You think printing stuff is easy. It's not.

^{(I found this little rant kicking around in my files, and decided to share it with you, though I've given it a fresh edit. I first wrote it about 4 years ago, but it's as true today as it was then.)}

Print production is one of those marketing-related activities which most people think should be really easy, but which is, in fact, the most difficult part of any marketing person's job. I know you probably find this hard to believe - after all, we're surrounded by printed materials every single day of our lives: business cards, posters, shopping bags, the direct mail that keeps coming through our mailboxes...you'd think that printing stuff must be easy, right?

But it's sort of like car repairs: Almost everyone has a car, you see thousands on the road every day, and your auto mechanic doesn't seem like a quiet genius type - and yet somehow, every time you take your car in because it's making a tiny little rattle, it always ends up costing you $1500 and 3 days in the shop.

Print media has long been the ugly cousin of what some people would call 'real' advertising, with the creatives who do tv, radio and Digital Evangelizing dismissing print specialists as 'hacks'.  But I can assure you that no radio or tv commercial I was ever involved in (including that time we filmed turtles, rabbits, chimpanzees, white mice - one of which died on set - and a couple of cockatiels, all in the same day) has ever caused me anywhere near the kind of grief occasioned by, say, trying to get a custom cardboard box printed.

And this rant was triggered by...

A couple of years ago I was organizing a big event for a client, where the takeaway item was to be a customized cardboard box, sort of like this box they use for Timbits.  It was to be printed with the client's logo and a catchy tagline, and then be filled with various promotional items from the client and their strategic partners.

I tried to plan:

7 weeks pre-event:  I asked the printer for an estimate, providing them with the Timbits box for reference

6 weeks pre-event:  I reminded the printer I was still waiting for the estimate

5 weeks pre-event:  I approved the estimate, which had finally arrived, and asked for dielines to give to the designer

4 weeks pre-event:  I lost my shizzle at the printer, who still hadn't provided dielines

3 weeks pre-event:  The printer advised that maybe I should just make my own dielines, since he didn't know where to get any

2 week pre-event:  I lost my shizzle with the designer, who didn't know any more about the dielines than the printer did, even though I suggested she just copy the Timbits box

1 week pre-event:  The design arrived, full of mistakes; the printer, faced with the design, said he couldn't actually print it as he said he could, which meant an incremental $2500 (for 500 boxes!)

6 days pre-event:  The designer had fixed the design, but had sent the wrong version to the printer.  Of course, this all happened at 5pm on a Friday, which left me losing my marbles while the designer and printer took off for a stress-free weekend of bliss, and I spent the weekend wondering how quickly I could find a new job, given that the imminent non-production of the boxes was probably going to get me fired for incompetence.  And, to add insult to injury, the implication that I probably hadn't had my ducks in a row from the get-go. 

The boxes arrived, in the end - about 2 hours before the event started.  

I wish I could tell you that this was an isolated incident. It's not.  I've had misprinted, mission-critical items turn up on Christmas Eve; discovered spelling mistakes in $50,000 print jobs that are in a truck on their way to the client; waited 12 weeks for business cards because no one could agree on the card stock; packaging materials that got printed with 'lorem ipsum' copy because someone used the wrong version; and had printers tell me that it's my fault that the client's official red colour has somehow become pink when printed on banners. 

What's the real problem?

Print production has changed a lot in the past 10-15 years - digital print options have made it much easier (and cheaper) to print in small quantities and you no longer have to wrestle with 2-colour, 4-colour, or 6-colour printing the way you used to.  

One problem is that the person in my position - the project manager, as it were - is the only one who ever has to face the client and tell them that there's going to be a delay or a cost increase or a complete failure.  The other people in the process - the printer, the print broker, the designer, the traffic manager, to name a few - don't have to have that difficult conversation, so it's easier for them to assume that someone else will double-check their work, and absolve themselves of responsibility for a perfect final product.

However, I think the bigger problem is that print production really does seem like it should be so easy that it's just not taught or addressed adequately.  I know when I first started in marketing, there were plenty of people who were happy to give me instruction in client management, strategy, media planning and writing creative briefs - but no one ever outlined the basics of print production.  Maybe they didn't know; maybe print production is something you can only learn through traumatic experience.  Maybe I just started learning before there was a website for every subject imaginable.

I did get one very valuable piece of advice: When you're talking about print production, it's "Fast, cheap, good - pick two."

[end rant here]

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...or am I just getting old?

The other day, my friend and former ad agency comrade Alanis and I were talking - via Twitter, of course - about the dismal state of television ads for yogurt, with specific reference to that terrible 'Find Your Source' series.  

