Please Feed The Animals

The following is the seventh in series of articles written by Josh Copeland for people with careers in account service. This feature will appear every Thursday.

The portfolio that I’ve been sharing with PFTA is now in production.  While it is being built, I wanted to revisit an unresolved topic: sharing sensitive client data in case studies.

Thing is, most of the work that we do in advertising/pr/media is private and governed by Confidentiality & Non Disclosure Agreements. This inhibits our ability to share campaign results. Some of us disregard the NDAs and post reels, recap videos and campaign spots on YouTube anyway, forgoing the risk for the sake of the reward of a new job.  But if I’m going to have a portfolio website available 24/7, I’d prefer it not be a target for lawsuits.

I believe we all try to strike a balance with confidential information. But lawyers for many of the agencies & agency holding companies that have employed us have created broad blanket statements that cover most forms of information we can share.

So what’s an account guy to do?

Here are a few initial guidelines I’m following, but I’m curious about what you’d do if you were me.

• Should campaign results focus on percentages gained or lost rather than absolute amounts? Absolute amounts aren’t usually released in corporate earnings statements so percentages may help minimize proprietary info. Percentages matter more to managers anyway.
• Has any of the disclosed information become publicly known? If so, it has likely entered the public domain and may have less liability to its disclosure.
• Trade secrets are forever. If you learned the KFC secret blend of spices while working on that account, you’ll have to take it to your grave.
• Want to include status sheets in your materials? I do – and so I blur out the information on them.  Potential managers may just want to understand how you organize information– and understand how many projects you’ve worked on during a given week.
• Creative briefs? I’d like to include them, but will be weary about including sensitive target demographic info.  It’s likely something I’d speak to during the interview.

What about trend presentations or other decks? Some people are putting them on SlideShare. Is that ok?

Am I being overly sensitive? Is there some balance I should strive for that toplines this stuff without disclosing too much?

Tell me why I’m being too cautious (or not cautious enough).