Underground Blog

Our agency has been getting in more resumes than usual, which is always flattering to me. Many of them are from students about to enter the workforce, but, this being an economic nightmare, we’re getting plenty from talented folks in the industry as well. And I fear some of them have the notion that talent is all that matters to a Creative Director. Well, it’s not. Not this one anyway. So here are a few tips that I pass on to you in hopes that you will keep this in mind during your search. These are my and my observations alone based on the encounters I’ve had in just the last several months. Forgive me if my tone is a bit more blunt, but frankly, some people who just don’t get it need to hear this:

1. I don’t hire artists and poets. I hire Designers and Copywriters.
If you want to do art and poetry, do it in the privacy of your own home. In fact, don’t even get into our business if you want to be an artist or poet. Because here, you get paid for your design and writing. That means your “expression” is not always going to be favored by the client. You will have to revise it. Again and again. And just when you think it’s approved, you’ll revise it a few more times. Believe it or not, this will make you a better designer and writer because you will be continuously challenged to work within tight parameters and find ways to be nimble while you strive to deliver a product that is every bit as good — and hopefully better — than your original concept.

2. Get anything that doesn’t resemble an ad out of your portfolio. Now.
Wow, what an interesting illustration of the lead singer of Metallica. When do you plan on presenting a concept like that to one of our clients? Oh, I know — you just wanted to show me you can illustrate. Seriously, it’s cool that you have that versatility. But I’ve got a better idea: List that skill on your resume. Then, if I ask about your illustration, you can show me examples of that skill kept separately from the rest of your work, prefacing it by saying, “I realize that this concept isn’t an ad obviously, but if you want to see my illustrative skill, I have some examples here I can show you.”

3. You will not always work on what you want to.
I have worked on insurance, mortgages and semiconductors. You can make anything fun and creative if you push yourself hard enough. For me, the satisfaction in doing what I do comes from completely absorbing myself in the client’s business so I can understand their challenges and then produce a creative product that addresses that challenge. Look, many accounts are not “sexy.” Yet many writers and designers want to work on the “sexy” accounts. Now imagine how much more you’ll stand out by being the writer or designer who wants to work on anything at any given time — with a smile on your face while doing it. Stay hungry and stay humble.

4. Where you worked before doesn’t mean as much to me as you think.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m impressed that you worked here or there. Because that place you worked was probably a hard place to get hired. But I’m much more interested in the ideas in your portfolio. I’m also incredibly interested in the course of our conversation that you aren’t an arrogant prima donna that won’t get along with my team or a person who turns his/her nose up at an assignment.

5. Get to know my agency before you write or call me.
I know all the tricks. You think that you can get a little more of my attention by sending me a form letter that says “I respect the methodology of (AGENCY NAME HERE) and I’d like to work with you because you do work on (ACCOUNT NAME HERE).” Nice try. But I can tell that you’re trying to send out as many emails and letters as possible in hopes of something that hits. After all, all you need is one, right? Wrong. That’s a lousy way to look for a job and any agency worth a dime is going to sniff out the fact that you didn’t do your homework on them. So spend some time getting to know our company. Go to our website. Read our philosophy and get a feel for what makes us tick. Send me a letter that convinces me there’s no way in the world you would know the things about us that you do unless you really absorbed what WE are about. Yes, it’s more time-consuming to do this. I’m sorry, am I putting you out to spend 15-30 minutes studying me but you want 15-30 minutes of my precious time? It works both ways. Prove to me you give a damn.

6. Don’t make the kind of mistakes you would’ve been caught for in elementary school.
Spelling errors on your resume? Are you kidding me? That does a lot for my confidence. Thanks for the red flag that says you don’t pay attention to the details on important jobs. Next candidate, please.

7. Talk strategy with creativity.
There are many, many, many creative people out there. But let’s get one thing straight. You are not here to do cool ads. You are here to supply business solutions in a way that is strategically and creatively incredible. Creativity without strategy is a pretty picture and flowery words. It will impress me more if you go beyond saying, “I did this because it’s cool” and instead say something along the lines of “The target audience being a group of people in the southwestern United States between 25-35, it was clear that this group uses and responds to media in a way that’s different than their older counterparts. With this in mind, I built a campaign driven by their behavior that includes….” Remember, creativity is not solely about the content, but also in the way you are creative in the use of media in relation to the target audience. That shows me a strategic thinker who also happens to write/design.

8. Respect my time and rules for interviewing.
“Can’t I just come in and show you my portfolio?” Sure, total stranger. Let me move everything on my plate to accommodate you. Or maybe you can send me a resume and PDF samples of your work along with the aforementioned letter that shows me you would like to get to know my agency. Once I receive that, we can potentially move on to the next step. It’s a relationship we’re potentially having here and I’d like to make the right choice by taking my time. I know you need a job now, now, now, but I want to make sure I have the right people on the bus if I have an opening. Chemistry accounts for a whole lot in these parts.

9. Don’t be a pest.
Call and email me every day and you will not get hired. Persistence does not get you the job. It gets you a Restraining Order. You can check in from time to time to see where I’m at in my decision making process, but just be reasonable at the same time.

