Can you imagine life today without... No, we’re not going to say “the internet,” “mobile phones,” or “next-day free shipping.” Can you imagine life today without... rectangles? Stay with us on this. There’s a method to this seeming madness. Rectangles. Boy do we ever take them for granted. Sure, they’re the shape of buildings and Amazon boxes, but for the purposes of this discussion, they’re also, almost exclusively, the shape of the boundary in which you present creative materials to your audience. Think about it. Everything you must design for—everything your audience consumes—is bounded by a rectangle:
Need we go on? Fact is, from the days of the first framed canvas, creators have been creating within rectangles. Today, we take that for granted. But we shouldn’t. That’s because there’s an art to composing for rectangles, regardless of the medium. Since we’re so surrounded by rectangles, you’d think that 1) everyone was aware of this fact, and 2) everyone intuitively knows how to compose for them. Both of those assumptions, clearly, are wrong. Thus this article... thus the need for this article. Know the rules before you break them “Composition,” in this context, means “where you put things inside that rectangle.” And three classic rules of composition come to mind, which have evolved over the years: 1. The Rule of Thirds. You’ll see this one in every photography textbook ever printed. It basically divides a rectangle into a tic-tac-toe board, and tells you that you should place your subject at any of those intersections. Why? Well, this rule will tell you that most people’s instinctive response to framing a subject in the viewfinder would be to center them. Put their face right in the middle, equidistant between left and right, and top and bottom. Therefore, putting them where they’re about a third of the way across (and/or down) will look more pleasing to the eye, less “mug shot-ish”/less “deer in the headlights.” 2. Leading space. You’ve got a composition of a person looking off into the distance. How do you frame that? This rule tells you to give them “breathing space.” That is, if they’re looking off to the right, you should park them toward the left of the frame (a third of the way from the left border, if you’re also following the Rule of Thirds). This way, there’s room for your eye to go where their eyes lead you. It’s a nice place to park, say, a headline. Look at any stock-photo website; you’ll see tons of photos framed like this, for that exact reason. Leading space creates comfort. It respects the subject. It provides balance. (If you’ve read any of these articles from Copel Communications before, you so know that all of this is a set-up!) 3. Bounded/unbounded composition. This is one of the basic tenets of photojournalism. It asks you to make a choice. Do you want to show the entire subject within the frame? Or would you prefer to show just a portion of it, letting the rest bleed out of the picture? The former “bounds” the subject, and tells the viewer: “Here’s the entire story.” The latter “unbounds” the subject, and tells the viewer: “This is just a part of the story. It’s bigger than the portion you’re seeing here.” So following this rule will make “bounded” subjects stand alone, whereas, say, an “unbounded” crowd scene (or, say, cemetery) may appear to stretch for miles—when, in fact, it may only extend a few inches beyond where the photographer chose to frame it. Breaking the rules As always, you have to know the rules before you break them. Which is why we took the time to define each of the three rules above. These rules didn’t just appear out of the blue. They evolved. They withstand the test of time. They serve a very good purpose. Most of the time, you’re best off following them. But sometimes you’re not. 1. Breaking the Rule of Thirds. Sometimes, you’ll want your subject to be pegged like a deer-in-headlights. You’ll want them to look uncomfortable. Or you’ll want absolutely perfect, anal rigor for your composition. Those are perfect times to break the Rule of Thirds. 2. Breaking the leading-space rule. This one’s even more fun to break. Picture this: Your subject is peering off, intently, to the right. What happens if you park them at the very far right side of the frame, leaving a ton of empty space to their left? Bingo: You’ve created tension, and suspense. Tension, because the audience can’t see what your subject is looking at, when they're inured to just seeing it. And suspense, because what’s about to come up behind them? This type of composition is routinely used in horror movies. Want to see one of the best-ever usages of “invading what seems to be safe negative space”? Just watch the first appearance of the shark in the movie Jaws. You’ll see. 3. Breaking the bounded/unbounded composition rule. This one is a no-brainer. You can make a crowd look smaller simply by showing its edges. You can make a sole subject seem bigger than life by having it break the bounds of the frame. It’s entirely up to you. The key thing is to always know that this tool is in your kit, and to employ it judiciously. Get help We know about these rules—and how to break them—because we employ them—and break them—all the time on our clients’ behalf. If you need help with that next creative assignment, contact us. We’d be delighted to help.
