I had an opportunity to interview with Matt Mickiewizc, the US representative for 99designs.  The site, a spinoff from Sitepoint, puts clients in direct contact with graphic designers from around the world.

Over 22,000 graphic designers from over 100 countries.

And the results can be pretty amazing.  So far, 99designs has helped broker over 14,000 projects, soliciting creative ideas from places like Africa, South America, Asia and all over Europe and North America.  Each project is presented as a “contest,” complete with prize money and a creative brief to provide direction. Each entry submitted by a designer is posted for public display (check out examples of contests here, here and here).

Once a contest is completed, 99designs serves as a kind of “creative escrow agent” allowing each designer to hold the copyright to his or her work until payment has been received from the client (the “award” for winning the contest).  At that point, 99designs and the designer release the files and the rights to the work to the sponsor of the contest.

I asked Matt about potential intellectual property concerns. He pointed out that by keeping all of the contest entries public, the designers police themselves and flag work that is ripped off or obviously derivative.  “The community is self-policing,” he explained.  “We remove flagged work within twenty-four hours of receiving notice.”

A resource for agencies
According to Matt, 99designs is a resource for agencies that need additional bandwidth or are just looking for a fresh approach for a client.  “About twenty percent of the contest held on 99designs are sponsored by agencies or design shops looking to outsource work,” he said.  “These are often held as private contests that are viewable only by the designers and the contest sponsor.” The security shields the agency’s clients from the prying eyes of a competitor or wandering client.

The volume of contributions a soliciation can generate is impressive.  In the bygone era of creative sessions involving too much coffee, donuts, squeaky pens and pads of paper, a creative team would be tasked with the responsibility of “filling the walls” with concepts, headlines and comps.  Account executives and creative directors struggling to impress a client with their agency’s creative abilities would often present a “rustle pile” of tissue comps in an effort to “throw it against the wall and see what sticks.”

The “rustle pile” of ideas on scraps of paper can now be replaced with an online gallery of nearly printer-ready comps. 

One contest for Anthill Magazine in Australia generated over 270 comps for a magazine cover.  The gallery for this old contest still has over 240 of the proposed concepts online for review.  (99designs allows designers to remove their submissions once a contest has closed.)  A brief for the contest can be viewed here.

A concept for every occassion
I had to ask Matt about the most unusual design assignment posted to 99designs.  After thinking it over for a moment, he mentioned a recent contest to design a marriage invitation to be printed on a picnic blanket.  The blanket was to be unfolded, revealing the proposal, at just the right time.

“We heard back that the proposal was accepted, so it must have been a good design,” said Matt.

Chalk up another contest winner at 99designs.

Special thanks to Katie Lister at Vantage Communications for putting me in touch with Matt and 99 Designs.

One of the things clients seem to hate is budgeting.  I get it.  Nobody likes to feel they’re the equivalent of somebody else’s Sunday dinner.

Last week, I had a client say to me: “I’m reluctant to give out a number for that project because I don’t want the vendor to keep loading it up with bells and whistles to meet my budget.”  It was a refreshingly candid (and honest) statement.

So in a world of creative smoke and mirrors – where every job seems to be a custom job requiring (at best) “educated” guesses at costs and production timelines; how does an in-house marketing manager get things under control and make sure he or she doesn’t get taken for a ride by an unscrupulous ad agency or design boutique?

Believe it or not, the best process to use for controlling production costs on the client side is very much the same kind of process agencies should be using on their side as well … but more on that later.

The secret to controlling production costs is to take the guesswork out of it. 

Believe it or not, as creative and high energy as most agency-types are, they can be incredibly risk-averse when it comes to money.  The reason for this is pretty simple.  If they’ve been in this business long enough, they know that if a client refuses to pay a bill for printing or broadcast production or media (or name your major expense), the agency is the one who is often “on the hook” as far as the supplier is concerned.

After all, the agency serves as an agent for the client, representing the client’s interest and intent to make the purcahse in the first place.  Many vendors maintain that if the agency doesn’t have a fiduciary responsibility to them, there’s no point in working through the agency in the first place.

In fact, the financial downside for agencies is significant.  If a client refuses to pay (or just plain can’t pay) a media bill, for example, the agency’s responsibility to cover the balance of the costs outweighs the commission earned on the media schedule by a factor of 7 to 12 times (depending on the commission structure).  A client that files for bankruptcy can take its ad agency down with it.