Alanis was referring to a fresh new disaster in this line, featuring a bizarre fruit-surrounded woman DJing her way to yogurt happiness, but I can't find it online.  No matter, because the one I could find is just as representative of the genre:

However, the yogurt commercial that's been driving me nuts lately is the one for Yoptimal yogurt, which uses what must be the oldest trope in the commercial business:  The star of the spot keeps 'ruining' each take because she's enjoying the product so much that she can't stop eating it.

Unfortunately, everyone involved with this spot is apparently so embarrassed by it that the best I can offer you is the thumbnail above - even the production company (Spy Films) doesn't have it on their website, and the ad agency (Bos) doesn't have it in their portfolio.

Why did this one stick in my mind?  Because I remember this actress - Natalie Brown - starring in one of the most 'iconic' tv commercials of my youth:

^{(I do give her credit for looking almost exactly the same as she did 20 years ago.  I don't know what she's doing, but it's clearly working.)}

Those of you who are a certain age will no doubt remember this Heinz commercial.  Slightly cheesy, but with a little story and a nice idea and decent casting.

But that's the thing:  20 years later, we can still remember this spot.  When I went looking for her current yogurt commercial, it took me ages to figure out it was for Yoptimal - I finally had to find a list of Canadian yogurt brands and search each one of them until I got a hit. When people can't remember the product, and can't find the spot even when they're looking, your commercial has failed. 

I know that television advertising has had to change in the past 15 years:  When I first started working in ad agencies, 15 years ago, clients didn't blink at forking over $350,000 for a commercial or two, because everyone was watching tv and that's how you reached them. And everyone knew that, between ad agency fees, ACTRA contracts, and studio time, the costs just mounted up.  

These days, everyone has a high-quality digital camera and iMovie on their computer, they're watching tv shows online where they can avoid commercials - so what company is going to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a tv commercial when they can crowdsource something for $1000?  But while 'crowdsourcing' your commercial sounds like a fantastic idea when you're in the boardroom trying to impress everyone with just how iHipster you are, it very rarely translates into an iconic ad in the end.

Don't worry - I haven't turned into a curmudgeon here.  There are plenty of interesting commercials happening - they just aren't making it on to television.  They're living on the internet:

But it's kind of a shame, because it's making television even more annoying to watch than it already is.

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You may be getting paid to design websites.
But if you're doing any of these things, it's time to stop calling yourself a 'professional'.

_{Don't know who created this, but I found it here.}

In many ways I'm lucky:  I've worked on website projects for more than 15 years now, and I'm married to a web developer who knows a lot about all kinds of different coding languages.  So while I don't design websites myself, it's pretty tough for an unscrupulous web designer to pull a fast one on me and leave me with a hideous, broken, or grossly overpriced website.

Unfortunately, I'm feeling like I'm in a tiny minority.  In the past couple of weeks I've come across a number of new clients - and businesses which can't afford to be new clients, because they just spent their whole marketing budget on a disastrous website - who are in big trouble because they put their faith in someone who claimed to know what they were doing, but didn't.

Thanks to tools like WordPress, designing and building (basic) websites is easier (and cheaper) than it's ever been. That should be great news for clients, but instead it seems to have created a whole army of nincompoops who think that anyone who's able to download a WordPress template and stick the client's logo at the top is suddenly a 'professional' web designer.

It's making the rest of us look bad, and I want you to stop.

7 ways to know that you should stop calling yourself a professional website designer

In case you're not sure if you're actually a 'professional' website designer or not, I offer these 7 criteria.  If you're doing any of these things, to any of your clients, just stop right now.  Go find another career. In fact, I'm pretty sure you're going to have to find another career sooner or later, because your clients aren't as stupid as you think, and eventually they'll wake up to your nonsense.

1.  You play fast and loose with your client's logo

If you can't manage to use your client's logo on a website without stretching it, changing the font on the tagline, or using it consistently across different website pages, you need to think about being an accountant or something, because your sense of aesthetics is insufficient for any career involving the word 'design'.  Your client's logo is often the basis of their brand equity, and for small businesses it may be all they've got.  Change it and at best you make them look unprofessional; at worst you've cost them real money.

2.  You start using random colour schemes that have nothing to do with the client's brand identity

I've written about this before:  When you start injecting new colours all over the place, you dilute the client's brand identity and set a pattern of inconsistency that can cause a whole lot of problems.  Yes, it can be hard to create an engaging website if the client's logo is monochromatic - but it's up to you to identify that challenge and help the client develop an official colour palette.  Adding random rainbow backgrounds is not the answer.

3.  You use all kinds of different fonts...

...and then pretend not to know what the client means when they say their website "doesn't seem to look cohesive, somehow".

