Listed here are some essential habits to ensure one has what it takes to survive in a world where globalization is increasing its hold on multiple markets and to keep up with the momentum of our world’s ever-changing trends.

• Learn to listen. Not only to your clients, but to your creative team, to your assistants and to your peers. Fresh ideas come from within you and from those you are surrounded by on a day-to-day basis and oftentimes, that brilliant idea you have been waiting for will come from someone you rarely listen to.
• Be aware of others’ fears. Those of us with a strong emotional IQ, know that it is important to gage others emotions, motivations and fears. Depending on their personality type, those you work with may fear loss of control, making an error, etc. Keep this in mind at all times, this can significantly better your work environment.
• Go above and beyond. Meeting a client’s expectations will make you forgettable, exceeding expectations makes you unforgettable; do not expect to continue a partnership with a client if you have not surprised them a few times over the course of your relationship.
• Read. There is a wealth of information at our disposal. Do not let it go to waste. Take time out of your day to pull an article that intrigues you, opens your eyes to something new and adds to your repertoire of knowledge. It is easy to allow the demands of work to suck you in daily, but remember next time you are in a brainstorm session, you want to be able to bring something to the table.
• Just do it. Some people think it is suffice to talk about everything and have laundry lists of what they will do, but actions always speak louder than words. Look at your list; take the first item on the top and dive into it. Once you get started, you will find that things will begin to flow. Who knows you might create your masterpiece of the day.

Weave these into your lifestyle and you will be on the road to success. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

If you’re a designer, there are going to be some days when you don’t feel like you can get the creative juices to flow. So, what do you do if something that you used to enjoy has become inundated with crazy deadlines, design criteria and the ever-popular “design block”? Here are my suggestions on how to get the juice to flow.

Sleep On It

A good night’s sleep can have great impact on your ability to problem-solve your creative block. In addition, many creative people say that they will ponder a problem or creative roadblock as they drift off to sleep and then turn it over to their subconscious mind to review as they snooze.

Mother Nature Might Hold The Key

When you allow yourself to step away from the workspace that you occupy each day, you should remind yourself of what Mother Nature has of offer. Among this amazing diversity in nature, you can explore new colors, textures, sounds, sizes, shapes and composition. Allowing your mind to explore, creative juices will (in theory) become more focused, your mind will be cleared and solutions and inspiration will begin to flow far more freely.

FUN FACT: Velcro was inspired by nature. The Swiss Georges de Mestral, inventor of Velcro, noticed how the sticky seed heads of burdock plants attached themselves to his pants and to his dog after walks in the woods. This observation led him to invent the product now called Velcro in 1948.

Just Do It

I have uttered these three, short words to myself many times in order to draw inspiration from somewhere to get something done. More often than not, it’s not that you’ve run out of ideas, it’s just that you’ve forgotten what it feels like to create designs based on how you’re feeling at the time. Give yourself the time to enjoy your craft.

Remind yourself why you love to design so much. Think of this as revving up your engine and giving it time to warm up. Somewhere down the line, you will have the momentum to get started and get things rolling.

Work It Out With A Workout

In addition to keeping your backside from spreading, a good workout is one of the best ways to gain inspiration. Think of it as “inspiration through perspiration”. An exercise session can take your mind off the issue at hand and allow that subconscious problem-solving to kick in. It also increases oxygen flow to the brain, upping your ability to think and problem-solve more effectively. You feel better and your creative blocks don’t seem so difficult to overcome.

Hopefully these juicy ideas will shake off that sluggish design state of mind and get you back on the creative track.

BONUS: Illustrator: Design Tip

Ever want to add a gradient to text in Illustrator without converting the text to outline? Here is how.

Step One

Using the Type tool, type out some text.

Step Two

Using the Selection Tool, click on your text to select it. Now go to your Appearance palette. If you don’t see it, go to Window > Appearance. Click the little arrow in the top right of the palette and choose the following> add new fill.

In the Appearance palette you’ll see a new layer for a Fill.

Step Three

Now You Can Apply Your Gradient! Click On A Gradient Swatch Or Create Your Own. If You Don’t See Your Gradient palette, go to Window > Gradient.