10. Never, ever turn down an informational interview.
I’m not hiring right now? So what? Next week can change. The big man upstairs can smile upon me and rain 5 large accounts on my doorstep next week (I can dream). Which means if you’ve left a good impression with me, I’ll remember you and you’ll have been in the right place at the right time. Or perhaps I might know of someone in town who could use your services if I can’t. Again, show that you have an interest in my agency, not just a job.

I hope these words from the other side of the desk give you inspiration and encouragement on how to tailor your approach toward the agencies and other types of businesses you might be interested in. Granted, some of these words are blunt but remember they’re for your own good. If I don’t tell you this stuff, you might get eliminated from the process for the simplest of reasons. Here’s to you standing out from the rest and making the finish line at a place that you absolutely love working.

I’m the kind of person that has a thousand different things going on at once. Maybe you are too. And I find it helpful to leave certain things I can’t do to the experts. In our business, one such group of experts are printers. And while I’m going to specifically reference printers in this post, I think what I’m saying has applications for other potential relationships.

When our company started a few years ago, we took the tour of a big printer’s facilities. The President was there, but it was clear that he didn’t have much to want to do with us other than shake our hands and be on his way as he passed off the tour responsibilities to an associate. It was a good way to make a small firm like ours feel even smaller. Sort of felt like Julia Roberts in “Pretty Woman” before she met Richard Gere. You give me that attitude? Big mistake. BIG mistake.

But then we came across another printer. He too had great printing facilities. But he brought something else to the table that other people wouldn’t. He believed in our company. He got to know us, our talents, our mission and our goals. He didn’t just say “we have this and that piece of equipment.” He said, “What do you guys want in a print partner?” and “Here’s how I can make your jobs easier.” He even believed in us to the point of where he stuck his neck out for us on numerous occasions in the early years of our agency when perhaps he didn’t have to. If I have a complex project that can’t be explained over the phone, I can have him in my office the next day.

I’ve been working with this particular printer ever since.

Unlike that very first tour I took of another printing company, I can get the President of the printer we work with on the phone immediately and we can talk about a project. I get a quote from him within 48 hours. His company understands that his accounting department has to match up with my client’s accounting department.

Some printers may or may not say this relationship is unusual for their business. But then, these are the same people who come up to me at the end of the year and say, “Hey, why haven’t we done anything with you lately?”

Well, here’s why:

Because you weren’t willing to offer creative solutions to my client’s budget challenges.

Because you didn’t consistently educate me on new technologies and formats related to printing that I could incorporate into solutions for my clients.

Oh, there’s nothing wrong with you as a vendor. You do your job just fine. The print quality is great. But as a partner? Not quite there yet.

Because the hard truth many don’t want to face is that machines are a commodity and people are not. While I expect the highest quality product each and every time, I come back due to the highest quality service.

Of course, I also understand that it’s inevitable that things happen. Machines break down. Edges get cut poorly. Inks aren’t quite at the level they should be on a recent run. It’s not a perfect business in printing and often the mishaps are corrected. But here again, the difference of vendor and partner appear. A vendor says, “This happened. We’re trying to fix it. I’ll keep you posted.” A partner says, “This happened. But if we don’t get it corrected shortly, here’s what we’re going to do to make sure we make our client’s deadline.” The key word being OUR. The print partner takes ownership and sees my client very much as their own client too. Which they really are.

More than one printer can occupy the role of partner. It’s just that I’ve found from my experience that there are many good potential print vendors and only a very, very, very select group of print partners. However, if you can land on the side of partner, be consultative and gain an understanding for what my client wants to achieve rather than just asking me what the specs of a given piece are, we can do a lot of business together.

The excuse of “I don’t have time for social media” doesn’t work. I hear it many times. But then I also hear experts say that the execution of social media tactics can only come from within that company. Well, I don’t agree with that either because frankly, it’s not always practical.

As brand development consultants, we can keep banging our heads against the wall and preaching “set aside 1 hour or more per day” for social media, watch clients roll their eyes and see this vital tool be forgotten about. Or we can be consultative partners in building that presence for them to point of handling every last blogpost and tweet for them.

If we’re going to keep preaching the benefits of social media – and I have witnessed those benefits firsthand – then I believe we have to help people do it to the point of where we do it for them.

What I am getting at is that there is an alternative if you don’t have the time for social media. Hire someone who does. This isn’t easy. You can’t just dial up a freelance writer and say “Hey, you write pretty well, can you blog for me?” Uh-uh. Remember, you are choosing someone who has to be intimately involved with what your company is about, your brand, your processes, your people, your goals and your customers. They have to sound like they work there and have worked there for years, even if they don’t and haven’t.

Let’s be absolutely clear – nobody can sound more authentic than you and if you or someone in your company can generate the voice of your social media presence, it’s a very good thing. But if not, the person you hire to step into that role has to come as close to your voice as possible.

