Don’t be shy – share your ideas.

Even if your client only does local advertising or has a very narrow market, document every idea that you have and share them all with the client. Keep budgets in mind, but don’t be limited by them. When the economy has turned around, and their budgets have done the same, they will remember that you may have tightened your belt, but you chose the correct belt to tighten.

For example, I recently had a client that handles a tire retailer. Tire unit sales declined 19% from 2008 to 2009^*.

This agency had a brain-storming session with the only rule being “No Idea is bad and all ideas will be explored.” This agency came up with and successfully implemented a campaign that partnered with a local grocery store chain. The campaign entailed painting the parking lots of the stores. Instead of stripes for the parking places, they painted tire treads with the tire stores Logo inserted several times within the tread.

The campaign cost less than what the client had spent on local Television buys and netted a higher increase in sales than the client had experienced in over 5 years.

Because this agency wasn’t afraid of sharing all of their ideas with the client, they developed what was one of the most different campaigns that ended up being one of the most successful for both the agency and the client.

^* According to Tirereview.com