How about this, I was working on a sizable project for a certain sneaker company and it's subbranded athlete sponsored shoe. The client approved the ads (which had snakes inter-twined around the shoe), shot, produced, major retouching and materials shipped to the publication. Large composite shot, trifold spreads and everything. Get called into a team meeting to find out that the athlete has a phobia of snakes and is uncomfortable with the campaign. ARG.

Marc, NASA does space stuff. not space, like mini storage, but up in the sky. it's cool. i also had a client, here at my current position, once tell me not to be creative on an assignment. that's always pleasant to hear.

Here are two of my own:

 ... class=MsoNormal>A recent example: We're presenting work to one of the largest high tech companies in the world. We're restricted to their image library, which is just one step above vanilla stock. Rather than choosing just one image for the cover of a brochure we were designing, the art director on the project rather artfully arranged several images from their library in a collage, giving it some texture, tension and style that the images alone were lacking. Our client contact was a former sales guy who was completely new to marketing. Consequently, he invited someone to the meeting who was introduced to us as the marketing professional in charge of his division. After looking over the collage, this so-called marketing professional's only comment was “There are too many people of color in this image. They don't look like our clients.” We were stunned. I've never experienced this type of blatant racism before in business. We eventually recovered and pointed out that the images were from their stock library. Thankfully, our client contact called to apologize later in the day, saying that the comment was completely inappropriate.

 ... class=MsoNormal>Another:

We're presenting back-to-school TV boards to a major computer manufacturer based in the southwest. In my board, a young teen boy is in his room and has the classic “what did you do on your summer vacation” assignment to complete. He's bored, but suddenly gets a brilliant idea. He goes online and copies photos from all sorts of cool vacation destinations, researches information about them, and puts together a report about his fantasy summer vacation. The client turned the board over on the table and said “This spot is truth challenged

Okay, get this. I had a potential client excuse himself right in the middle of a pitch. He said that after eating a bran muffin which we had graciously put on the conference room table, he had to "take a dump." He excused himself, left the room and about ten of us looking at each other in disbelieving silence. When he returned after about 15 minutes, we resumed where we had left off. No, thankfully, we didn't get the account.

Blue, as you must know is not an appetizing color. No one except White Castle uses blue for fast food. Hey, I'm pretty good at killing work, I should be a client! :) Hey Marc--what's NASA anyways?

That NASA comment reminds me of a pitch several years ago to a rather established fast food chain in the midwest. We had contacted [and got approval] to use The Blue Man Group. The client was rocked and gave us a standing ovation at the end of the creative presentation and then called us the next day and said they were afraid "the blue men might scare people."

Early in my career I experienced what I think is still the stupidest client comment I've heard. The client was a science institution and my ad made a reference to NASA. The client didn't buy the ad because they feared people might not know what NASA is. I've always said the masses are asses, but c'mon. Another horrible client I dealt with (and many other agencies have endured their own horror stories with this particular client) led us to believe that our agency would keep the business then suddenly dropped us, went to another agency, and ran the spot I built for them from stock. They shot it and used the same music I used. I guess they liked the creative and that was about it.

I gave a presentation on this topic - or the meta-topic that your subject implies...the challenges of working with clients as a "creative" service. http://www.id.iit.edu/ev... is the PDF Abstract: In design research we invariably collaborate with people inside corporate environments who operate with a different mindset; an orientation towards convergence, checklists, timetables, fixed processes and scripts. Yet our work needs to be housed within a more open-ended structure to allow for divergence, discovery, creativity, surprise, insight, and of course innovation. In this presentation we will explore some of the semiotic issues that can inform these relationships, to help build confidence and reassure our partners without "going corporate" or giving up on creativity. We will consider various artifacts in these relationships (i.e., the proposal, video deliverables) and review some ways we can manage real and perceived validity. Hope this is of some interest to someone....