Ok, so those that know me will vouch for the fact that I’m not one for convention – work, rest and play I’m mostly outside of that infamous box. However, what I’m about to say about may shock even those of you that know me well – especially since I’ve spent most of my working life being passionate about all things ‘design’:

So, the topic is colour, the sentiment is ‘get over it!’

Directing Resources

I recently had a conversation with a large format printer (she prints in large format, she’s not a format printer that’s large – just to clarify!). She recounted the story of a well-known national building society whose marketing team are so particular about their brand colours, that every single material (leaflets/stationery/banners/website/emarketing/TV adverts) has to match perfectly in terms of colour – now this may seem, on the face of it, not an unreasonable ask but, when you consider the amount of different substrates and the different print processes that they commission, it really is a hugely difficult thing to achieve. Take a look at the colour matching article that features in our ‘really useful stuff’ and explains, in more detail, the difficulty in achieving an absolute colour match across different media.

Friends

My rant is really about the art of being realistic and managing expectations – it’s about having a degree of tolerance. It’s also about knowing your suppliers and trusting them. This particular building society really was not in the habit of winning friends with the amount of work that was rejected due to slight colour variation.

At wow! we like making friends; friends scratch each other’s backs and enjoy making each other happy – they go out of their way to ensure that they do a good job. Our suppliers are our friends – we’re able to talk to them when we have a particularly difficult finish that we’d like to achieve, and they help us to meet, and often exceed, our clients’ expectations – it’s often a bit of human ‘tinkering’ and years of experience that works – not a computer programme.

Forethought

Nevertheless, we understand the print process ourselves, we know all about the variation that occurs across litho print, digital print, large format print, as well as the differences between inks that are printed and colours that you seen on screen. We also know that, as long as your brand and palette of colours has been well thought-through in the beginning, you’ll not have to worry too much about slight variations in colour in order to give your customers or clients the right, professional impression. Certain colours should be avoided and your brand should be instantly recognisable; graphically and typographically. If your brand relies on fantastic colour representation then choose colours that translate well across all media.

Back to the building society: their marketing budget isn’t well spent at all – much time, money, blood, sweat and tears are spent making sure that colour is exactly, perfectly matched across all media. That means less of each of the above resources for the message – surely that’s the most important aspect of each action that the building society takes? Not wishing to be flippant (colour is extremely important), but there are very few people would compare a poster to a TV ad; a letterhead to a flyer and say ‘ooh, I’m sure that red (or blue, or green)’s 1% lighter than before’! Humans notice style, layout, overall colour and general messages more than they notice a very slight colour variation – heck, when we read, we don’t even see individual letters – we read words as ‘shapes’.

Tolerance

So, rant over – a little bit of forethought, a great brand identity, a solid relationship with your design team and printers that will scratch your back and you’ll not need endless reprints or reworks. ‘Tolerance’ is a great word (a virtue that should be applied to all aspects of our lives!) – and one that should be applied in this instance – with a certain amount of tolerance, you will be truly represented.

I’m going to say a dirty word.

It’s OK, it’s not the kind that needs you to cover children’s ears. And it’s not the kind that describes a horrific illness that people can’t even bear to mention. It’s not even the name of a character from Harry Potter that can’t be said out aloud.

The dirty word in question is BUDGET.

I can be sitting with a client discussing their brief, talking through ideas and options – excitement is oozing from the meeting when suddenly I drop the ‘B’ word and the atmosphere changes. The client can be seen squirming and stuttering. The meeting ends quickly.

We’ve had so many clients who refuse to tell us a budget when working on their jobs. Some may give us a guide such as ‘as cheap as possible’, but often clients don’t like to give away their budget, it’s like we’re playing a high class game of poker. These are grown marketing people who have studied for years, I know they have budgets. I know they will have planned things, I know they will have set their budgets in line with their objectives. Yet they won’t share it with their agency.

It seems like it’s only limited to the marketing world – you never hear of an architect submitting plans for a project without first scoping the budget, it’s the difference between a bungalow and a 5 story mansion!

It’s a strange phenomenon and one we try to educate our clients out of as it’s detrimental to the results that can be achieved, but where does it come from?

It would seem the issue is hinges on two things – trust (or lack of) and best price.

Best price

Some clients believe that if a designer is given a budget they will spend that budget – and therefore will probably overspend when it comes to the actual project – yet if the agency has a pop at pulling a price together they may just come in under budget and you get to save a load of money.

That’s not a bad way of thinking, possibly it can be seen as logical. However if you expect your agencies to pitch for the work, give over ideas before determining any agreed budget that’s really harsh. The agency needs to show you their best work and yet they have to win the job on price as well. It becomes nothing more than a creative lottery. There are many agencies who, desperate to compete in the tough market conditions are spending time on pitches that they never have an inkling chance of getting because their ideas are too big – they’re pitching St Pauls Cathedral without knowing you have a terraced house budget.

