Vague RFP’s don’t help anyone.

Let’s use websites to prove a point.

Scenario 1:
Client: How much for a new website?
Designer #1: Hmmm. Depends on what you’re looking for.
Client: Just base it off of what you would like to do for us.
Designer: #1 How about $250,000?
Client: I don’t have that much.
Designer: #1 How much do you have?
Client: I don’t want to tell you because I’m afraid I’ll be taken advantage of. I guess we can’t work together…

Scenario 2:
Client: How much for a new website?
Designer #2: Hmm. How about $5,000?
Client: Sold!

Weird huh? But unfortunately it happens time and time again. From the two examples above, can you tell which designer would have done the better job? Can you tell who would have been easier to work with? Basing the decision off of cost assumes something that is unequivocally wrong… -that the end products will be equal. Face it, every agency wants you to spend a million dollars on your project. It would give them room to do really exciting groundbreaking design that flips and twists and wows everyone. Just because they asked for it doesn’t mean they should be penalized. They might be able to do something great within your actual budget as well. Deciding things by a blind bid:

• Penalizes studios with lots of abilities, and aspiration.
• Rewards agencies who may not totally understand the job, have lower standards, or are better at guessing your budget. (not a requirement to be a great designer)
• Ignores the real goal of the RFP/bidding process: Value for money.

The best way to prep an RFP or question an agency is by challenging them with a budget. It’s much easier to to compare apples to apples this way… Clients don’t want to do this because:

• They’re afraid the studio might have done the job for less.
• They haven’t determined a budget.
• They want to get untainted recommendations from the agency on what they should be spending.
• They’re embarrassed that their budget might be too small.

These are all understandable reasons except for the last. If you take a budget to an agency that knows what they’re doing, they’ll be honest with you if your budget is too small for them. It doesn’t mean that you’re cheap, or small, or a bad person. It just means that agency is staffed to handle bigger projects than yours, and has overhead accordingly. It can actually be a great starting place, as the agency will likely recommend someone to you that they respect who is more fitting for your needs.

The real goal is to compare agencies based on the same criteria. If you don’t establish those criteria, you’ll be no better off than when you started. Every agency has a different methodology, and will solve your problems differently in different scenarios.

The website example above is somewhat clear cut. Bidding on entire campaigns when there are production budgets, and schedules involved can be really tough for a studio. It might seem that a campaign is a campaign just like the next, but they’re incredibly different. If you take a notional budget to a studio, they may talk to you about websites, email campaigns, and PR. Take that notional budget multiplied by ten, and they might talk to you about billboards, print ads, direct mail, and other mass media. Giving them no budget at all means they would have to cover every single option. If their bag-of-tricks is deep, it can be an impossible task.

Let’s not even open the whole subjective “taste in design” can of worms. Suffice it to say that design ought to be a huge part of your decision making process. Advertising is not a cost, it’s an investment. Better design is stronger insurance that your investment is safe. It’s pretty tough to quantify the value of design in a blind bid.

The most succinct RFP you can give a studio is a budget, and a list of goals. That gives them an opportunity to spread their wings. It gives them an opportunity to show you the amount of value they can provide for your dollar. It gives you a way to more accurately compare value for value. It lets you focus on the truly important questions that will effect your project more than anything else:

• Does this studio do good work?
• Do I trust them?
• Do they seem easy to work with?

Get With It. But Only if You’re Sincere.

If your business is not social networking and tweeting, and blogging, and etc. you might as well just close up shop.

Ok. Not really. In fact, for many business it’s needless distraction that can fragment an image, and a brand. There’s so much talk these days about “taking advantage” of social media sites that it can be overwhelming. Whenever there’s a buzz about a new technology or technique to catch an advertising ear it seems to turn into the new snake oil over night. Since people are finally getting wise to how SEO often is a blatant scam, it seems it’s time to move on to the next big thing. Which seems to be social apps like Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, etc.

We get quizzed all the time by clients; “Should we be on MySpace?”, “Should we be Twittering?” The answer is different for different industries and companies. First let’s weigh the good.

• The trend of companies to be more vocal and open with their clients is a much needed, and great thing.
• Giving people more ways to be connected to you is always good.
• Instant communication channels are fantastic, and allow you to fine tune your brand and your message quickly.
• Customer response time can be greatly improved.
• You can more concretely, and honestly define your brand.