The best thing about it is that you can still edit the text!

The Appearance palette also has the option to add additional strokes. That’s how you can create text with multiple strokes. The cool thing is you can move the strokes and fills around in the Appearance palette just like layers in Photoshop. Use some Illustrator filters on top of that and you can do some pretty fun stuff.

Everybody wants it, and those who have it want more of it! Nobody wants to give it away, and if you’re the Operations Manager of a creative ad agency – this can be a problem.

The more figures you can move from your AR statement to your bank statement, the happier the CEO. If we follow this logic, both the bank statements and the happiness of the head-honcho, is your hands. If he is happy – so is everyone else.

So how do you keep account receivables running smoothly? Stay consistent. Know your clients’ payment habits and keep up with them. If you know your client tends to pay within an acceptable amount of time, give them the buffer, but check-in weekly and call immediately if their check has not arrived.

I find that when you are not consistent with the calls and the e-mail reminders, payments start to come in slower. A quick weekly check-in and a few e-mails is all it takes to make your accounts receivables less of a nightmare.

Having a great rapport with your client is also very helpful.  Once I started e-mailing those who handled the clients’ accounts payable on a more consistent basis and getting to know them, I started getting e-mails from them in return indicating that a check was on its way – fabulous!!!

It is hard to get into a routine. No one really wants to “ask” for payment and no one really should have to “beg” for it.  Sending an e-mail reminder is a gentler, less intrusive way to ask for payment. I would start there. If a check has still not shown up by the date you were given, make the dreaded phone call. Procrastination will not fund payroll!

If push comes to shove, you’re not getting anywhere and the account is well past 60 days overdue, it’s time to start making calls and writing e-mails two or three times a week. Role-play the ultimate nag.

When constant nagging does not work, you may need to call someone higher-up at the company. I would put the onus on you first.  Ask if there is a problem with the invoice, do they want to discuss it with their account manager? This is also the time to discuss a payment option. Once an invoice hits 90 days overdue, it will be harder to collect.  So now is the time to involve a collection lawyer or agency.

One final thought, humor can make requesting payment a little less painful. As I also cover our accounts payable department, I once received a late payment notice with a bit of humor I though I’d share. Instead of the typical “PAST DUE” stamped on the statement this company had a sticker that said “money talks but yours hasn’t spoken to us in a while”….  I laughed and paid the account.

“The safe way to double your money is to fold it over once and put it in your pocket.” ~ Frank Hubbard
“We can tell our values by looking at our checkbook stubs.” ~ Gloria Steinem
“There is a very easy way to return from a casino with a small fortune:  go there with a large one.” ~ Jack Yelton
“I am opposed to millionaires, but it would be dangerous to offer me the position.  ~ Mark Twain
“They who are of the opinion that Money will do everything, may very well be suspected to do everything for Money.” ~ George Savile, Complete Works, 1912
“I cannot afford to waste my time making money.” ~ Louis Agassiz
“There’s no money in poetry, but then there’s no poetry in money, either.” ~ Robert Graves
“When I have money, I get rid of it quickly, lest it find a way into my heart.” ~ John Wesley

“It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocketbook often groans more loudly than an empty stomach.” ~ Franklin Delano Roosevelt
“After a visit to the beach, it’s hard to believe that we live in a material world.” ~ Pam Shaw
“The real measure of your wealth is how much you’d be worth if you lost all your money.” ~ Author Unknown
“Only when the last tree has died and the last river been poisoned and the last fish been caught will we realize we cannot eat money.” ~ Cree Indian Proverb
“The only reason a great many American families don’t own an elephant is that they have never been offered an elephant for a dollar down and easy weekly payments.” ~ Mad Magazine
“I’d like to live as a poor man with lots of money.” ~ Pablo Picasso

Thank you Quote Garden – http://www.quotegarden.com/money.html

By hoping and praying? Calling every ad sales team in the nation? We think not.

If you have a client for whom you purchase multiple newspapers in multiple markets, you many want to consider utilizing a newspaper-buying network to help. There are actually several, including the Newspaper National Network, the Florida Press Service and others, like Valassis.

