3 Years ago I posted an article about content called “Your client is not a copywriter” and all the points are still valid today. What changed in the last 3 years is that now we have “content strategy” and everybody talks about content. Content strategy is an abstract concept about copy, photography, graphical elements and the guidelines to keep these elements consistent over time and aligned to the communication strategy. But does the client actually understand us, when we talk to him about content?

We just assume a client knows what content is

In client services we often assume that the client knows about the creative business as much as he knows about his own business – and sometimes they let us think they do.

Most clients business is not to produce content, in fact it is the business of writers, photographers, musicians, videographers, artists, designers, … also known as content creators. The business of our client is accounting, making coffee, build machines, … you name it, that’s their “core”, this are the things they know about.

It’s not in their core business to know if they have user focused, high quality content. Even worse, they will most probably not have the competence to know where to get or produce new content if they realize that they have no content.

Content Strategy is not only a buzzword

Educating our client about what content is, is in my opinion the most important part of content strategy. It is actually one of the first things we should do when talking about the project – because it will affect our proposal.

There are many great blogs and podcasts about content strategy out there, so I will not go into much detail. It’s a great tool, and you don’t need a dedicated person with that role for small projects, as long as it’s part of the process.

A quick recommendation is the Content Talks Podcast where you can get a great insight into what content can be and how to educate your client about it.

Get the content before we start

Even if  you don’t want to dig into content strategy – ask for all the content even before doing  the proposal. If you find that to extreme, introduce an initial step in your process called “content audit” – a billable step where you ask for the content before you start working on the project.

In either way we have in an early stage the possibility to get back to the client if the content hasn’t the desired quality or if parts are missing. Document the communication about this as it is important not only for planing the schedule for the project, but also if a deadline fails because the content is not ready.

Go ahead and take control

After the content audit it’s time to do proper content strategy, lining out guidelines and take control over the production of the content. I will say that 90% of the time a project will end up in a success when the responsibility for the content lies in the hand of the agency/creative side – we know what content will get the results and we push for quality.

Build up a vendor network

Networking for me means to build a list of vendors/partners I can contact for specific projects. You should have a couple of trusted “preferred” vendors and some for special needs. It’s a common in the print design world as you have to deal with printers, media etc. but I still see many freelance designers lacking a trusted network of professionals they can reach out to if they need to.

Strengths and Weaknesses

In the end it all boils down to recognize strengths and weaknesses, our client weakness could be our strong point – and our weaknesses can be overcome by partners. The result will be the famous “win win” situation, where ideally everybody wins – our clients customers, our client, we and our partners, isn’t that something to aspire to?

Secrecy is important to any firm who wants to launch a new product. By surprising the competitors with a product the firm can increase its market share, reputation and have generally an advantage. If another firm knows about the new product he can potentially launch a competing product earlier. Especially in the B2B world this can be disrupting. As an Art Director you are often directing also the overall communication of your client – so even this topic is of your business. After the break I talk about how I discovered a secret product line through crowd sourcing and how we can prevent such an event.

Discovering a secret product line

Two weeks ago I discovered through a crowd sourcing portal for graphic design that a competitor of my client is preparing to launch a whole new product line. They where pitching for a “name” and “logo design” for a range of products.

I informed my client about the pitch and ask them if they knew something about the new product line. They didn’t and neither did the market – a scoop so to say. The information in the pitch was valuable to my client since it contained a very good description about the features of the new product line and when it will be launched. Therefore the client informed its sales force and they are now prepared to answer questions of their clients.

What can we learn from this experience?

1. Do not crowd source design of “secret” products – especially if the pitch can be seen without any registration
2. Do not describe your product in the project brief – send the description to an interested designer after he has signed a non disclosure agreement
3. Do not link directly to your competitors site – I’ve found out about the pitch because I’ve seen hundreds of visitors coming from a non-industry related site
4. Do prohibit your employees to blog, twitter, Facebook about a new product
5. Use a project code name that does not relate to your industry or product
6. Do not use Cloud-Services for your product development - unless you are sure that none of the information can be made available to the public

How can you use crowd sourcing and the internet for spying on your competitors?

1. Visit crowd sourcing portals on a regular basis and search for projects related to your industry and competitors
2. Use Google Alerts not only to monitor the web activity of your firm and brands, but also of your competitors
3. Use crowd sourcing traditionally by letting the crowd search through social networks, forums and the web for information about your competitors
4. Sign up and monitor the support forums of your main competitors (if they have one). If they don’t have one try to open a user-to-user support forum for your competitors products – and see what happens.

