CLOSE-UP: ON THE CAMPAIGN COUCH ... WITH JB.

Q: Our entire agency is working till all hours to pitch for an account that will realistically spend less than a couple of million ... in a good year. What's more, it's the sort of brand name that will make us look very desperate if we win it. We used to be the agency for big blue-chips ... will we be doing our own brand more harm than good by scrabbling about for crumbs like this one?

A: You say that you used to be the agency for big blue-chips: so what happened? No, don't tell me: I'll tell you. This is what happened.

Many years ago now, a lot of extremely talented and hardworking people built your agency and its reputation. They weren't at all snooty about the clients they worked for; they liked them to be honourable but size and sector were irrelevant. The work that they did helped turn small clients into big ones and crumbs into sizeable wholemeal loaves. Some even became blue-chips and so other blue-chips were naturally attracted.

Then people such as you joined the agency. Never having known what it was like to be poor, you took it for granted that your agency would always be rich. You took other things for granted as well, such as your clients and your agency's reputation. You hadn't noticed that brands, however strong, are never self-perpetuating but need a constant trickle-charge of performance to sustain that strength.

And now, of course, your agency is suffering horribly from a long and debilitating new-business famine and your management has started scrabbling about for crumbs. How undignified! How desperate we shall seem! You find it an affront to your own self-image.

Well, you have a choice. You can persuade your management to withdraw forever from the indignities of the marketplace and so opt for a certain if lingering death. Or you can help your management rebuild its business with the same conscientiousness and sense of humility that characterised your predecessors.

'But this isn't the agency I joined,' I hear you cry. Indeed it isn't - and whose fault is that, I wonder?