Some media buyers and planners choose to deal with every paper individually, and this is fine, as it is part of maintaining relationships and is ideal for particular clients. But, if you have either a huge multi-market client and/or a modest media buying department, the services that these buying groups provide can be invaluable.

Benefits of newspaper buying services:

1. Saving time – and we all know time is money.  With a newspaper buying service, a media buyer/planner only has one point of contact instead of a contact at every newspaper. They now have more time to spend on the strategy of the media plan…or with other clients, for shame.
2. Coordination of the details – These services not only will research and negotiate media, but will also provide circulation numbers, mechanical specs and space and material close dates.
3. Accounting savings – There is typically only one insertion order and therefore only one vendor invoice, saving time in accounting. And, in the end, there’s only one check to mail out.
4. Proof of performance – The newspaper buying service also tracks all the proof of performance so no more tracking down tear sheets or going at a six-foot pile of newspapers with scissors and a dream.
5. One point of contact – With a buying service, it’s easy to make last minute changes to the buys/plans. Usually, it is one phone call or email vs. one call or email per paper.

While utilizing newspaper buying networks may not be feasible for every client, it is an option to consider for clients with larger newspaper buys that are trying to target a number of markets and because of their buying power negotiated rates, it typically is not at any additional costs to your agency.  Win. Win. Win.

When marketers refer to using Flash, they are frequently thinking of it as a video compressor, and this is where some of the most vocal opposition to Flash comes from. The complaint is primarily poor performance in regards to CPU usage, but how accurate is that complaint? Flash performance is based on the plugin’s ability to access hardware acceleration, and Apple is not giving Adobe access to the tools they need to reduce the load.  It’s not difficult to conclude that Apple’s block is more about pushing mobile users to buy videos at their store than it is about doing them a service by blocking video readily available for streaming all over the Internet, but the bottom line is the iPhone won’t use it anytime soon. Is the alternative Apple offers in HTML5 a viable option?

According to YouTube software engineer John Harding, the answer is no. HTML5 falls short in dynamic quality control, buffering, the ability to play full-screen and as uncompiled code and suffers from the ultimate shortcoming: no protection for copyrighted material. It’s also far from being an industry standard. HTML5 has yet to adopt a standard video format, and browser inconsistencies will continue to plague HTML5 for years to come.  Video is not its only downfall either. The “canvas element” for HTML5 has been prematurely lauded as a rival to the interactive aspect of Flash. Since current experiments are crude, only sophisticated browsers support it, and few knowledgeable Flash developers would be willing to give up the wide scope of what they can already accomplish to learn it anytime soon. Flash is by nature a compiled application, something Flash game developers rely on to keep their work protected. HTML5 for games would not only require an excessively lengthy amount of coding to do the same job, it would expose it to the world.

There are alternatives to Flash that can accomplish some of the same purposes with fewer drawbacks and higher cross-platform compatibility. JQuery is quickly becoming a replacement for Flash slideshows because it is commonly supported and does the same job – a simple web effect that can take longer to replicate with Flash in terms of load time and future adjustments. Very few websites are built entirely in Flash anymore and shouldn’t be, not only because of compatibility issues and the time it takes to edit, but also because nothing beats the ease of establishing good relationships with search engines like text that lives outside of a compiled application.

Flash continues to have no reliable competition when it comes to interactive games, activities and animation, as the protection it offers and the breadth of its capabilities have yet to find an equal. Offering this kind of rich media should be something your website does as an enticement to engage, but it should not be a cornerstone of your content. This way, search engines and visitors averse to plugins will still find plenty to explore. Javascript is readily available for your developer to include, and will show alternative content should your visitor arrive without the plugin installed. But what about all of the buzz around mobile devices? Who knows who might be looking at your website and what their capabilities are…shouldn’t you leave Flash out of the mix completely just to be safe?

It’s important to keep your audience in perspective. For the average website, between 75 and 85 percent of visitors are on a PC using Internet Explorer, and in spite of the hype, those visiting on a cell phone or iPad will be less than 1 percent. Consider this: are your friends with iPhones using them to browse business websites or do you more frequently see them using applications developed specifically for their device? While the number of users visiting websites on mobile devices will surely rise, analytic trends from the last five years show that these numbers have hardly budged up to this very week, and any change is likely to be slower than you might think.