Aware of the possibility that any client could become a financial “Titanic”, most agencies encourage their creative people and production people to plan for every conceivable contingency when putting together budgets – especially if the client has not provided clear guidelines with regard to what he considers to be an acceptable cost, scope of work or delivery date.

There are two main factors that drive cost when it comes to producing anything from an ad to a web site to a brochure to a commercial: scope of work and delivery date.  To understand how those two parameters impact cost, consider the following:

We’ve all had clients (or bosses) who seem to always add more to a project as it progresses.  What starts out as a relatively simple and straight-forward assignment picks up new objectives over time until it becomes almost Byzantine in its complexity.  This results in writers, art directors and others having to complete the project multiple times.  Some brochures I’ve worked on in the past, for example, went through 15 or more sets of revisions.

And some of those revisions were ridiculously small; almost certain to be missed by all but the most anal-retentive customer.  But for political or “artistic” reasons, the changes had to be made – each round driving the price of the project higher and higher.

Conversely, projects whose scope of work (what the client and agency agree to produce) remains the same but never receives a firm due date for completion can suffer the same kind of fate.  These projects pick up minor changes like lint.  I’ve seen it get so bad that clients and agency personnel change on the project and forget (or just don’t know) why certain changes were made and wind up changing things back.

Much of this can be avoided by documenting key production facts about every project undertaken by an in-house marketing department or by an agency on behalf of a marketing director.  At a bare minimum, you need to track the following:

1. Project type
2. Project start date
3. First concept presentation date
4. Concept approval date
5. Project completion date
6. Budgeted Cost
7. Actual Cost
8. Quantity of Pieces Produced

Believe it or not, just documenting these eight things can be tremendously helpful when it comes to establishing budgets early on in the process and finding areas where the “fat” can be trimmed.  Much of the same information can be gleaned from old invoices or from agency production records; so you may not even need to wait until you’ve completed a sufficient number of projects to start making informed decisions.

Because informed decision making is what this is all about.

Giving an agency, design boutique or freelancer a budget should not be a license to “hang bells and whistles on a project” ever!  The understanding you should have with your marketing service provider is that a budget is exactly what it is … a budget.  They need to come back to you with a clear scope of work that falls within that budget level.

If you need to be more frugal with your money than in previous years (not an uncommon occurance), then provide your service provider with a budget that is lower than the average of the costs of similar projects produced over the previous few years.  Encourage the agency or designer working on the project to explore new, dynamic ideas and present them as options or extras to consider.  The result may be an increase in your budget – but only if you see value in the “bell” or “whistle” as it is presented.

Deadlines need to be evaluated and issued using the same kind of methodology.  Make sure you know what kind of internal deadlines might exist for a project and then compare that to how much time similar projects have taken over the past few years.  You’ll know that if the internal deadline for a project is much shorter than the historical data would suggest is required – you’re likely to face some rush charges or up-charges for more senior people to work on the project.

By the same token, if there is no specified deadline for a certain marketing project, you need to use the information from your research to set a reasonable (and timely) deadline to keep your marketing service provider engaged and operating efficiently.

I’ve seen this methodology work for clients and agencies alike.  If you use a different way of controlling production costs, let me know by leaving a comment on this blog.

Unless, of course, you re-register to receive the fresh, clean RSS feed via FeedBurner.  Just click on the big RSS icon in the upper right corner of every page and you’ll be signed up in no time.

I’m sorry for the inconvenience but given our future plans I figured it would be easier to do now than later.

Thanks for your continued support. - Mike Bawden; Brand Central Station

ADOTAS — Unsurprisingly, females are using sites like Facebook and Linkedin to connect with colleagues and friends and check out products, but they also worry about privacy protections.

According to “The Power of Social Networking For Women Research Study” from female-oriented social networking site ShesConnected, substantial majorities use social networks to research products and services (79%) and finding deals and discounts (64%). While users understand the need for revenues, networking, self-promotion, keeping in touch and privacy remain their top priority.

Read the whole story.

by Mike Bawden
President & CEO; Brand Central Station

I’m sure I’m not the only one who has dropped out of the Twitterverse a time or two. Right now, I’m on a Facebook diet – only updating my status in the morning and checking on “friends” at lunch and before I turn out the lights in my office at the end of the day.

