​We recently had a client dump a whole bunch of input on us, as part of a larger marketing project we were helping them with. This data dump, incidentally, was incomplete. They gave us links to videos, and slide decks, and web pages, and Word docs… yet when we cross-checked the lists of stuff we were supposed to receive vs. the stuff we actually received, we found gaps. Plus there was stuff—input—that we flat-out didn’t understand. Was it even relevant? Were we missing something? 
 
Clearly, a big team meeting was needed. But our preliminary order of business was simply wrangling all of the input—and making sure that the checklists indeed teed up with requirements of the final deliverable. 
 
This was not easy. 
 
So. Where are we going with this? And how does this help answer the perennial question of “How will this help me make more money?”
 
Seeing the bigger picture
 
Sure, we’d needed to book, organize, and run, a meeting. And the clock was ticking. This, incidentally, gets to the answer to the italicized question we’d posed above. 
 
Time is money. And when you multiply the number of people in the room by what they’re worth, on an hourly basis, the stakes go up real high, real fast. 
 
So this is about more than just booking a meeting. There are bigger takeaways than that. 
 
This is about bringing different people together in service of a larger—and more profitable—goal. And it’s, frankly, about sweating a ton of details in advance. 
 
Chop, chop
 
Know what we ended up creating from all this mess? A “next steps” email to the team we were working with. 
 
Think about that. How many times have you had to compose a “next steps” email? It’s hard.
 
We had to lay out: 

• What we’d received from the client. 

 

• What we still needed from the client. 

 

• What we’d received but didn’t understand or couldn’t make sense of. 

 

• The constraints for the project established by our client’s client—and how all of the above aligned (or didn’t) therewith. 

 

• The goals of the proposed working session. 

 

• A brief overview of that working session’s agenda. 

 
We still have the email we’d sent to our client. It’s just 397 words long. And yet it took us an hour to write. 
 
Yup. 
 
We can’t share it here—it’s confidential—but we’ll bet you could read the thing in under two minutes. 
 
And that was the intention. And that was why it was so hard to compose.
 
Important point: Every recipient and cc on this email is very busy. We had to make our case, be ultra clear, and close with a specific call-to-action (“Shall we send you slots for a meeting?”). 
 
This email took us an hour to write because the initial draft was about double the length of the final one. We sweated the details. We moved paragraphs. We moved sentences within paragraphs. And we cut, cut, cut, as much as we could. 
 
Speed reading
 
Honestly: Do you think that any of our client-recipients of this email would have guessed that it took us an hour to write this two-minute read? Of course not. They never gave it a thought. 
 
We didn’t want them to give it a thought. But we needed to get stuff done, quickly, succinctly, and efficiently, and this much-sweated-over email was the best way to do it. 
 
And think of this: What kinds of replies did this email elicit? Were they equally-well-thought-out, carefully-considered-and-organized responses? 
 
Of course not! They were more like “Good idea; how’s Wednesday?”
 
Were we upset by this? Did we feel slighted or unappreciated? Nope. We beamed. Mission accomplished.
 
Because when you fast-forward this story, 1) all of the missing input magically appeared, prior to the meeting, 2) all of the related gaps were filled, and 3) the meeting itself went swimmingly—a full-court press in which seemingly impossible goals were surmounted in a shockingly short timeframe. 
 
And, frankly, none of it would have happened without the “next steps” email.
 
Now do you see the broader lesson here? 
 
People routinely dash off emails with nary a thought. But sometimes, when the situation calls for it, you’ve got to hunker down and really figure out the tactics of where you’re headed, and do the hard work of putting that into something that can be read at 10x the speed it took to write.
 
Need help getting all of these “tactical marketing ducks” in a row, whether via email or not? Contact us. We’d be delighted to help. 

​Here at Copel Communications, we’re proud to have a diverse clientele. Sometimes it’s so diverse, it can be challenging—to the point where successfully addressing these challenges generates some teachable moments. Hence, this article. 
 