This are just a few examples how you can leverage the internet for doing research.

Sometimes things just won’t work. You made a nice communication concept, build a campaign and everything the execution was impeccable. But when you and your client look at the results they don’t meet the expectations. Now what should you do? Normally we would think that we would try harder – but you shouldn’t.

The misunderstanding

It’s a common misunderstanding and our language and how we we all have been brought up leads us into this. You have to get “through”. You have to “win over”. We have to “resist” etc. This concept of being stronger than our counterpart to accomplish our goals is common in all our life. To make an everyday example: Everyone tells you, that if you want to conquer a woman, you have to show your interest, buy her flowers, call her often and in the end eventually she will fall for you. We all know that this happens only in movies and that in reality she will be more likely to be annoyed or drop you of for the next best guy who doesn’t care less if she diggs him or not.

To make a long story short – we think, that if something doesn’t work we just have to try harder. But as you can see, just by doing more of something that doesn’t work doesn’t make it work. Taking down a wall with bare hands doesn’t work just because you punch harder.

The solution

To get out of this situation is fairly easy and difficult at the same time. If something doesn’t work, stop doing it. Try something different – maybe even exactly the opposite. This doesn’t mean that if you do advertising, you should not advertise – but if you try to sell out a product throwing one sale after another you maybe off better if you make the product high class or you limit the availability.

It may seem counter intuitive – and that’s good. If something is counter intuitive it’s different and if something is different it catches the eye. Getting the attention is one of the main goals in advertising and graphic design, so if you get that a good part of the job is accomplished.

Now it’s obvious that you still should have a valid product and have done your “homework”. If you have the wrong product for the right audience and the right communication, then you still will not sell. You may want to change your target group instead of changing the product.

A famous example of such a shift is the post-it from 3M. You know probably the story. The original goal was to make a new strong glue. The result was a weak glue which doesn’t leave traces when removed. A failure for the intended target group, but by changing the use and therefore the target group it became a success.

In short: If something doesn’t work the way you planned it, take a few steps back and look around. There is maybe another way you can go.

Image by dots and spaces

If you are asking this question, then the answer is “no”. Your ask why? I will tell you.

You are never in the position to ask this question and if you do, you are not worthy for any client because you are too arrogant. Simple isn’t it. I’m inspired to write this through Seth Godin, the word “deserving” is really huge and in today’s business world I would never use this word. The only phrase, and it is a phrase, I would say is ok with this word is “Everyone gets the client he deserves.” There is much truth in this saying and you should be aware of it from time to time.

Foto by Stephen Poff

Why taking the distance from your work is important

Did you ever get upset because your work has been rejected or was not treated with the “respect” it deserved. Does criticism about your graphic design irritate you and you think sometimes that the feedback was not good because “they” didn’t get it. Maybe you are too attached to your projects. Having the right distance helps react better to criticism and to understand if a feedback is valuable or not. Its the “Watching from outside” perspective. This perspective saves a lot of time and nerves.

Why are we attached to our work.

It’s not unusual to hear graphic designers and art directors talking about “their” projects. Most of the time it sounds like they created something extraordinary out of nothing. I must admit that the terms used in the design community may mislead our thinking – terms like “creation” and “producer” want suggest us that a graphic designers produces or even better creates something. We call them our babies, like they where born out of our mind.

This mindset binds us to the work and we think of it like it where our property. Something we have to protect and give shelter. Nobody should know about it until we are ready to show it, defended from criticism and enforced in the path it has taken. I’m exaggerating obviously, but I’m sure you get the point.

The reality – you are a tool

So lets take a step back and look at our projects from outside. We have clients – this clients want (in most cases) communicate to their clients/investors/customers/workforce. They want to sell/lease/… THEIR product. The knowledge about this product and everything surrounding the product is property of the client. In fact is integral part of their job. The problem your client has lies in the configuration of this information. The information presents itself in ways to fit in the context of your client. Basically the client needs the information to build the products.

Your job is to transform this knowledge to something the customers of your client find appealing. The knowledge to be able to do this is your property, not the materials you are working on. Its in your head so  to speak. This is the service you provide, this is why you get paid.

What’s the deal

There is no point in being attached to something that is not yours. You don’t have to protect something that belongs to someone else. So if you get feedback about a project you can separate them into two categories:

1. Its about the the product or the information about it
2. Its about your ability to transform the information into something appealing

You don’t have to care about if the Feedback is about the product. I had quite a few projects canceled after the presentation, because they discovered through my work, that the product was not ready for the market. They didn’t have the look from outside.