I’m blogging again, but only at night. I cue up the posts for the next day and if I don’t get much into the pipeline, I deal with it.

I’ve developed a love-hate relationship with social media that only my Bowflex and treadmill enjoy. I know these things can be good for me, but they take up soooooo much time.

Of course, I don’t work up a sweat with my Bloglines account like I do when I run for 40 minutes. And my wife and family seem to appreciate my time spent at the home gym more than they do on YouTube.

But I need to be here. I need to work on my business’ cyber-presence in small, digestable chunks. Not because my life depends on it, but because my livelihood does.

It’s important for PR practitioners, advertising creatives and marketing consultants to spend time in the social web – learning about what’s new and, more importantly, what can’t (or shouldn’t) be done. We have to learn how to manage the overlap between time spent in the real world and time spent in the virtual one, for one very important reason:

Someone has to explain to clients how it’s all done. And we need to be credible when we do.

I can’t tell you how many times I”ve sat through presentations where people started pitching Web 2.0 ideas to a client who didn’t have a clue. There’s nothing worse than the pit that develops in the bottom of your stomach when that client turns to you and asks for confirmation of a half-baked idea from some marketing pinhead who doesn’t know his widget from a hole in the ground.

But even if you know about all the cool technology, soon-to-be-coming applications, theories on WOM Marketing, stories about guerilla marketing, legends of buzz building … whatever. If you don’t know how to do it and keep it from overtaking your life, your advice to a client is nearly worthless.

The client will get that. They’ll re-trench back into older, 20th-century marketing tactics that won’t ever work like they used to. And worst of all, you’ll lose credbility in their eyes.

Dropping out of the social web is a bit asocial for a marketing guy. Having a client fall off the social media bandwagon can hurt you far worse than it hurts them.

So, I’ve re-emerged. Climbed back on. We’ll see how far we can go – and enjoy the ride in the process.

Over two-thirds of companies surveyed by a team from IBM claimed to take a more “strategic” view of CSR programs than simple philanthropy.  And over half of the companies interviewed said their CSR programs were profit centers. 

IBM Report on Corporate Social Responsibility - (download the report here)

What it comes down to is the fundamental premise that companies can make money by doing social good.  But this is more than just having corporate “nice guys” finish first.

Probably the most notable thing to keep in mind when discussing CSR programs is that they take time to evolve and even more time to provide a demonstrable return on investment.  As a result, many of the early CSR efforts undertaken by companies and their PR advisors were accused of being “high on production value and low on substance.”

Fortunately, these early criticisms did not prematurely end the growth of corporate social responsibility programs as a viable business strategy.

The primary reason for this is the fact that nearly two-thirds of consumers who hear and successfully process a CSR-related message for a brand develop a strong positive inclination towards that brand that often changes buying behavior and, eventually, market share.  The influence works the other way, too, creating consumer pressure on brands that are seen as ignoring social issues or just behaving badly.

In fact, a 2004 study of CSR programs conducted by APCO Worldwide found the following:

“Positive CSR information has led 72% of the respondents to purchase a company’s product or services and 61% to recommend the company to others. Conversely, negative CSR news has led 60% to a boycott a company’s products and services,” (as reported in PR Week).

These economic realities make it even more tempting for businesses to adopt a CSR position in name only, leaving the harder cultural and financial changes undone in the process.  In the case of environmental programs and positions (now so favored among US businesses), the term is called “Greenwashing.”

Now, admittedly, you can’t make all the environmentalists happy all of the time, but some of the corporate initiatives to “go green” seem to be a bit half-hearted.  Some environmental groups play along – becoming, in effect, corporate cheerleaders.  But most groups know adopting a environmentally-friendly market position is a daily grind.  An on-going task.

How do you know if your company (or your client) is attempting to ”greenwash” a situation?  Here are some helpful tips from a comprehensive article on the subject:

• Follow the Money Trail: many companies are donors to political parties, think tanks and other groups in the community. Few companies actually disclose in their annual reports exactly whom they are donating to, even though it is shareholders money. Ask about all their donations, not just those they boast about in glossy documents such as the corporate social responsibility reports.