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There’s more to growth than just “adjacent spaces” If you’re looking to grow your consulting business, there are certainly a bunch of commonly-accepted ways of doing it. Very broadly, there’s organic vs. inorganic growth, in which the former is basically “getting new accounts,” and the latter is more radical initiatives, such as “acquiring a current competitor.” In this article, we’re going to limit our discussion to the former—that is, organic growth via getting new accounts—but we’re also going to veer into some very interesting, and creative, ways of doing it. We bet you’ll see some impressive parallels that you can profit from. Land and expand Before we tell you about that intriguing, counterintuitive way of proceeding, let’s clear the decks of all of the usual suspects (how’s that for a mixed metaphor?). We’re talking about “adjacent spaces.” Our old adage here is “Start with what you know.” Back when we were in New York, the expression was “Own your backyard.” They’re all different variations on the same theme. To wit: If there’s a segment you’re really good at, let’s say it’s P&C (property-and-casualty) insurance, then your first order of business is to own and dominate that vertical. If there are other P&C carriers out there that haven’t heard of you, then you need to shore up your marketing efforts to them. Because, frankly, you should be able to close new P&C prospects with relative ease; they’re the lowest-hanging fruit. Okay. So let’s assume that you’ve done all this. You now “own your backyard.” Where do you go next? The next-door neighbor The next logical step would be other segments within the same vertical. That is, the second-lowest-hanging fruit. Following our P&C example, this would be to extend your outreach efforts to others in the insurance space, beyond P&C. Such as, say, health insurance. That’s a pretty big ask. If a health insurer asks you about your experience, and all you’ve got is P&C, it will be a tough sell. But it won’t be as tough as, say, trying to crack open a wholly new vertical, such as, say, logistics. And remember this: All you need is one new client in that new segment, and you’re set for life. You will, from that point forward, have “health insurance” (in this example) as one of your areas of experience. You can use the “big ask” to shape your marketing efforts. If you’ve never helped health insurers before, we doubt you’ll get in the door at Blue Cross. But there may well be a smaller carrier who’s willing to take a chance on you, especially if you 1) sweeten the deal, and 2) tout your ability to leverage synergies from your experience in P&C and apply them to healthcare. (We wrote a related article on what we call “Cross-Pollination Consulting,” which you might also enjoy.) So you can do this kind of marketing all day long. Pick out adjacent spaces where you could at least carry on a credible conversation in the room, and then play the numbers game: The more prospects you’re able to reach, the higher your chances of closing new business. Sticking your neck out The highest-hanging fruit, by contrast, consists of entirely new clients in entirely new verticals—those that would occupy the farthest quadrant in the classic Ansoff Matrix of prospects. Keeping with our example from earlier, if your main experience is in P&C, good luck trying to crack open a brand-new client in logistics. That said, there are ways to counterintuitively crack open new spaces, just as we’d teased at the outset of this article. Granted, these are not entirely new spaces, but they’re not exactly adjacent, either. Allow us to explain. The basis of this idea—indeed, the inspiration for this article—came from a recent experience with one of our clients. We’ll need to clothe this in anonymity for obvious reasons, but we think you’ll be able to get the gist—and perceive the takeaways. This client of ours did tons of work in one very specialized consulting space. It was a lot of what we might call “after-the-fact cleanup”: a common calling in the consulting space. Our client was really good at this, and had tons of experience, won awards, you name it. But there was one other space they wanted to crack, which was dangling tantalizingly just out of reach. And it consisted of an entirely different vertical that was tasked with doing all the stuff that invariably led to cleanup requirements later. Hmmm! Think about that. There’s a chronological logic to this. Our client was doing cleanup work. They were yearning to get into the “Before” side of the equation, but had absolutely zero experience there. How do they get in? We helped them craft the messaging to this new market. It went something like this; note how brutally honest it was: “Hello. You don’t know us, but we would like to help you. And we certainly believe we can. We’ve spent the last XX years helping XXX clients to clean up all the messes that have happened in the ‘Before’ side of the equation. Doing this, and gaining all this experience, we realized that we could bring unprecedented foresight, power, and savings to all of those who, like you, toil in the ‘Before’ side of the equation, helping them to avoid costly mistakes in the first place. Might you have a few minutes to schedule a quick introductory call?” Guess what? It worked. Beautifully. Today, this client is straddling both realms: the “After” (their traditional area of expertise), and the “Before.” And like our fictional P&C example above, they needed to land just one new client in the “Before” realm, using that new messaging. After that, they already had experience in the “Before” realm, and the introductory messaging was already outdated, having served its purpose admirably. Turn the tables yourself You can see how cagey we’ve been forced to be here with our whole “Before” and “After” descriptions, but we’ll bet that you’re seeing parallels to your own practice already. Any business operation proceeds in a chronological fashion, and more often than not, consultants are called in to “clean up the ‘After.’” Yet therein lies the opportunity to “better empower the ‘Before.’” This could apply to any of a number of upstream verticals or segments; the only limit is your imagination—and your creative approach to the outreach. Need help finding that creative approach? Contact us. We solve challenges like these for our clients all the time, and would be delighted to help you, too. |
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