If its about your abilities as a graphic designer then you have to understand who is making such remarks. Comments about your abilities most of the time mean something else. “This is a bad design” may just mean, I don’t understand the message. If you look at it this way you have more options to address this. The cause can be readability, misunderstandings in the briefing, … or simply that your skills lacked in one area. None of this problems can’t be fixed and to say it yet one more time. You don’t need to protect a design which doesn’t deliver the right message.

An example

Typeface, colour and the hexagon are from the original CD of the company. The plant separates it from the original and stands for the personal growth of the students

A client of mine opened an academy where his clients could attend seminars to market relevant topics. They briefed me, that the academy was to be self contained financially and will become bigger with the years. It should rise the awareness that my client was “the one” who is the right partner in the sector he was operating – for products, services and everything else.

The element of the plant is carried through the CD and the images are used more than the original Corporate Design of Maico

I made a logo and corporate design reflecting this briefing – it was based on the CD of the client but different in order to let it stand on its own. Like a cousin, not a child so to speak. The presentation went very well and my client liked my design – but…

1. He realized that it was too self contained and too self confident. Entering the education market so strongly was maybe not a good idea as they had partners in this market for years and they might see it as a danger to their market.
2. They had the impression that i didn’t pay enough back to the main brand – in terms of authority.

The hexagon has been replaced with the logo of the company – the Academy now is only a division.

Point 1 was their fault, point 2 mine because I wanted a strong self confidence in the Corporate Design. But I had no problem in changing the CD to conform the new briefing – its part of the process. I made the “cousin” to a “son” and solved both problems by integrating the Academy into the CD of my client. Not much work and both the too strong self confidence and the lack of authority transfer disappeared.

Image use is reduced and the contents are now in the grid of the Maico Corporate Design

You can see, that not holding on to tight on your work will benefit the project itself, you and your client. But one of the keys is good feedback.

But getting feedback the right way is difficult and worth more then one future lessons

How many times have you seen a folder, website, brochure with poor text? How many times you read a headline and thought what is this all about? How many times did you stop reading a text because it was tedious to read? I’m sure many times. These texts are not written by copywriter but by the client himself. As a graphic designer you don’t care much about the text, it’s not your business – as an art director you must care about it. Here are some tips on how you understand if a text it’s good enough and how you convince your client that is worthwhile having a copywriter do the job.

Copywriting is a job on its own

Like being an art director or graphic designer, being a copywriter is a job of its own. It’s more than just writing grammatically correct; it’s about tailoring the text to the medium to transport the message. It’s very similar to the graphic job, just with other tools. By that said it’s obvious that a client whose profession is to develop/sell products or services is not the right person to write the texts. Neither is the secretary or a journalist (unless your project is a house organ).

Advertising text is not the same as a technical description

Most of the time you will get texts which read like fact sheets or are technical descriptions which are suited for the experts. Most of the time all facts and topics are treated as if they have the same importance and the texts are therefore dull. As with all advertising you can transport only one message which has to be single minded. A good copywriter tailors the text to transport this one message and incorporates the rest in order to strengthen this message. You see, there is clear difference between simply describing the features of something and transmitting a message to the audience with the description.

Half-ready texts needs to be reset

The worst thing is, when your client thinks he can actually write. This results in halfway-technical and halfway-old school-advertising texts. You can recognize them easily. You find the company and product name hundred times in it (written in capitals), many bold text phrases (everything is important) and a lot of words like “new” “best” “never seen” “amazing”. The sad thing is that the strong points of the product get lost and you have to reset the whole thing and get a briefing to be able to find out the structure und the facts which matter.

Copywriting comes after the creative brief – but the copywriter needs to be there first

In most cases the creative brief is made not only for the graphic design part but also for the copywriter. But like I said in a lesson, the creative brief is a compressed form of the briefing which helps you stick to the track. You need to be at the briefing and so does the copywriter. You maybe want to get the help from the copywriter to write the creative brief and convey with him about the direction the whole project should go. It’s important that you both now what you are talking about. You may be surprised how valuable it is to have the copywriter with you as you proceed with the project. You can decide with him how much text you need or want for example – your job is to make the text fit into the layout and the job of the copywriter is to write a text which stays in the layout. The communication between you and copywriter in this sense is crucial.