Although the direction of Internet development is always bright and exciting, it’s also certain to be a vast hodgepodge of alternate technologies, for nothing in the world of competing browsers has ever been consistent. Keeping a close eye on your analytics will guide the Internet developer to the right tool for the right job, and Flash will continue to be one of those tools for the foreseeable future.

Many companies develop their own PR in house, some by typing up random contact lists for journalists at publications they’ve never read and sending out press releases through email blasts. Remember, it takes grit to harness the power of persuasion and finesse to win someone over.

To get your news published, you must be worth a journalist’s time. Here are a few pointers when considering taking on the public relations role internally.

• It’s more time consuming and costly than you’d think. Even a mid-sized company with a 60 +/- employees and a marketing department of less than five, could spend $75,000 +/- per year in salary, benefits and overhead in a mid-sized market, plus approximately $1,000/mo. in management software such as Cision or Vocus, if done right.
• Personalize – That means no more email blasts. Each email, letter or fax  sent needs to be personalized to the receiving journalist. Get to know their position, what they write about, and take the time to read some of their recent articles to get to know their writing style. Become a resource to the journalists, not a spammer.
• Be worthy – If you don’t read their publication, your company probably doesn’t deserve to be in it. When corresponding with journalists, show that you know their publication and understand its value.
• Know their and your audience – Even though many companies can’t accurately pinpoint their audience’s ethnography, the extra effort will need to be made if you want to do your own PR. Does your audience align with viewers of a particular news program or readers of a particular magazine? How do they consumer it? When? Where? Know where your audience is and take the steps to reach them “where they live.”
• Foster a good relationship – Ruining a relationship can be easier than you may believe. In some cases, all you have to do is refer to your journalist contact by the wrong name, send them something of non-interest to their audience, fax a news release to the wrong department, misspell a word or pester to see if your release was published – and presto, you may have just lost a contact. Their time is very limited, and they look to seasoned professionals to focus the message, especially since the inundation of social media.

Although the pointers above are not inclusive of all that you’ll encounter, it’s time to move on to “your” story. Even if you have the perfect journalist at the perfect publication, do you have the perfect story? Don’t miss the mark.

• Impact – The facts and events that have the greatest impact on the greatest number of people are, simply, the most noteworthy. Include numbers, indisputable facts and figures in your release. Without a tangible frame of reference for the media’s readership, the context may not be fully recognized by the journalist gatekeeper. They want to write about what their readers want to read. Demand is supply.
• Timeliness – Events that happen recently are more noteworthy. Newspapers are already competing for readership with electronic media, so know when their deadlines are and work to be in front of them with a timely story, not last week’s news.
• Proximity – Events that happen near the readers or viewers are generally more interesting. Again, context. The reader or viewer has to see or feel the impact of the release, or it may not be newsworthy.
• Relevancy –Attempt to find a common thread between your company’s news and a current issue. A little hint is to look in the national publications and find a local angle for your company.
• Human Interest – Stories that play to human emotions may be noteworthy. Remember to target only those writers who have written human interest stories in the past and follow their style.

Public relations is an investment that can yield significant results, yet is often the first to be cut from a marketing budget and taken “in house”–unhealthy for the organization. “Hey doctor, … cut right here?”

With social media on the rise, and being significantly cheaper than other mediums, many companies are going for it. Great if you are opening the hottest new club in town, but what about if you’re trying to sell hearing aids? Twitter may not be your best bet! So, when deciding what channel to use, the first step is to identify your target market and the best way to reach them.

Let’s stick with the hearing aid example. Although an increasing number of seniors own computers and are savvy about navigating them, studies show there are better ways to reach them in a more targeted fashion, like by direct mail.

While Internet spending has increased dramatically over the last several years and newspaper advertising has decreased dramatically, direct mail spending has remained virtually flat. Flat doesn’t sound good, does it? But really, this means that it’s a tried and true marketing medium that has stayed consistent throughout the years.

