Five Tips for clients working with a production house, ad agency, or interactive development firm.

No one likes to be surprised by an invoice that is higher than expected, or a product that is delivered later than expected. Or, probably the most frustrating, receiving something that is nowhere near what you expected.

Here are some simple tips to help set your video, website, DVD, print piece or other custom creation up for success.

1. Know what you want, know what you need.
Ok, maybe you don’t know what you want. That’s ok. Does everyone know what they want when they walk into a store? Some wait for the salesperson to help, or some zealots thrive in making rash decisions. It’s all fine and good when we’re talking about getting sliced ham at the deli or a $50 DVD player, but when you are about to buy a $30,000 car, you want to have a pretty good idea of what you need.

Perhaps, you need to be consulted by an expert or someone who has been through the process, who can show you examples, who can walk you through the options and get you focused, not just on what you want, but what you need.

2. Communicate expectations.
This is even more critical when the message conveys information about an important event (i.e., wedding) or communicates to a large mass of people (i.e., wedding). Phew, I’m glad I’m not in the wedding business! Consider what you expect to see by certain dates. Express the quality you want. Feel free to share examples and over-describe. There is too much left for assumptions and everyone’s creative interpretation. If you want navy, ask for navy, not blue. Otherwise you might end up with a royal blue—not quite the same, right? Other times, it doesn’t matter and you should express that to…”Any blue will do, light blue, midnight blue…”

3. Limit the number of contributors and opinions.
The product of people contributing to a project is a bowl of hodgepodge opinions. Sometimes the opinions contrast. Sometimes the opinions are given by folks who really don’t get the big picture which translates into inconsistency or conflicting messages. Example: Client has a design made which includes a skyline shot of the city they represent. Their Marketing Director asks for the sky to be muted so the text on the sky punches out more clearly. The Vice President says make the sky a richer, vibrant blue…”Everyone loves a deep, blue sky!” Yea, but not when you can’t read the message!

4. Designate a Project Lead from your company.
Sometimes one single, but strong difference of opinion between two clients can gridlock a project to a halt. The vendor is stuck in the middle. Whose opinion should the vendor follow—the junior employee who is closest to the content in question or the seasoned executive?

Just as it is important for the production company to have a project lead, the client needs a lead as well. This project lead wrestles the unwieldy opinions from the many contributors and turns them into a “controlled” voice that ensures the project doesn’t endure scope creep, delayed deliverables, change orders, and higher costs.

5. Invest the time planning the project.
Media projects are built very similar to houses. If you’ve ever gone through a remodeling project or a built your dream home, you will totally get this analogy!

Just like a house starts with a blue print, media projects typically start with a script or some type of plan. Then, wireframes are built to provide the team (including client) with an idea of what it will look like. This includes how things will be placed on the screen, on the stage, on paper.

Majority of decisions are made in beginning of the project, yet many clients get involved after deliverables start coming. In order for a project to stay on budget and stay on schedule, a client MUST be involved with the planning.

Like a brick wall, there is a cornerstone that the rest of the bricks are built upon. This could signify a video script. If you have already shot a scene and edited into the video, but now you decide you want the dialogue changed, well it’s more than a quick “word change.” The video needs re-scripted, the talent rebooked (hopefully they are available), the video recorded, the video re-edited with the new scene. Suggesting to a producer that a script change is required, is just as costly telling a building contractor you didn’t want a ranch home, you wanted a 3 story home after you see the framing of the ranch house. Now the builder not only has to tear out the framing, but also dig deeper footings to support the larger structure. And, of course it comes as an additional cost.

Clients benefit from staying engaged in a project at the start because they see the building blocks that become the foundation for the project. Changes to the building blocks are easier and cheaper to do before the next stone is in place. Last minute changes, even small tweaks, may even create quality issues with the finished product. This is especially true with interactive products like websites and DVD-ROMs.

I hope this helps you get what you want, on time and on budget from your vendor.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 11th, 2007 at 9:56 am and is filed under General Communications. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.