How much do you need to know? Probably more than you know currently. Take the time to get to know the dynamics of your clients business beyond just marketing and you'll develop insights that will add real substance to the work you suggest and present. Strangely enough the clients with whom I have taken the time to explain how we work, what goes into the process in order to arrive at the outcome, work better with us. Mutual respect and trust is developed through understanding, try it, after all we're supposed to be in communications aren't we.

Frankly, even if I felt I knew the client's products, competition, customers, and brand better than they did—and even if I thought they were doing everything back asswards—it would be downright rude act that way at a meeting. A while back I got a brief filled with proof points that I felt wouldn't hold up under scrutiny. But I gave the client the benefit of the doubt. "'We're trying to understand this." "Please explain." I repeated his own words back to him. "So you're saying...?" "And this is important to this audience because...?" When we got off the phone, I was prepared to work with the logic, even if though I didn't necessarily buy it. But the client later that day came to the conclusion himself that it would be a mistake, and killed the project. I believe that project would have been produced and blown up in the client's face, and ours, had we gotten on the phone with a "this is a mistake; you shouldn't be doing this" attitude.