We recently worked on a social-campaign assignment for a very big global brand; while we can’t name them in this article, you certainly know who they are. To be more specific (about the assignment, and not the brand, LOL! we need to be delicate here), we were brought on by one of this brand’s multiple ad agencies. This agency specializes in addressing a certain ethnic market in the U.S. and overseas. And their specialization derives from the fact that they, themselves, belong to this same ethnic group. 
 
(It’s really hard to tell this story while protecting identities!)
 
So. They handed us some creative, which they had developed, and the Big Brand had approved, for a social campaign touting one of the brand’s products. 
 
And the creative—the visuals, and the ideas—were really thoughtful and inspired. The campaign consisted of different little multi-panel vignettes that would tell the story of a certain person, depicted in them. It went something like this: 
 
Imagine there are five panels that will go by, almost like a little slide-show of memes. The first four establish this likeable person—whom the target audience can easily relate to—and their situation. 
 
Their situation, mind you, is aspirational-yet-flawed. They aim high, but there are constraints on their dreams. 
 
Guess where this is going? 
 
Of course. Panel Five introduces Big Brand’s Great Product, which, you guessed it, organically solves all of Hero’s problems in one fell swoop. 
 
We’ve over-simplified this a bit here, but you get the gist.
 
Lost in translation
 
Now why on earth, you may well be wondering, was Copel Communications brought in for this assignment? It certainly seems like it’s a wonderful campaign, neatly tied up with a bow. 
 
Well, almost. 
 
The problem here—and it was a big one—was the copy. Remember: Each “slide” in each of the campaign’s hero stories was effectively a meme: A photo with a quote, title, or caption. 
 
And while the ideas for all of these were great, the original copy had been written in Ethnic Audience’s Homeland Language, i.e., not English. 
 
Oh. 
 
So the Google-translated-to-English copy was clunky and needed help. 
 
On its surface, this seems like an easy, straightforward, and fun assignment. It was neither of the former, and hardly the latter. Why? Because, as easily as we could see where each of these panels (and there were tons of them, effectively five for each of the numerous “heroes” selected) needed to go, that didn’t make our client’s English any better.
 
Example: One of the panels showed a young barista, working in a coffee shop. He’s our hero. Remember: aspirational-yet-flawed. So the input caption we were handed read: My job is hard.
 
Gee. My job is hard.
 
He’s a barista, right? So we came up with this version: 
 
Life can be a grind.
 
Cute, huh? And so we got big pats on the back from the client, and we were happily endorsing a check five minutes later. 
 
Yeah right. 
 
Here’s the problem: The client didn’t understand “Life can be a grind.” So they kicked it back to us, instructing us to make it more like “My job is hard.”
 
And, by extension, our job was hard! 
 
There’s not a huge lesson we can simply spout from this story. There were a zillion revisions and, not shockingly, for one of the “hero stories,” after they rejected Version 10, we used their suggestions for Version 11 to gently suggest that they re-visit Version 1 and, you guessed it, that was the one that flew. 
 
The takeaway? Assignments like this boil down to patience, and trust. The skill is just a subset. 
 
Need help with an outside-English-to-English assignment? Contact us. We’d be happy to help! 

No that’s not a brand of beer. When we refer to “Draft Number 10,” we’re talking about Word docs.
 
Oh. 
 
Which begs the question: Why embrace that? Just by its moniker, “Number 10,” it’s daunting and annoying. Who in their right mind would ever enjoy, let alone embrace, the tenth draft of anything? Wouldn’t you be automatically burned out? 
 
Let’s answer that “in their right mind” question first. 
 
This is business, not art
 
If you’re a painter or a poet, up in your garret, you can dream and wile away the hours, finessing your grand opus—“a hundred visions and revisions,” in the words of T.S. Eliot—and you’ve only yourself (and perhaps your muse) to answer to. 
 
But we’re not talking about art here, despite our decades of experience (not to mention lots of awards) in creative services. 
 