If your company’s policy is one of tender or pitch – at least set a guide budget to enable agencies to match the creative ideas to the budget.

The Trust Issue

There are some clients who think that all suppliers are nothing more commodities – to be bought and sold at the best price. That design and marketing is just another widget to be purchased at best price. These are the kind of client that will make agencies re-pitch and re-pitch every time they need a piece of work producing in order to get price.

This is just wrong on so many levels. Firstly, you never build up consistency, an agency is unable to advise you of long term solutions and they can never fulfill their potential. There are a huge amount of creative agencies out there who are all brilliant at producing great pieces of work that will help you achieve your marketing objectives. Using them for one off’s is like discarding a fine wine after one glass – there’s still a whole lot more richness to enjoy in the bottle!

Good agencies get to know you as a client, and get to understand your needs, and they understand how best to use your budgets to maximise the bang for your buck. Trusting them with the budget allows them to build, create, design a solution that is totally tailored, and fully on course to deliver on every level.

The dangers of giving your agency a budget

You may never get a killer cut price deal – although agencies that know you will always look to keep a long term relationship so will never ill advise.

You can’t make a judgement based only on price – that’s actually not a myth, it’s true. But then marketing should surely be judged on return on investment not just investment? (I once had an estate agent say to me – you’re too expensive I’m not paying more than £150 to get one or two leads. I tried to point out that perhaps that approach may have been the problem).

You don’t get to ‘see what’s out there’ – Sure you do, you give a guide price and see what the agency will deliver for that money. You can still see how much each agency will provide for the budget.

You really don’t have a budget – This is one of those situations that arise where an urgent out of the blue job is suddenly thrust upon you so no budget has been allocated. It happens. However you will still have more of an inkling than the agency of how much you are prepared to allocate to the emergency – so talk to us about it, tell us gut feelings – we can work with them!

It’s a tough call – we creatives are always spouting that they are different to other suppliers, we know it’s a hard pill to swallow when you’re trying to get the best for your company. All we ask though is that you try it, give a budget and see what amazingly tailored work you’ll get and at worse you know you can sleep better safe in the knowledge that you didn’t make an agency work though the night on a project that they never had a hope in hell of getting.

Related posts: 5 reasons you should give a budget to your creative agency

Social-media is the biggest thing since sliced bread in marketing circles. If the industry gurus are to be believed you need community managers and Facebook fans and you should be tweeting your every move.

However, these sites are great for large numbers, or for retail outlets facing the public, but when it comes to industry specific networks the benefits can seem less advantageous. Hence we’ve recently developed our second industry-specific networking site on behalf of our client, Project Leaders.

Two years ago we designed and built the HR Business Network – a successful site for top-level HR professionals to network and connect with their peers. The site offers detailed profiles, advice sections, discussions, events and of course, messaging. With over 2000 approved members, all senior figures within the HR industry, the site has been a huge success encouraging industry networking.

The project was deemed so good that Project Leaders asked us to replicate the project for the Finance Sector, and we’ve just rolled out the Finance Business Network.

Current social networks don’t fit all business models, so if social networking isn’t working for you, talk to us about creating a social tool that can get you connected to the right people. It’s often better to be the facilitator and align your business with the heart of the discussion than to join an ocean of ‘me-too’ companies.

We recently faced the same conundrum for Forward Swindon when they needed to exhibit at the OGC conference in London. How do we make the stand ‘stand out’ from the usual pop-ups?

Pop-up exhibitions, the standard choice for every exhibitor who needs a professional display. But there are limitations – it’s costly to replace the graphics and let’s be honest, they all start to look the same, creating ‘pop-up-blindness’ – you and your competitors blur into one…

We wanted the display to constantly keep attracting the attention of delegates in between speaker sessions, but we were limited to a conventional pop-up area.

We felt that in order to grab attention the stand had to change during the exhibition so that delegates never became blind to the visuals. Enter 100 displays in 1; our idea was to develop an innovative display created by a frame that fits around 12 individual boxes, each featuring a different image/message on each of their sides. The boxes are interchangeable and easily moved, allowing for the stand to be easily changed in the middle of an exhibition. One moment the whole thing can be green and, in minutes, it can display a different message in purple, or a whole set of messages! There are a huge number of combinations.

The stand we built was also double sided so it could be viewed from the front and back. Added to that the stand is totally eco-friendly and can be produced for a price similar to a standard pop-up plus it folds down and flat-packs away.

The solution provides a new and innovative way to keep your displays fresh, the whole system is sturdy and hard-wearing so it’s ideal for conferences, exhibitions and temporary retail window displays.

For more information contact Natasha or Miranda.

Left: 100-in-1 display: The Forward Swindon OGC stand with the surrounding frame. The frame provides constant branding whilst the message can change throughout the exhibition.