I got a call this week from a couple of women who were frustrated with the look of their new website but they didn't know why and their website designer wasn't returning their calls. The biggest problem?  There were 4 different fonts on the homepage alone, none of which was the font actually used in their logo+tagline image.  It's one thing to use a serif for the headings and a sans-serif for the body copy, just to offer a little visual interest, but more than that and the whole thing starts to look like a random collage. And you should know better.

4.  You grab random stock photos and then don't bother to customize them in any way

Ah, stock photography and the internet.  In many ways it's great:  These days, you don't have to spend $10k on custom photography when you need shots of people on a beach or something.  But stock photography almost always looks like stock photography:  People can tell that that attractive, culturally diverse group of people gathered around a computer screen, with strong blue tones and a white background is something you found on iStock.

It makes the site look generic, and worse, makes people wonder if the content on the site is similarly generic. It's fine to use stock photos - just make sure you make them your own.

5.  You lie to your client because you assume they're too stupid to know any better

The client is not stupid.  In fact, the client may be a whole lot smarter than you are, and more than capable of creating their own website if they weren't so busy conducting symphonies or finding a cure for malaria.  So don't lie to them just because you think anyone who doesn't know the difference between html and a CSS must be an idiot.  If you can't bring yourself to refrain from lying simply on moral grounds, consider this:  Sooner or later your client will figure out that you're not being honest with them, and they'll call someone like me instead.

6.  You tell the client that something "isn't possible" when the truth is you just don't know how to do it

The bottom line is that when it comes to websites, almost anything is possible, given sufficient brainpower, time and budget. Sometimes you're on a deadline; sometimes the client just doesn't have the budget.  But if you're telling the client stuff like "WordPress doesn't allow you to change the background colour" or "Flash and html don't work on the same website" or "It doesn't matter if the site doesn't work in Firefox - no one uses that any more" simply because you don't know how to solve the problem, you're lying, and you need to stop it (see #5).

7.  You refuse to give your client their files or passwords even after they've paid you for the work

Among real professionals, the industry standard is that once a client has paid you in full for your website design, they own it.  That means they own the files, the access to those files, the images, the passwords - everything, unless you have a prior agreement in writing.  Refusing to give them these things (or not bothering to get back to them when, a year from now, they need something from you) in order to keep them beholden to you is unethical - and could set you up for legal consequences.  

And that's what I have to say about that.

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Just because this is a rant doesn't mean there isn't a point.

Christmastime always seems to bring out my latent crafty-craft tendencies, and this year is no exception.  I decided to make these chocolate-covered marshmallows on a stick:

^{(I seriously need a better camera than the one on my phone.  Come to think of it, I need a new phone.)}

I'd probably make stuff like this more often - put anything chocolate-covered on a stick and you've got a high-perceived-value kind of edible - but it generally takes me the whole year to steel myself to do them.  Not because they're hard to make (they aren't), but because getting the sticks and the melting chocolate and the little bags requires a trip to Michael's Craft Store, and I can't bear to even contemplate that more than about once a year.

This is what the lineup at Michael's looks like, all the time:

Okay, this isn't a photo of Michael's. But you see how there are, like, a zillion people in line?  That's what Michael's is like.  

Today, I was the 33rd person in the line, and while it took me only 7 minutes to select the items I needed, it took me 23 minutes to get from the back of the line to a cashier.

And all I could think was:  If I'm limiting my Michael's shopping expeditions to once a year because I can't stomach the thought of waiting in line, how many other people are doing the same thing?  

I have similar thoughts about Winners and Tim Horton's:  There are plenty of times when I pass a Winners or a Tim's and decide against going in because I can see the line is 10+ people deep, there are only 2 cashiers working, and I know that by the time I've been in line for more than 11 minutes, I'm going to need to go on beta blockers for sudden-onset high blood pressure.

How much does this cut into revenue?

It's at times like this that I wish I was one of those behavioural psychologist researcher types who specialize in retail behaviour, because I would really like to know how much my - and I'm assuming I'm not alone - reluctance to enter certain stores ends up cutting into the bottom line.  

How many people, running a little late for work in the morning, bypass Tim's because they don't have 15 minutes to wait in line?  Does Winners lose business to other clothing stores because people like me can't face spending 45 minutes combing through the racks followed by another 30 minutes waiting for pay for them?  I know these stores have to balance cashier wages against purchases, but is a cashier:customer ratio of 2:10 really the most cost-effective in the long run?

Customer experience isn't just about friendly salespeople.

Winners, Tim's and Michael's all seem to be leaders in their categories, and maybe they don't worry too much about the business they may be losing.  Maybe they can't worry about it, because it's impossible to measure.  After all, as I said the other day, people in focus groups lie when they're asked about purchasing decisions, so it's easy to dismiss the "I spend less money at your store than I would if you had faster checkouts" claims of someone like me as false ultimatums.