Some people disagree with me on this, which is fine. They say it’s not authentic to write in the voice of a person or company if you aren’t actually that person or work for that company. What I argue is that as long as that person or company provides a rubber stamp of approval in a very timely fashion to blogs, tweets, articles, etc., social media representation can work. They are approving of the communication that goes out into the world that they don’t have time themselves to generate.

So as you evaluate someone to be an extension of you, keep these 5 thoughts in mind:

1) Be in agreement on the channels.
Don’t leave it up to the person or company representing you to choose the mix for you. Get on the same page. Make them explain why this makes sense for your audience and marketing strategy, not just because everybody else is on LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.

2) Quick approval is key.
Social media execution has to be timely and consistent, therefore the approval process has to be as well. If I have to wait 4 weeks for you and/or a chain of command to approve things, it’s not going to work.

3) Have one person internally be the quick approver.
Social media approval by committee is such a bad idea that if you’re going to water down content and make the approval process bottleneck that much, you should just not do social media at all. Have one person be the designated approver of content, make sure they understand the responsibility of the role and keep the momentum going. And make sure that internal approver has a very accessible back-up.

4) Don’t micromanage every last word.
If you’re going to do that, just generate social media content yourself. Why did you bother hiring someone and wasting everyone’s time? Of course you should have a say in the content. But you’re actually making it worse to put everything that goes out into the world through an extreme filter. If you can’t get with the idea that the person or company you’ve hired has to sound like a human being in some form, you shouldn’t hire someone to represent you in the social media universe. Be hands-on and be timely with approving but don’t be so hands-on with editing the other person’s content that you do yourself more harm than good. There has to be some degree of trust going on here. Allow a certain flexibility in the tone and message that must come with one human being trying to talk to others. And then, do what I’m talking about in point #5.

5) Communicate regularly with the person or company generating content to talk about future direction, results, goals and more.
Remember, this content is still representing you and you very much require a say in the overall direction, including whether or not a shift in channels and message is necessary.

For most companies I’ve seen, social media makes sense as part of an overall strategy. In all likelihood, yours is probably one of those companies. But the idea that social media content generation is a “done by the company or done by nobody” proposition is one I challenge and have proven wrong.

“Ghost writing” has been done for many years before the appearance of social media, so the concept of writers and artists handling communication on behalf of clients is nothing new.

So don’t worry about not having time for social media. It would be ideal if you did. However, if you don’t have time for it but want to find yourself involved in it, as I’ve outlined above, there’s another way in. And if you don’t take advantage of that road, well, then you really have only yourself to blame.

About 136 bucks. That’s what the average Facebook Fan is worth, according to a new report published by social media measurement firm Syncapse. You can find greater details on the methodology behind the study here: http://gigaom.com/2010/06/11/how-much-is-a-facebook-fan-really-worth/

We could probably guess that Facebook Fans spend more money on brands they are fans of, more likely to continue use of a brand and more likely to recommend that brand to others. And while the figure may or may not apply that well to your particular situation (your average Fan may spend even more on your product or service, not lower), the point is that there is often some spending power that is very real behind people who express their love for you, and it’s not confined to merely a “Like” button.

It becomes important to note this when we’re still hearing people question the value of social media — “Yeah, OK. So they’re a Fan. But what does that really mean?” It means that the power of Word-of-Mouth doesn’t merely come from the traditional places it used to and hopefully more studies and surveys such as the one just completed can continue to show that social media is here to stay as a very real initiative. Because if the value truly is anywhere near the ballpark of $136 per Fan, the value of a company engaging in social media and building a presence in places they never had before becomes that much more of an intelligent marketing decision.

From BP to Spirit Airlines (strike and flight cancellations), there’s a simple lesson to be learned here in the new era of social media. If you don’t communicate with your audience in a consistent manner, somebody else will. And that consistency shouldn’t merely encompass “spin” but how you’re putting together a real game plan for making things right. It also consists of eliciting feedback from your audience via multiple methods: An 800 number. A Twitter handle dedicated to responding to ideas and complaints (and you must respond to many of these tweets as well). A YouTube channel of daily updates. And more.

You have to be realistic about the situation at hand. You can’t hide the fact that gallons of oil have spilled into the Gulf or that flight after flight is cancelled, inconveniencing customers at the airport. The goal isn’t to put lipstick on a pig of a situation. People are too smart for that and you’ll draw the ire of customers and prospects alike.

Instead, I find the organizations that 1) Make their leaders regularly accessible and visible to the press and public, 2) Communicate next steps with their audience consistently and 3) Don’t pretend they know all the answers and 4) Provide multiple avenues for feedback are companies that tend to minimize the fallout as much as possible. In BP’s case, it’s not like a new logo or new name is going to hide the fact that their product is ruining an ecosystem. The focus has to be on taking complete responsibility (which they didn’t at first) and how they’re going to be helping the environment — from wildlife to economic — as a result of their ongoing efforts. Again, this is where social media can shine a light on that story. People aren’t going to fall in love with them, obviously, but ignoring the affected isn’t an option either. In such scenarios, 2-way communication via social media becomes more important than ever.

CEOs can either choose to engage or have the story written by people who will fill in the blanks with commentary against the company.