• Follow the membership trail: Many companies boast about the virtues of their environmental policy and performance but hide their anti-environmental activism behind the banner of an industry association to which they belong. Find out what industry association companies are members of and check and see what their policies are. Assume that all individual companies support the trade associations policy positions until such time as they publicly state that they don’t agree with them or they resign. (See the article on the third party technique, a central plank in most PR campaigns).

• Follow the paper trail: Most companies, or their trade associations, will make submissions to government and other inquiries on a wide range of issues. Often these submissions will be posted to a website. They will also send lots of letters to politicians and government agencies, which can be accessed by Freedom of Information Act searches. Ask about submissions made by the company and their lobbying on issues you are interested in. You will probably discover that instead of lobbying for tougher environmental standards, they are busy trying to weaken the ones that exist.

• Look for skeletons in the company’s closet: Every company has major problems that it doesn’t want the public and regulators to know about. Some companies include information in the annual reports about problems that have been in the news in the last year. More often, there will have been problems, occasionally reported in the media, which they don’t want to tell shareholders about. Check for information on the company with watchdog groups and in the media and compare that with what they disclose.

• Test for access to information: Many companies will make lofty claims about their commitment to transparency and providing information to ‘stakeholders’. Don’t just take them at their word. In their reports they will probably refer to environmental impact statements, reviews, audits, monitoring data and other information. If it relates to an issue you are interested in, ask to see it. And remember that ‘commercially confidential’ is just corporate speak for ‘no’.

• Test for international consistency: Most companies will operate to different standards in other countries. Check and see whether their operating standards and procedures are consistent or whether they opt for lower standards where they think they can get away with it.

• Check how they handle their critics: Some companies go to extraordinary lengths to try and silence their critics. This can involve everything from legal threats (see the article on SLAPPs) to funding and collaborating with police and military forces.

• Test for consistency over time: It is common for a company to launch a policy or initiative and then starve it of funds. Or a company will make promises when they are under public pressure but never implement them when the spotlight fades.

So you have to take the good with the bad.  It’s like that in life, I suppose.  CSR programs are important and, thankfully, they’re here to stay.  But companies who take their eye off the social “prize” and focus too much on trying to find a competitive marketing advantage by adopting the mantle (but not the cultural change that goes with it) can run afoul of watchdog groups who can turn the tide of goodwill against them.

It will be an interesting marketing trend worth watching over the foreseeable future. 

If you’re interested in learning more, you can check out CSR-related stories every day by going here.

In it, Dave rants on about people who are keeping their head stuck in the ground when it comes to addressing the very real business issues that are brought on by an economic recession:

Many small business owners, particularly those in micro-businesses where they are their only employee … believe that if they just ignore what is happening around them, put on a happy face and say that what is going on around them isn’t real, then it won’t impact them … Looking at our current economic condition and saying it isn’t real is as negligent as the large corporations and government that got us here. It is our responsibility to think strategically and long term to create solutions that withstand future economic downturns.

What’s clear is that whether we’re freelancers, business owners or managers, the economics situation facing our country seriously and on a very personal level.  In his post, Dave provided a list of suggestions to help small businesses re-focus on the best practices of doing business.

I’ve taken those suggestions and re-drafted them as critical questions you should be asking yourself when it comes to evaluating how you’re positioned to deal with the recssion.  So ask yourself the following questions – and if you don’t like the answer, do something about it:

1. Do you have a realistic forecast of your cash requirements for the next eighteen months?  Will your current level of business support that need for cash?  Remember, in a recession, cash is tight and you may not be able to borrow short-term money to make ends meet.
2. Are any of your current customers likely to fail or not be able to meet their financial obligations to you?
3. Am I aggressively building a cash reserve for the business and for myself personally?
4. Is my customer acquisition strategy effective for the market?
5. Do I have adequate credit to withstand a medium to significant change in income?
6. What can I do to deepen my relationship with my existing clients and how can we work together to make each other’s business stronger?
7. What do I need to understand about the economy and how it might impact my business that I don’t understand now?
8. What changes do I need to make to the business in order to survive?
9. What economic indicators should I pay attention to in order to know when to make the next changes in my business?
10. What costs should I cut to create profits short-term?
11. Who should I really be studying and listening to in order to maximize my opportunity and grow my business in this economy?
12. If 20% of your sales staff is responsible for 80-90% of your income, should you still support your lowest performing salesperson? Same for manufacturing staff, same for admin staff etc.
13. What am I doing to make my brand stronger and extend it into appropriate new markets?
14. Do my advertising and marketing efforts have a strong ROI?
15. Am I understanding and embracing new technologies that will allow me to extend my message to the place where the audience is? 
16. What can I do to get more competitive and more visible?
17. What is the most important story I can tell in this economy?
18. What can I do to improve my customer service and make it memorable?
19. How can I create an unforgettable experience for my clients?

