CLOSE-UP: ON THE CAMPAIGN COUCH ... WITH JB.(Brief Article)

Q: One of my clients is threatening to take his account to another agency. I have some incriminating photographs of him in flagrante. Should I use them to keep the business (albeit with an unpleasant atmosphere)? Or should I pass them on to the new agency and be grateful to be free of the adulterous lothario?

A: Let me respond to your deeply tacky question with two of my own. How did you come by these photographs? And how would you use them if you decided to do so?

First: if you paid money for these photographs (or better still, actually took them yourself), you emerge as a great deal more despicable than your transgressing client. If this were to be widely known, in what way do you believe it would improve a) your professional reputation, b) your career prospects, c) your new-business record and d) your wife's opinion of you?

Second: if you do decide to resort to crime by blackmailing your client, you may wish to minimise the risk of your own incarceration; so what is your strategy? Until your client has seen at least some edited highlights, you clearly have no leverage. And as soon as he has seen them, he's got to fire you: you've left him no choice. Adulterous lothario he may be, but it passes belief that he's as stupid as you are. He'll look you straight in the eye and say: 'Your move, I think.' And it will be.

So what do you do then? Invite the inevitable consequences outlined above? Or creep away sheepishly? Either way, you're dead.

You suggest, as an alternative, that you might pass on the photographs to his new agency. Another great idea. At one stroke you reveal to a key competitor that you collect incriminating evidence against your clients while being too incompetent to know what to do with it.

You've lost it, boyo. Just burn the snaps and get back to business.