We’re talking about business. Money. Deadlines. ROI. 
 
Where, then, does a Draft Number 10 even come from?
 
Quick oh-now-you’ll-get-it answer: A client who’s a perfectionist. 
 
Aha. 
 
Now everything should make sense for you. We have a client—we’ve actually had lots of clients like this—who’s a perfectionist. Who will revise and revise and revise a draft until it’s almost perfect… and then decide that it’s anything but, and then trash it, and start over, and then revise and revise and revise again, taking us along for the ride. 
 
As a creative resource, you could fight this. But you know that that would get you in trouble, and perhaps fired. 
 
You could just go with the flow: “Oh, this is the way they like to work. I’ll just… endure it, without complaining.” 
 
It’s possible that you could coast along like this indefinitely. 
 
But neither of the above approaches benefits anybody. 
 
Thus our advice to you in these situations: Embrace it. Heck, enjoy it. See it for the invaluable paid education that it is: 
 
Our fastidious client in this story—like most of the clients we’re lucky to work with, whether they’re fastidious or not—is quite brilliant. We would pay to learn their thought processes. To try and osmose just a tiny bit of that genius. Why do they toss Draft 5 and do a wholesale rework for Draft 6? 
 
Incidentally, the method behind the madness reveals—if you pay attention—that overall, these drafts get better as they go. It’s not a simple straight slope, were you to graph it. But the trend would be positive. Put it this way: Wouldn’t you love to see Einstein’s notes en route to e = mc2? 
 
We get paid for our services. It’s incumbent on us to remain profitable. So we don’t lose money on assignments like this—while, at the same time, we don’t take advantage of our clients’ generosity. And while we get paid in dollars, often the greater reward is the knowledge. The insight. And, frankly, the ability to help other clients like this in similar situations. 
 
As we’d said, we’re not along simply for the ride. We dive right in, on every single draft, seeing what’s changed and doing our best to make it better throughout. That’s why our clients entrust us on this journey. 
 
Need help with a client, or project, that feels unending? Contact us. We’d be happy—truly happy—to help. 

​Y’know, it’s funny. A voiceover is truly an old-school skill: it dates back to the birth of radio about 100 years ago. And radio itself, while still around, isn’t the front-and-center medium it once was. 
 
But what about voiceovers? Have they suffered the same fate?
 
Au contraire.
 
They’ve not only survived. They’ve flourished. They’ve exploded. The internet—specifically things like B2B and B2C videos on YouTube and Vimeo, cross-posted to platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook—have made them ubiquitous. Essential. 
 
And the way they’re done has changed, too. 
 
But we’ll get into that in a minute. The point of this article is to help you get more out of each voiceover you buy, so that your target audience buys more stuff from you. Basic premise, but packed with nuances. 
 
The new reality
 
As we’d noted above, online videos are everywhere. And pretty much all of them have a voiceover—if not for the entire thing, then definitely portions of it. Even if (and this is common) it’s a little video that will scroll by, with the sound off, and big “closed captions” rolling past, Karaoke-style, you’ll still have that voiceover track, which you can hear, the instant you click the “un-mute” icon. 
 
Voiceovers are important. Sure, they tell the story. They explain what’s going on. But, done right, they do much more than that. In a subtle way, they represent, and sell, your brand. 
 
Is that voice authoritative? Seductive? Approachable? Intelligent? Likable?
 
Or what if it’s the opposite? There’s a lot at stake here. Which leads to casting. Which leads to the new modality of simply producing voiceovers. 
 
The new modality
 
Here at Copel Communications, we’ve been directing (and of course writing) voiceovers for decades. Back in the day, we’d do them at sound studios and/or radio stations, and everything was in person. We’d show up. The voiceover artist would show up. The engineer would show up. We’d bring the script, printed on paper, in triplicate, so each party could have a copy. And then we’d sit in the control room while the V.O. artist sat, on the other side of the soundproof glass, in the booth.  
 