On the other hand, Winners, Michael's and Tim's spend lots of money on advertising, so they must want more business.  Once you've got good brand awareness - which all 3 of these chains do - then your marketing is really about keeping yourself top-of-mind so that people purchase more stuff, more often.  But when staying top-of-mind can't conquer people's reluctance to shop in your store, you might want to reallocate your marketing budget to staffing, or even process engineering.

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Sometimes, throwing professionalism out the window is all you can do.

The day I smashed the phone down so hard that it cracked in two.

I was 30, a month into my first 'Director' title in an ad agency with a big dot-com salary, and 3 days away from launching a $100k website.  (It was my first big website project, and I was still learning that ASP was not, in fact, a Shakespearean viper.

I wasn't too worried, though:  The VP had hired a project manager:  "This guy's a genius with the internet," said my VP.  "You do the client management and he'll take care of all the technical stuff - he's a genius!"

"Don't worry," said Genius Boy.  "I've been running online bulletin boards since the internet was invented - I'm a bit of a guru.  Just don't make me talk to the client.  I hate clients."

People who call themselves gurus usually aren't.

72 hours before the site was due to launch, I discovered that Genius Boy had completed none of the tasks he'd been assigned. He hadn't implemented the changes the client requested ("They're stupid," he said, dismissively); hadn't tested the site on IE ("Microsoft is evil and I'm not wasting my time fixing bugs in IE," he said with a fastidious sniff of derision); had fired the Flash director ("Flash is stupid, and anyway you can't put it on a site with html," he said, erroneously); and he'd called in sick.  

I lost it. 

From 'A-list' to 'nutjob', one phone at a time.

I phoned Genius Boy at home.  I don't remember exactly what I said - thought I'm pretty sure it contained something about how I was sick and tired of his arrogant "...Apple-centric, passive-aggressive, Filemaker-Pro-is-the-best-database-in-the-world',  OS-dependent moral code" deluded worldview - but when I was done, I smashed the receiver into its cradle so hard that the handset cracked in two.  It's possible I uttered an oath at well above 'indoor voice' levels.

Five seconds later I hear a tentative "Um, Sarah?  Are you okay?" from two cubicles away, and I suddenly realize that everything within a 30-foot radius of my desk was enveloped in this thick fog of silence:  No talking, no typing sounds, no rustle of papers - nothing.

"Uh-oh," I thought.  "There goes my career."

As I saw it, I'd just gone from 'high-performing leader who handles stressful projects and impossible deadlines with grace and aplomb' to 'unpredictable freakshow' in about 3 minutes.  "I probably won't get fired for this," I thought.  "I mean, I didn't punch him or anything.  But I guess I won't be getting that promotion when I have my annual review next month.  No one wants to promote a loose cannon."

Losing your shizzle can be a great career move

The website got done and the client was (very) happy.  A month later, in my annual review with the VP, I got the promotion - and a raise.  But I was still feeling awkward about The Phone Incident.

"Don't worry about it," said the VP.  "You got the job done.  And to be honest, before that happened I thought you were too anxious to keep everyone happy all the time.  As a manager you can't be afraid to let people know when you're angry.  The Phone Incident is one of the reasons you got the promotion."

I said I still thought that raising my voice in a work setting was 'unprofessional'.

"Ha!" the VP chortled.  "That's a myth!  Sometimes it's the only way to convince people that you're serious.  Sure, do it every week and you'll get a rep; do it once a while and you'll find people give you a lot more respect.  And if means the difference between delivering on time and letting the client down, err on the side of on-time delivery."

And because no blog is complete without them:
5 tips for losing your shizzle at work!

Ideally, of course, we would all meet deadlines and client expectations without anyone ever losing their temper.  But even paragons of virtue lose it once in a while.

So how do you ensure you're losing your shizzle strategically

Here's what senior management people say:

1. Don't use long strings of invectives.  Three minutes of non-stop "F-you*&*&%$bleeping a-!@%^*^#&&*" will push you into Mel-Gibson-crazyland.
2. Don't get personal.  Referring to a co-worker's 'thunder thighs' is the kind of insult that could destroy a working relationship forever.
3. Keep it brief.  A one-off, 3-minute explosion gets your point across; an all-day scream-fest just makes you look like you need anger management classes.
4. Keep it contained.  Don't start yelling, "And as for you, buddy..." at everyone within a 20-foot radius.
5. Don't do it more than once a year.  More often, and not only will you get a reputation as a loose cannon, but your outbursts will lose their efficacy.

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