Get valuable partners

Every professional has his strengths and his weaknesses. The same is true for graphic designers, art directors and copywriters. Some may be perfect for technical products, others for consumer products or cosmetics. Not only graphical appearance must comply with the audience, also the words, and the language. Some creative professions are already more open to classify themselves, like photographers for example, its common that a photographer states that he does only fashion. I haven’t seen this happen yet with copywriters and it’s your job as an art director builds the network and understands what the strengths of the copywriter are. Ask them what they enjoy most writing about, get to know them and the writing style they have. Get to know more than one, so you can bring the right copywriter to the right job. And finally if you have to do jobs in more than one language (of which you may not speak or understand some) is sure you can trust the copywriter.

Now that you know how important it is to have texts written by a professional you can approach your client accordingly and “sell” the copywriter to him. But to get good results you need to communicate with the copywriter and how to do this will be part of the next lesson.

You maybe know the saying: “If you don’t know where you are going, the road takes you there.” So you end up somewhere without knowing if its the right place. In the graphic design and advertising business this is the last thing you want to happen. You don’t want to present to your client a product, which doesn’t get the point your client wanted to communicate. Did you misunderstand the briefing? Did your creativity lead you out of the boundaries your client want to accept. To know what happened, and even better to avoid such a thing to happen you need a creative brief. I know what you are thinking, so lets start and destroy some myths about the creative brief.

Creative briefs are too complicated

You don’t have to start with the high profile creative brief. If you are not used to make one start slowly. Just put on it the most basic things. Client Details, the responsible persons in the clients firm and in your firm. The main goal of the project in 1 or 2 sentences. A short abstract of the briefing. The dates of the steps. You can build a form for it so you just have to fill it out. Later when you get used to it you can expand it.

A creative brief is to abstract to help you

This is really a pitfall for most creative briefs. The balance between writing about the facts and to not limit the creative output. You should in the beginning stay pretty down to earth and later on you can write a little bit more abstract. For example if your client wants a flyer for a sale – write in the creative brief “Flyer for a sale” instead of “Promote a sale”. If you want it to be more open write “Cheap way to promote a sale”. So don’t misunderstand the term creative brief.

Writing a creative brief is lost time

In fact you save time. Think about the time lost when you have to redo a project because you where mislead. It also helps you to get back into a project if some time passed since you last worked on it. Its common that you start a job and it passes a couple of weeks before you really work on it because you did not have all the materials. By the way, you get usually faster the more creative briefs you do. And don’t forget, you do for yourself already a creative brief when you read the brief and rearrange the information in your head, you just don’t put it on paper.

A creative brief is only for internal use

Use the creative brief as a the rebriefing tool. Rebriefing is the process where you send your client before you start an abstract of the briefing to confirm that you understand everything. By sending the creative brief to your client you show that you are a professional and you show that its important for you to make your client happy.

Creative Briefs are cure for everything

A creative brief is just a starting point. Its the launch pad for your ideas but it does not show you the solution. It will help you keep on track, but its not a creative technique. Just by doing the creative brief you maybe not get a better result but you will get consistent products. Its part of a workflow, its not the workflow. So if you write a creative brief and you don’t stick to it or you haven’t got the process managed than its useless.

Some resources for you reading

So you got interested in writing a creative brief. Good. Here are some links to example creative briefs and some further theory. Pick the parts you like and build your own that fits your needs.

• How to Write A Creative Brief + Samples & Video
• The creative Brief – from the Chartered Institute of Marketing
• the perfect creative brief (look at the comments – very inspiring
• Creative Brief: CLient, Goals & Expectations – from Method of Mayhem, nice and short

If you are not in the situation where you get a good creative brief (how a good one looks like will be a topic of a future lesson) you have to rely on the information you get from the contactor or the client himself. If you have direct contact to the client you will have to make the right questions. Questions related obviously to the project, to the client himself (if it’s the first project you do for him) and on the goals.

The first rule is the following – the client won’t give you all information you need. Why is that?

Self blindness

Your client doesn’t hide important information from you on purpose. He knows his business and you know yours, and because he is doing his job and doesn’t know how to do yours he is coming to you. But as with anything you know best, you assume that certain things are obvious. An example:

You are a fan of the formula 1 racing circuit and you talk to someone that knows nothing to little about it. You talk about Ferrari and McLaren and so forth – but you will not mention that Ferrari has always red cars and McLaren (since it collaborates with Mercedes) silver ones. They may ask how you distinguish them, maybe by the numbers on the car? Sounds silly, isn’t it? Just because it’s obvious to you, but the other persons can’t know it, since it doesn’t have the basics.