Those all sound great right? Thank goodness we’re evolving as a culture and an industry. Maybe the days of stuffy business culture is finally over. Customers are people after all, so why not treat them like it?

So what could possibly be wrong with putting your company out there in an online community? The online world is slightly different than what you might be used to. People have a filter for BS and marketing-speak more highly tuned than in other media. Consider making social networks a priority if:

• You have something legitimate, and authentic that your audience might want to hear.
• You genuinely care about the community and being involved in it.
• The people in the community could potentially be customers of yours.
• You have the time and the wherewithal to follow through on the commitment you’re making.
• You’re actually enjoying being a part of the communication channel.

You should probably avoid it if:

• The idea to get involved came from sort of “How can we lasso the younger audience” type of corporate pow-wow.
• You’re going to use it as a platform to spew out the kind of marketing/biz-dev stuff that nobody would care about.
• You’re in it for more selfish reasons than genuine ones.
• You have to delegate the role to someone who doesn’t have their thumb on the pulse of your company, or who isn’t naturally involved in that sort of thing to start with.
• You have the type of customer base that could care less if you’re on Twitter, Tumblr, Friendster, or whatever.

The whole point of these services is so that you can communicate quickly, succinctly, and honestly. They’re not meant for spam, or advertising. The idea of companies using these services as a platform runs contrary to the original intent. Only if companies are able to make a valuable contribution to the network is it really accepted for them to participate. If you ignore the spirit of the community, consider the downfalls:

• Communication happens quick on these networks. Although most communities are fairly good spirited, -negative talk can boil over pretty fast.
• Even though it’s an informal venue, like with every other bit of branding, it’s important that your message is on point.
• A lack of commitment and updates can be seen as a lack of care, or ineptitude.
• Not responding within the timeframe that is common for the service will be a bad customer interaction.

Succinctly said: If your heart’s in the right place, and you sincerely want to participate in the network, -go for it. Otherwise, it’s possible you’ll do more harm than good.

One thing is for sure; the more social networks turn into a giant advertisement, the less useful, and used they will become. Then someone will build another technology that is pure and innocent, -maybe a bit further out west.

New Site Launched! -Scooper Joe’s

Pretty cool business plan… It’s as simple as it sounds, -they come to your house, and they clean up pet waste. We built SJ a small site that’s as simple and honest as their service. If you have a need… -do our new client, and your neighbors a favor, and give Scooper Joe’s a call.

See it online: New Scooper Joe’s Website by Entermotion

Widows Online

No, we’re not talking about a new community involvement group for the wives of the deceased. We’re talking about typography, and the total beginner mistake of leaving a word dangling all by itself at the end of a column of text. In desktop layout editors, it’s possible, and completely necessary to control the wrapping of lines so that text is presented in the most elegant way. What about online text?

Unfortunately, the state of browsers today doesn’t give much control. The only consolation is that it’s for a good reason. Because reading on screen can be difficult for many people, and because monitors have different resolutions, the size of text can be dynamically changed in websites. It’s a good thing, -but as you can imagine, it re-wraps text often causing awkward typography. You might say “well Entermotion, just create a line-break and fix it on my monitor.” The problem is that for every situation we fix it in, we’ll break it in another. The web is just a looser environment for typography.

So, for our clients who point out things like this, let us say two things:

1. We truly love you for being as nerdy about typography as we are. We’re a perfect match for each other.
2. Unfortunately you’re going to have to live with it for a bit. Just long enough for online technology to catch up to Gutenberg… We know worrying about the orphans and widows of this world can wake you up in a cold sweat. It happens to us too, -but together we can make it through.

Glimpses of Genius Novelty, and Beauty – Funny

• “How designers think” – More of them should
• Handwriting of typographers – The worse the better
• Seriously, don’t miss this one – Conan O’Brien’s commencement Speech
• We miss Macromedia – Adobe crashes
• Entermotion is here – To make friends
• We look at the label – Picking out wine
• Lego – Meets famous architecture
• Ahhh Adobe again – Reader 9 is out
• Weirdly mesmerizing – Bears dancing