What are you doing to make sure your business will survive in these tough economic times?

Let us know.

I received an e-mail from a friend of this blog today who filled me in on an interesting online exchange between a blogger and the president of a company he blogged about.  As it turns out, the post written by the blogger provides a less-than-friendly portrayal of the president’s company. 

Nineteen months after the fact (Tuesday, as a matter of fact), the president contacts the blogger with more than one nasty e-mail message.  Threats of lawsuits follow and the ‘libel’ word is thrown around liberally.  The blogger was sufficiently po’d to contact another blogger, who wrote about the exchange and then passed the information on to me.

And now I’m blogging about it – albiet third-hand and without using names or quoting accusations.  You see, I don’t know either party involved in this broughaha and can’t vouch for them.  But that’s not my objective here.  Instead, I’d like to dive into the tactics employed and their ramification on reputation and, eventually, market share.

First off, consider the actions of the blogger who wrote about his personal experience with the company in question.  He wrote what he knew from personal experience and linked to information he found on the Internet.  His criticisms in his blog post, in fact, didn’t seem to be out of line.  Most of his post was opinion and direct observation.

Where things may have crossed the line is in the comments area – where readers commented on their experiences and the blogger responded.  The number of posts to the blog seem to have helped drive its placement in search engines like Google, putting this less-than-flattering review of the company directly under the listing for its web site.

Unfortunate but not intentional.  And even if it was, so what?

In fact, neither the post nor its placement in a Google search results page seems to have mattered to the company (or its president) until more than a year and a half after the fact.  Infer what you will from this fact, the appearance is that no one with the company was aware of this online negative impression (at best), or no one cared.

Point Number One: Pay attention to what people are saying about you and your brand(s) online by actively looking with some regularity.

Next, the president of the company acted – probably before seeking counsel from either his legal counsel or, most certainly, his PR counsel.  Threatening lawsuits via e-mail is rarely a good idea.  In fact, I can’t think of an occassion when it would EVER be a good idea.

Point Number Two: Don’t threaten lawsuits by e-mail.  Ever.

Next, the blogger gets his dander worked up and starts quoting from the U.S. Constitution to defend his right to free speech.  He may be right, but this could hardly be considered a constructive tactic.  Then again, it’s pretty obvious by the bulk of his post, there isn’t a whole lot of respect left in this relationship anyway.

But the point is, quoting the Constitution and correcting grammar and spelling in e-mails is almost certainly leading you down the road to conflict.

Point Number Three: Don’t poke the bear.

Now if “poking the bear” wasn’t enough, the blogger went on to share his experience (or possibly vent) to a fellow blogger who has picked up the cause and reported on the incident in his blog.  The quote at the end of blogger #2′s post is, I think, quite telling:

“Big no-no, Mr. Buchan. If you’ll look in the revised 21st century PR handbook, it says to never send angry emails to bloggers and expect them not to post them. Actions like that tend to come back and bite you in the ass.”

So, I suppose in a way, passing the news on to me is part of the ass-biting process.  Okay, I’ll bite.  Just maybe not as expected.  And that’s my next point.

Point Number Four: When you decide to stir up the shit, beware of the splashback.

Now I’m not critical of either of the bloggers in this case.  The fact is, they’re doing what bloggers do.  The first is writing what he knows or has learned.  For the most part, he’s sharing an opinion and there appear to be a number of folks out there who appreciated his insights.

The second blogger is also doing what bloggers do – he’s passing on an interesting story.  And he’s right.  This little firefight between blogger and company president is an intersting study in how NOT to react to a negative blog.  But by passing the story on to me, this second blogger runs a risk of fanning the flames of controversy with an (apparently) litigous adversary.