Direct marketing, as defined by Wikipedia, is a form of advertising that reaches its audience without using traditional, formal channels of advertising, such as TV, newspapers or radio. The goal of direct marketing is to allow businesses to communicate directly to the consumer through the use of advertising techniques such as flier and catalogue distribution, mailing of promotional letters, and street advertising.

There are several advantages to direct marketing. Here are a few:

1. It enables you to send your message directly to the consumer, without interference.  For instance, when it comes to TV spots, how many people now Tivo and DVR their favorite TV shows, and skip right through the commercials, blasphemous to an advertiser, but it happens nonetheless!

2. It also allows you to personalize your message to each consumer. “Dear Mr. Jones, we would like to offer you a special discount…”

3. Direct mail also can include a call to action, which allows for tracking. For example, if you ask consumers to “bring this coupon into the store to receive your discount,” you can actually tally up the amount of coupons the store receives to see the success of your campaign. Other calls to action include, “call this number” or “logon to this website.”

4. Although there are many forms of direct marketing – telemarketing, e-mail marketing, door-to-door leaflet marketing, broadcast marketing – direct mail remains the most popular.

5. In a study conducted by The Direct Marketing Association, it was found that 57% of the campaigns studied employed integrated strategies.  Of those, almost half (47%) launched their campaigns with a direct mail piece.

6. Additionally, although we were using the hearing aid company as an analogy marketing to seniors, direct mail can also be used successfully to market to all age and ethnic groups.

Direct Mail and Coupons

For the first time since the Depression, the Gen Y group and their followers, the Gen Z group, are saving more money than any of their predecessors. Although not a definite, this could be attributed to the rise of coupon usage. Where it used to be taboo to use a coupon (think standing in line behind the blue-haired lady in the grocery store, with her handful of coupons), it is now the norm and almost expected. Don’t want to spend the money for your morning latte? Probably will if you have a 50% off coupon. And what better way to receive a coupon that by having it mailed directly to your house?

So when determining how best to spend your precious marketing dollars, first and foremost consider your market and how to reach them, then make sure your messaging is clear and if using direct marketing – consider making your consumers an offer. And don’t discount direct marketing – it’s how many consumers get discounts and they love that, so you should too.

When investing money, your own or your company’s dollars, you have to have a plan. Define, track and assess your advertising program by following these steps:
Define the goals that your program should accomplish – SMART Goals – Strategic, Achievable, Measurable, Relevant/Realistic, Timely Goals
Assign a dollar value to the goals
Track the results – daily, weekly and monthly and record the information to establish trends
Adjust the program based on tracking information, what is and isn’t working well

Step 1: HOW CAN YOU SET A MISSION WITHOUT DEFINITION?

Define the goals you are trying to achieve. How well do you know the target market and audience? Are you trying to raise awareness of your brand, change a perception about your product, company or service? Or are you asking consumers to change their behavior, buy a particular product/service? Maybe you’re trying to expand your customer base? Whatever the goal, it should be outlined before you invest in advertising. You can’t measure what you can’t define.

Step 2: ASSIGN DOLLAR AMOUNTS – IT COUNTS

Assigning a dollar value to the potential results can be tricky. Ask yourself how much are you willing to spend and what is it worth to you? What is the value to every prospect? What is the value of every lead earned?

Now, don’t let us scare you away by all the numbers, but on the Google Ad Network, the average conversion rate of every banner ad is .005%. If you are running banner ads on websites where the demographics don’t match, the conversion rates will be lower. EVOK has found that on average it takes approximately 10 impressions to impact awareness and 20 impressions to impact brand perception.

Assign your dollar value based on how frequently your ads run and how many impressions will you garner. If your search engine optimization is working, it typically grows organically .02% every month. For print publications, the pass-through readership is typically 2.3%. There are several variables and formulas to consider when assigning a realistic dollar value to your results. Depending on your current awareness, product offering, etc., if you spend $100,000 in media, you should be growing the marketplace, gaining awareness for your company and impacting sales.

