Received really negative feedback from a client at work - help please

[soupsettttt]

I work in advertising and today I received a really horrible email from a client about a piece of work I produced. I'm quite junior (it's a graduate role) and have been working there for 6 months for context. My work is reviewed and signed off by two senior members of staff before it goes to the client.

I've never received negative feedback before from a client, even with clients known for being notoriously picky and critical. I'm used to receiving positive feedback.

This afternoon I received a long email in response to a piece of work I submitted saying how bad it was, far below the standard needed/expected, saying I must be a junior person to have produced something of this standard and questioning our internal review process that this quality of work got sent. They CC'd in several senior people at my company.

I was completely and utterly shocked by it. I then looked at their specific feedback on the piece of work and it was a reasonable amount of feedback, more than I'm used to getting from clients but an ok amount for a first draft. Some minor wording changes are needed but nothing too crazy. During our internal review process I had positive feedback with positive comments, so I thought I along the right lines so to get this kind of email felt totally out of the blue.

I feel so upset by it. I'm glad I was working from home today as I burst into tears when I read the email. I have a 1:1 with my manager tomorrow and I know she will bring it up but I don't really know how to discuss it in a professional way. At the moment it feels very raw and upsetting. Should I frame it as a learning experience? Acknowledge that this has been difficult to hear, but it's taught me to how to react to negative feedback and how to work as a team to rectify? Do I apologise to my manager? I just don't know what's the right thing to say

I feel so humiliated

The one thing I can 100% categorically tell you is that your senior managers will not be wasting their weekend worrying about a bad drafts. Bad drafts are part of the process. Sometimes they uncover what the client doesn't want (because they didn't know until they saw it); sometimes they uncover a poor brief; sometimes they uncover that they project itself is ill-conceived; and sometimes it's just a bad draft. No-one gets it right all the time.

I must admit I don't like the system of removing creatives from the briefing process, I don't like filters and every filter dilutes the message. That's something you could bring up. One busy agency I work for doesn't feel that taking creatives out of the studio for briefings works particularly well for them, so they sent all their account managers on a how to brief course, I saw a huge jump in the quality of their briefing after that. So there are definitely ways to get you closer to the story that you can suggest.

But HONESTLY you need to stop ruminating. Your seniors signed off, your line manager is happy, you've engaged in the process and have learned something from it. And running through it all is the highly likely possibility that your client is a dick. That's it done now. Time to shrug it off and move on.

Maybe before doing a first draft I should have requested a call to say I'm finding the brief a little unclear, can we talk through it? Because I'm junior I'm not allowed to join calls with the clients, so I have to hear everything second-hand, including feedback that are given in calls/meetings.

I think this then gives some answers to the earlier questions on the post. You weren't even there to hear the brief directly! This is very much on your more senior colleagues, not you.

I think your more senior colleagues will be very aware that this is their responsibility, but they will be more used to getting negative feedback and it certainly won't be running their weekend and knocking their confidence like it is you.

My first thought reading this was that if the revisions could be done in < 1 hour, then the sweeping criticisms were definitely uncalled for. It sounds like a team only rallied around and spent ages (actually a few hours) reviewing, because the client was so unhappy -- not because the work OP did was so terrible and needed a lot of changes.

As others say, the work was signed off by a whole TEAM who thought the product was reasonable quality at this stage.

So in short, some clients are unreasonable and communicate badly.

It's a job hazard. You of course respond professionally but definitely don't take their words personally.