker’s suit, Joe graciously said that his team would like to work with us. That kicked off a ten-year relationship and set a tone that can best be described as that of good neighbors.

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