I’m not making any assumptions about intentions here.  What I am trying to do, though, is point out one of the inherent dangers of this social media we work within.  Rumor and inuendo are so easy to pass around in the blogosphere that we all have a responsibility to keep that in mind as we read, write and respond.

This is, in much the same way, at the heart of the big eBay controversy concerning seller feedback.  In a two-way medium like this, both parties need to have a channel that allows for civil and transparent dialog.  Inflamatory e-mails (like the kind sent by the company president) or the practice of holding positive feedback hostage (a very real fear for eBay sellers) certainly aren’t civil or productive.

Maybe thinking first before firing off that e-mail is a best practice all of us should follow.

Especially if you’re Steve Yastrow (writing for the Tom Peters blog) or Richard Rappaport (writing in Ad Age).  Rappaport wrote this tome for Ad Age and decried the rise of “snide” advertising.  Yastrow followed Rappaport’s article with this blog post declaring that “advertising is a sick business.”

So, what gives?

If you read the comments on both pieces (AA | TPB), you’ll see folks lash back against the writers’ opinions.  Some of the comments on the Ad Age article, in particular, are well conceived and convincing.

My comments on Mr. Yastrow’s post may, or may not be posted.  In order to be fully “on the record” I’ll post my comments here as well:

“It’s ironic (to me, at least) that I had to read a snide blog post about a snide article on snide advertising in order to find out what the broughaha is really about. The point of the article is not so much about snide advertising as it is about the decline of civility in ad creativity (although the argument is poorly crafted and unclear).

It seems Mr. Yastrow has missed the point here and, instead, has gone on a screed declaring the end of advertising as we knew it. He’s right that customers are more discerning than ever and that, thanks in large part to the Internet, have a more involved decision-making process than ever before.

Advertising, the way it was practiced in the 80′s and 90′s isn’t any more relevant to today’s society as advertising from the 30′s and 40′s was two decades ago. But it’s the job of the advertising industry to keep up and stay abreast of those changes.

To declare that “advertising is a sick business” is uninformed, judgemental and, well, snide.

Then again, it gives me something to blog about, I suppose.”

Yeah, that’s right.  I’m blogging about a blog about an article.  It’s a weird, Kevin Bacon-ish thing that I’m not crazy about.  But there are two specific points I’d like to make about both articles:

First, advertising has almost always had some relationship to comedy and an essential element of comedy is sarcasm.  Little reminders of our own humanity played out in such a way to bring us back to earth and laugh at someone’s expense (very often our own).  Sarcasm taken to the extreme can be snide and hurtful.  But many of the examples cited in both posts don’t go that far.

Second, even though the arguments weren’t particularly well crafted, the concerns raised about the plight of civil discourse in society is worth noting.  And, yes, advertising has a role to play in re-setting society’s understanding of what is and isn’t acceptable communication.

Interestingly enough, it’s the ability to listen, undertsand and truly communicate with customers that will interject civility into those relationships and enhance brand value at the same time.  And even though Mr. Yastrow doesn’t seem to understand it (may he doesn’t want to), that is the job of marketing professionals and the advertising industry in particular.

And what was it that provided that almost magical attraction? No, not rhino horn. It was a heretofor unknown ingredient called Retsyn.

I think it’s safe to say that Retsyn, isn’t anything at all. Just a cleverly crafted advertising gimmick for a less cynical time, I suppose. But the way it was positioned in the ’60′s and ’70′s, Retsyn was what made Certs better.

This leads me to a discussion I had today with a client. I was explaining that even though he and his company weren’t the focus of a story we had pitched to the media, his company was the thing that made the story possible. That, in fact, our entire strategy was to present stories about interesting people, clients, problems and products that were newsworthy and to make sure his company was positioned at the turning point in each story.

This is in direct contrast to what he WANTS which is to be the be-all and end-all of the stories we pitch. As I explained, his company and his service is only SO newsworthy. Pitching it too much or too hard will make him come off as overly promotional.

In other words, he had to be happy being the Retsyn rather than the wrapper.

He looked at me like I was crazy. That was when I realized he had no idea what I was talking about. I found this classic commercial from the ’60′s and used it to illustrate my point:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykk6iy6QCjo&rel=1]

Why is it that all the good ad allusions are lost on the young?