Isn’t The Fight Worth It?

The recent discovery of an elite college admission scam in the US was shocking (in scope) but not terribly surprising. An article today was written by a college professor who teaches the ‘entitled students’, complete with advice from staff to new educators.

“Lower your standards,” they advise new colleagues. “The fight isn’t worth it, and the administration won’t back you up if you try.”

This results in an increased workload as staff find themselves

hounded to provide a remedial education on top of an already heavy set of official duties.

In other words – watering down their expertise.

This results in intelligent, highly-educated people having to compromise their abilities and efforts to placate those undeserving of this level of support. From my outsider’s perspective it seems not only damaging, but unsustainable.

It really jumped out as it comes just a day after a tweet from Tom Goodwin (@tomfgoodwin) had me thinking about the parallels in marketing and advertising.

The brutal truth is clients are being given too much say in their creative direction.

The revenue chase sees businesses placing more value on money coming in than work going out, which in turn creates a disproportionately-weighted sense of worth in what clients want and expect.

Despite our experience and education, we often find ourselves in a position of having to defer to people who don’t have the benefit of either of those things. And this is no casual client-bashing. The ability to listen to clients and understand their business and category is a fundamental skill for all marketers and communicators.

But there’s a clear parallel between the influence money has in both marketing and education: both sectors are wilting to accommodate revenue streams. Both risk diluting their ability to deliver the quality they’re meant to. It’s a sense of short-termism so short we can’t see it happening.

The fight is worth it. Our first step as creatives and marketers is to openly acknowledge it as Tom did in his tweet. Only from there can we really address the problem.