Step 3: DON’T MEASURE AT YOUR PLEASURE

Although a highly regarded science in our industry, it’s not rocket science. There are simple measures to put in place to see if your marketing efforts are working effectively. Some of the more common ones are response cards and adding Google Analytics to your website. Response cards can be added into any packaging where you ask for consumer’s feedback and demographic information. This will help you build your database. Google Analytics is a free service and enables you to view how much website traffic you are receiving, how many unique visitors are coming to your website, how long people stay, the demographics, where your traffic sources are coming from, etc. This information is invaluable and will help you track your results if your call to action is website driven. Analytics are not an audit, just a helpful gauge.

Consider creating special landing pages for your website and code your print ads with unique URL’s, so it’s easier to track what publications are piquing the most interest.

If you send out e-newsletters, track the open and bounce rates. How many people are opting in and out a month? If your drop out rate is high something could be wrong with your messaging and content.

Is your ultimate goal to make the phone ring? Why not invest in a unique phone number? There are several phone services available that allow you to purchase a temporary or vanity phone number to tie in with your program.

For awareness-raising efforts, it is helpful to do a benchmarking research study before you start. This way, you know what your aided and unaided awareness levels are and project growth over the next year.

There are many tracking tools out there, from Google Analytics to Radian6 for social media to Vocus for PR measurement. They all will assist you in determining whether or not you are achieving your goals. Make sure you use the right one to measure your specific goal’s effectiveness. If, for example, your goal is to increase visits to your consumer packaged good dealer locator, make sure you have Google Analytics on that particular page, but also monitor our site’s bounce rate and time spent on the site. While the initial unique visitor measurement could show an increase in visitors, are you sacrificing overall time spent on the site, sending consumers straight to a dealer locator to find a retailer for a product that they are uneducated about?

Step 4:  TO SUCCEED IN YOUR EFFORTS – ADJUST IS A MUST

Adjust the program based on what is working and what isn’t.  Don’t over commit your media to run for the entire year.  It’s great to be able to commit for several months to help keep the rates down, but after the first few months if you find that something isn’t working, you don’t want to be locked into a contract that you can’t get out of.  Keep in mind that the market changes rapidly. Just because something is working now, doesn’t mean it will work a year from now.

If you are still not sure where to start, EVOK can help you with your goals and metrics, please contact us at 407-302-4416 or go to www.evokad.com.

Now let’s talk about that new creative idea. Our biggest hurdle with new ideas is just that – that they’re new ideas. This means change to a client and many people do not like change. Before your pitch, make sure you are speaking to someone that’s interested in change, and if they’re not, find out why they think an agency is needed in the first place.

Moving forward, what happens when you find that idea, but it just isn’t working? Sometimes, even if the passion is there, that big idea isn’t always the right fit.  Ask yourself and your peers: Does this solve a specific problem or need? Is this problem worth solving? And will it translate into profits? Can it be implemented realistically? If these can be answered and backed up with research, creative thinking and real passion – then you have the big idea!

The thing we must always ask ourselves – how do we communicate the idea to the client effectively? First, you need to develop the elevator pitch – one short sentence that describes the idea at its highest level. Refine and simplify until it’s interesting, intelligent and to the point. The rest of your presentation should be based on this simplified explanation of the big idea and flow out like an open fire hydrant.

So there you have it, pitches. We research, we learn, we create, we execute, but we do it all while something’s missing – The Client. This is how the majority of agencies have to operate – without their major puzzle piece intact. It’s a sad way to do business, at least in my opinion.

What happened to learning directly from the client before the pitch? It’s very doubtful that any creative director or copywriter will ever know as much about the client’s business as the client does. This may not sound promising to clients, but the truth is – most of their customers do not either, nor do they want to. As a Creative Director, I want to hear the business successes and failures directly from the president or founder. A walk down the company memory lane is usually the spark that ignites the passion and reason for being of that particular business. This experience is invaluable to a creative and helps the idea bloom. Then that idea (and a good agency plan) becomes the integral link between Client and Customer. We develop the idea in the language of the consumer and place the right message in areas that they frequent. This model, when all of the above is developed properly, usually results in sales.
So I ask you, Client – Pitch me! Please.

