American Copywriter: When you get wrapped up in your own industry jargon

This is a pretty interesting blog posted on American Copywriter’s blog. I think the most important point to bear in mind from Jennifer’s post is that you have to remember the customer. It’s not about you, it’s not about your client, it’s not about their product. It’s about the customers.

Think of it like this:

“If you’re going to take up space in my living room without being invited in – even for just thirty seconds – you better be talking to me about me.”

If the heat doesn’t kill you the humidity will.

Read it. If you do what we do, steal it – we did. But ONLY if you will live by it and plan to place it on your site, speak these words to clients, and don’t take spec work.

for prospective clients

What it says:

Dear Prospective Client

We understand your apprehension. We really do. Hiring a creative services company can at first seem to be a scary enterprise. There are many of us out there, and no one wants to make a bad decision. Both time and money are at stake. It’s totally understandable that you want to guard against every contingency of being burned.

At August Hour, we want a productive and profitable relationship as well. That means we both have to accept a certain level of risk and not expect the other to shoulder the whole thing.

You’ve never done this before. Not a problem. You’re shopping around for producers and designers in much the same way you’d buy a car: you’re hunting for the lowest price, the highest quality, the quickest delivery time, the most benefits, the strongest guarantees.

For buying a commodity, that’s a fine strategy. For contracting a professional service, you’re going about this all wrong, and you’re setting yourself up for some bad experiences. We’re telling you this in the hopes that you’ll be the one in a hundred who actually takes this to heart, avoiding the messy consequences of (what you see as) common sense.

First, expecting us to shoulder all the risk in this relationship is unrealistic. We can’t and won’t do it – like you, we have a business to run. Don’t ask us to work for free, to be paid only once you’re satisfied (a business practice known as speculative work, also known as “on spec”). Don’t ask us to work for you without an agreement, or without an advance deposit. Don’t ask us to drive halfway across the state to meet with you unless you’re prepared to pay our travel time and expenses.

Don’t ask us for a money-back guarantee based on your satisfaction, or on the ultimate financial results of our project. We have no control over what you do with the materials we provide, who you send them to or how solid your follow up skills are. We guarantee that we will do what we promise, when we promise, and how we promise. We vow to keep our word and honor our agreement. Don’t ask us to take the blame for factors outside of our control.

Someone willing to shoulder all the risks is someone desperate for work, and someone you shouldn’t hire. A person in that position will do and say anything to get your check.

But, then, how do you mitigate your own risk as a service buyer?

Well, you can’t get rid of the risk altogether. Life is risk. We assume risk every time we sign on a new client; short of requiring full payment up front, we have no ironclad guarantee that we’ll get paid in a timely manner – or at all. The world’s also chock full of crazies, most of whom think they’re sane. Right now, we have no idea who you are, what conditions you’ve been diagnosed with, or whether your meds are up to date.

Of course, you don’t know that about us, either. So where do we go from here?

Tell you what. Let’s talk. Send us whatever background material you have, a website address, your brochures, whatever, and we’ll read them. You look over our website, request our portfolio, check out our “work” section, read our manifesto (below), and ask for our rate schedule. Let’s take the time to actually know what each other is all about.

We won’t compare you to other clients if you don’t insist on seeing a portfolio piece that is exactly the kind of thing you want for yourself. You’re a unique business, and we do custom work. We won’t insult you, so don’t insult us.

We’ll take the time to really understand your business and what it’s all about. We want to know, we really do – beyond just being good business, we’re also curious about what exactly you do. We’d love to hear your story.

Our rates are our rates, our terms are our terms – they reflect the respect we have for the work we do and the clients we’ve come to improve with that work. Don’t expect us to do work for free or at a cut rate while you get over your jitters. You should be able to evaluate our skills from our body of work; if you can’t, then it’s unlikely that we’ll see eye-to-eye on project development anyway. There’s no reason to ask us to do your work on speculation.

Likewise, we promise we won’t hit you up for full payment up front. We bill in progress, payment on term 10 basis. Likewise, you can contact us at any time and find out exactly where you’re at for work we’ve done; you can also contact us at any time for an estimate before giving us the go ahead to work. We don’t mind – in fact, we want you to.

The reason? Because we’re sharing a risk here. We can mitigate it together, or deepen it apart. We can work in respect, or spend all our time trying to get the other to take on the full load. We can work with each other, or against each other.

Personally, we prefer working with you. We hope you feel the same.

Sincerely,

John Evans, Owner, and the rest of the folks at August Hour

I’m testing a new Widget that allows me to post to this blog using a widget on my desktop.

It’s amazing how this all gets easier and easier to do. I wonder when my computer will crash from too many widgets?