The same thing happens to your client talking to you. They will tell you the new features of a product and why is so cool – but all the underlying basics are lost.

Ask like a child

A child has to learn about everything, its naïve and doesn’t have a broad knowledge. It makes questions about things that for us are so obvious that we don’t mind them anymore. The strength therein lies in these obvious details. By understanding the basics of a market, a product line, a segment of population, a standard behavior … you know what to do to stand out of the crowd with your project. Or on the other hand you know what is a no-go. Don’t be afraid of making childish questions, you just have to state why you are making them. You need the information to check you project against it before you proceed a present it to the client.

A child is never a discriminator, but is not politically correct either

Nowadays politically correctness is a must, discrimination a no-go and showing that racism is not tolerated a daily routine. But you have to watch out – don’t be afraid of asking questions which may seem racist, discriminating and not politically correct. A practical example:

You have to make a brochure for a B2B-client which manufactures machines. You have one page which states that your client is the best partner you can get and show an image of a young man and woman shaking hands sealing a deal (not a creative approach but shows the point). This message might well miss its target because the deals are made between “men” in their 50s. You want to give strength to your message with a picture, but you say with it, we are the best partner for young people, even more when we sell to a woman. Your client might not discriminate women, neither the client of your client, but they may have conservative values about who does business.

Or say you choose a stock image of a business meeting. I now often see interracial gatherings in these pictures – this might be the case in big cities, but if your client is a small-medium sized firm which resides in central Europe the chances to have black or Asian people in a meeting will be low. Not because central European businesses are racist, but because there are number wise enough black or Asian people to get usually into a meeting.

You see, you risk that your client rejects your work because you didn’t reflect the world he is living/working in. You can’t imagine his world, you have to ask him: How do your business partners look like? Are there Asian or black people in your firm/meetings?

Think like an adult

You may ask like a child, but you think like an adult, because you ask the questions to get to a goal. Business in general is goal oriented and your business is to bring the message of you client to its target. I do not suggest, that you ask hundreds of childish questions to you client – but you have to make enough to get the feeling of the client’s world – or of the world of clients-clients. Evaluating how many questions you need is the adult part of the process. You can also separate these from the briefing, by visiting your client (to see the manufacturing) or its client. Its part of the briefing and it’s the base of your work.

How channel all this information and how to make a simple creative brief is the topic of one of our next lessons. Stay tuned.

In the last lessons I talked about the mindset of an art director. It’s different from a graphic designer in many aspects. It is often difficult to explain what is different, so I will try to make an example – a situation that every graphic designer who is working not just for himself has faced. The “too small font issue“.

The font is not small, is elegant

Picture this; you have to do a brochure or an image folder. You have a nice brief and the text is ok. Everything is set, you start doing the layout. You choose the colors, the font, and the images to use a make a nice modern layout. The client has no clear Corporate Design (and if, who cares anyway, this is about image and not rules). The layout reflects the latest trend in modern graphic design, but you adjusted it a little to the audience of your client – you used the minimal style instead of the grunge

Now you present the work to your client and guess what – he rejects it. At first you will ask what he didn’t like and he will give you some really bizarre answers. If you have a client that is used to handle graphic designers he will immediately state that the font is too small. You might say: “No, its 8pt, that’s pretty large. I have absolutely no problem reading it. And by the way, it’s not small, it’s elegant.” In the end you will have to increase the size of the texts. You don’t want to lose the client, but you are also fed up, so you do as little as you can to change the layout.

Causing problems

The biggest problem of such a situation is, that you didn’t discuss about content but problems. You did not discuss with you client about the great graphical idea you had. You caused your client a problem, because he could probably not read the text. Or if he could, maybe his clients are mid-agers around 50 – and they for sure have a problem with a font in 8pt. You are now in the eyes of the client a problem maker and not a problem solution and this is not good for further business.

Avoiding problems

An art director knows ahead what problems could arise and what could distract the client from thinking of him as a great problem solver and communicator. He knows that a bad presentation is killing the idea and not readable text is a red flag for executives and even worse for the consumer. No white text on light gray background, no all caps text … you know all the cool stuff. But in the end you have to think about delivering the message. It’s your job to not make it boring, but it’s not your job to make it an effort to get the message. A design can be elegant even with big letters; you just have to design it right. And think always, styling trends are like fashion – they change every couple of years. If you look back on some layouts you made in the past you will think about the colors or the pictures, but I’m sure you will not notice how big a font was.