Good question.

Of course most successful companies have some sort of systematic workflow, a streamline of policy and procedures and believe that if they follow these steps they are guaranteed success! In the Real World, no matter what company structure you consider, this isn’t always the case. Companies set forth policies and procedures and try to abide by, but there is always an exception that seems to arrive, unannounced and unexpected.

In the fast-paced advertising industry, there must be an absolute streamlined process in place. It is essential, or the initial expectation won’t be met and the final deliverable won’t be realized. Our seemingly simple process works quite well when it is adhered to, and goes something like this.

1. The account manager meets with Client to discuss scope of project. The projects could be the brainchild of the client, but moreover, from the agency, through internal brand-building meetings or from our creative director, copywriter, media planner, account planner or a combination thereof
2. The account manager writes strategy brief and outlines task(s) with mandatory elements, point of difference, primary target, main objectives and due date
3. The account manager opens a new project in our online job trafficking system and outlines the deliverable(s)
4. The account manager, creative team and any needed outside services/vendors needed have kickoff meeting
5. Account Manager writes a creative brief and summarizes the kickoff meeting and any additional elements, concepts, ideas etc. outside the strategy brief
6. Job gets turned into traffic where the initial tasks are assigned
7. First proof is drafted and is reviewed by four accountable departments—art director, creative director, copywriter and account manager
7. Revisions, if any, are made at this time before the client sees the first draft
8. Client is sent first draft of print or electronic medium via e-mail or, preferably, in-person presentation
9. If there are revisions, go to step 5, if approved, continue to send job to final destination (media outlet, printer, make live on Internet or upload online)
10. Follow up, tracking and metrics to measure success of main objectives via the strategy, and if necessary, apply any lessons learned in future executions and deliverables

That’s a brief description, but you get the gist. So why don’t we always follow this? It’s so simple!! Answer: Earlier we mentioned the Real World. Well that’s it. We live in the Real World—not an “Easy Button” fantasy land where there’s an “F 12” key that creates perfect advertisements, campaigns, websites, media plans and marketing strategies or promotions at the press of a key command. The reality is that a litany of considerations and factors make or break our strategy of streamlining. Such examples include, but are not limited to: changes in project details, changes in the marketplace, sector developments or current events, late discoveries, grand changes of project scope or deliverables, wrong file formats, run/print-dates sneak up, missed appointments, scope creep, memory loss, vacations, computer and sever melt downs, too busy multi-tasking, sickness, contact no longer with the company, budget cuts—insert your own here.

To recap, and since keepings lists helps keep us on target, on budget and on time, here’s another list of some behind the scenes scenarios that get in the way of our “seemingly simple” ten steps to streamlined policies and procedures:

1. Extensive industry research
2. Comprehensive market analysis
3. Primary target ethnography considerations and utilization
4. Changes in product or service sector due to current events, natural disasters etc.
5. New direction or any change of scope or goals
6. Brainstorming
7. Brand Boards, industry notes and Client style guide creation (varies)
8. Strategy tweaking
9. Testing (internal and external)
10. Mock ups

As you can see, factors that affect the agency policies and procedures range from the serious to the silly—and like we said, that is the Real World. Luckily, we expect this; make concessions for it and still delivery real-world results. For that very reason, we strive to maintain constant communication with our Clients, sharing our discoveries and ideas at certain points along the way.

Though advertising is a quintessential rule breaking, ever-changing industry that can turn on a dime and seemingly unveil new ideas and technologies overnight, the importance of streamlining shouldn’t go unnoticed. Without it, how could anything get done? There will always be variables that seem to affect our workflow and materialize out of thin air. It happens and sometimes cannot be avoided. But we must march forward with the best intent for our clients and continue to work hard and over deliver. This may include longer hours, more rounds of revisions, another meeting and maybe even going back to the drawing board. As advertising professionals, we expect a certain level of chaos and uncertainty and hope our clients trust us to be their flexible industry partner. We see our jobs as establishing streamlined policies and procedures that help our clients’ workflow, as well as get their products and services to the target market at the exact time in the ideal medium/channel.

That’s simply our policy and procedure.