When I first learned how to play drums, all I had was a Ludwig Speed King bass drum pedal. It was squeaky and weird to play with. The first thing I did was replace the pedal. I had several different ones. After a while my bass drum pedal was always packed up with the live kit so I used the speed king to practice with. I forgot how much I really liked using it. The squeak not only made it fun to play, but it was this part of the sound of the kit. You can hear one on Led Zeppelin records.

It got me to thinking about how so many of the good musical instruments are old and about how much of the new musical instruments are crap. Why is it that they can’t manage to improve of the old instruments? And why is this the case mostly with analog instruments? Today’s digital synths sound better than the one’s of just five years ago. Newer computers work faster and more reliably than those of just a few years ago.

But, today’s Les Pauls don’t sound as good as the ones from the early 70s. Nor do the newer pianos, or drum sets, or or or.

It seems like maybe technology is better now at PRETENDING to be what the analog stuff actually was.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not some analog snob. Having lugged a Rhodes 73 and Roland CP70 and 4×12 guitar cabinet etc. around for thousands of miles with my 140-pound frame I’ll be the first guy to tell you to get a lighter keyboard and you don’t need a huge amp to sound huge. But why does the modern stuff have to be so good at imitating the old stuff, but not as good at producing the sounds?

I’ve always had this theory about analog mediums and how they are more readily apprehended by the human body. Pigments, sounds, papers, etc.; they just seem to be more human friendly. I wonder if maybe our chemicals in our brains don’t make us better able to receive information conveyed in an analog form.

If that’s the case, why are you reading this on a computer screen and not talking to me about it in person?

People ask me all the time, for some reason, what I think makes a song good.

I never had an answer.

But I’ll say this, I attach the most power to songs that make you fall in love with someone over and over every time you hear them – the songs that make you love the people in your life – the songs that are little buddas in the zen that is listening.

I’m thankful that my dear friends brought this music into my life, that my friend is able to keep making it; and for everyone who lets it into their life.

Oh, the songs? go here

Lately I’ve been reading Steven Heller’s book “Paul Rand.” I did this sketch and included a quote from the book to try and explore what he was saying. The chair is one in our living room. It’ was my grandmother, and somewhere there is a picture of my great uncle Maurice holding me as a baby while he’s seated in this chair. I’ve lived with this chair for a long time.

The quote says: “I have no particular credo, except that I must insist on the social responsibility of the advertising artist. He can take the easiest way, the primrose path of popular bad taste; he can truckle (great word) to the lower instincts of the herd and for a while, at least he will secure material rewards. But, I do believe, that living and working with the canons of good taste (trust and honesty) he will receive spiritual rewards.” — Paul Rand.

I think I’m drawn to Rand because, in part, in the early days of his career he designed on a shoestring. So he improvised and made a lot of his design by hand, or by collage. I used to do this a lot when I recorded music. I didn’t (and still don’t) have a lot of high-end gear and very few instruments, so I had to make the noises in other ways. I had to make an acoustic guitar sound like a drum, or a steel guitar, or a chair sound like a train.
It occurs to me that the best design, even video design, starts in the analog form. Rand said you have to be very good at rendering in order to be a good graphic designer. The same thing applies to music. You have to be proficient at your instrument, or AN instrument, in order to make a good record.

This is starting to sound like an old rant.

The point is, in this process I’ve been doing a LOT of drawing lately. Basically every day, whether it’s journal drawing or recreating designs myself by hand. It’s helping me understand, from a visual perspective, how these great designs were conceived. My hope is that from this point I can better understand how to integrate hand-done artwork into moving picture designs. In addition to Rand’s work, I’ve also been studying the British Modern designers (designers between the wars).

I’m trying to understand better ways to compose a shot, develop an animation, or develop graphic designs.

Additionally, it’s my hope that by including hand-created elements in EVERY design we develop we’ll create a more unique signature for August Hour and our client. But more importantly, I think by integrating hand-created, analog art into our video, audio and graphic designs we are working with the canons of good taste.

D. Price, Moonlight Chronicles

One of the more inspiring writers and artists I’ve seen lately (next to JW). Dan Price is the genius behind the design of Simple Shoes.

But what really inspires me is his journey, outlook, quest I should say.

“Price continues his search for truth and beauty. He’s studying the life of clouds that cross overhead unnoticed and is documenting how one learns to listen to silence. Entire sunny days are embraced like a lover. He’s busy making new pacts with the universe in exchange for purer ways of being. He’s hunting for a prize called innocence. And he has goals, the biggest being to somehow return to the age of ten, when the world was all wonderful and he’d disappear for whole afternoons, making tunnels in alfalfa fields, reading books up in trees, or playing hermit by a stick fire down on the river. He’s also trying to draw the whole world and write little stories that move your soul.”

Look around his site, buy the books and download the License to be a Kid poster and print it off.