We could see each other. (Although we could only hear each other via headphones and microphones.) And seeing is a huge asset when recording a V.O. As the producer, we could see how the artist was performing. They could see our reactions: good, bad, and indifferent. 
 
And there was instant feedback. After a take, we’d rate and review it. We might request a quick punch-in fix. And we could get everyone out of the studio pretty quickly, most of the time, with a great product in-hand. 
 
Fast-forward to the 21st century. No one works like that anymore... at least for the scope and budget of projects such as those we’re discussing here. For the business videos you’re producing, you’ll be posting them online—and you’ll be casting and producing them online, too.
 
The downside is you lose the eye-contact and the immediacy. But pretty much everything else is better: 

• You have infinitely more talent to choose from. 

 

• You can schedule sessions easier, and often get faster turnaround. 

 

• Prices have absolutely plummeted. 

 
About that last point. Decades ago, we’d pay about $150 for a voiceover session in a studio. Today, we’re getting the same product (actually a better product, since it’s digital and not analog) for about a third of that. And that’s after decades of inflation, so the real cost was higher then... or less, now, depending on how you look at it. 
 
There are lots of places to find V.O. talent. There’s Upwork. We’ve had good results with Fiverr.
 
Which gets back to that first bullet: “Infinitely more talent.” We recently wanted a Morgan Freeman-style voice, and searched on “Morgan Freeman-style voice,” and found lots of them. And many of them were quite good! Just like that! It was a real gig-economy moment: This obscure Morgan Freeman sound-alike was just sitting there, when, bang!, he got work from us. Everyone was happy. 
 
Direct without directing
 
We won’t get into the intricacies of casting here; that goes beyond the scope of this article. So we’ll assume you’ve found the talent that you like and need. 
 
But they might be halfway across the country... or the world. (We use lots of British voices, for example.) So how do you direct them if you can’t be in the control room while they’re in the booth? 
 
The answer is the script. That might sound like a no-brainer, but it’s how you craft the script that matters. 
 
Sure, you’ve got your “V.O.” in the “Audio” column of the script. (The other column is “Video.”) But you need to help that announcer along. Consider this V.O. passage (which we’re making up) for a corporate video aimed at banking executives: 

• “When it comes to SOX and the OCC, you may need to issue adverse action letters to clients.” 

 
That’s tricky! There are a few ways a V.O. artist could read this... but only one that you want. 
 
Let’s make it a little more artist-friendly: 

• “When it comes to SOX [“socks”] and the OCC [“O-C-C”], you may need to issue adverse-action letters to clients.” 

 
“Brackets” signify “directions to the artist.” Pretty obvious. As fixed, above, you’ll now know that your artist won’t say “S-O-X” or “Ock”, which wouldn’t help you. 
 
Also note the addition of that hugely important hyphen. “Issue adverse action letters” became “Issue adverse-action letters.” So “adverse-action” will get read [“red,” not “reed,” get it?] as if it were just one word (technically a compound adjective), and just guide that artist along. 
 
Help them with things like numbers, too. Don’t write “1,600.” Choose what you want: either “one-thousand six-hundred” or “16-hundred.” Make it clear. 
 
Here’s another trick: Toss some intriguing direction, for the artist, on the overall character and tonality, at the top of the script. Make it challenging and fun for them; they’ll love you for it... and deliver a better read. We recently penned a script which included a voice for a robot character who was “nerdy yet likeable” with a touch of “efficient British butler” to him. We got a dynamite read out of our artist for that one. 
 
We work on this kind of stuff all the time (heck, we even served as preliminary judge for the Clio Awards for “U.S. Radio”). Need help? We’d love to come to the rescue. Contact us today. 

​It’s that time of year again: the end of the year. That’s when we provide our annual year-in-review of our top articles from Copel Communications. We do two of these each December: one for our “Creatives” audience, and another for our consultants audience. 
 
This one is the former. Here are the top articles we’ve posted for creatives, chock full of cool tips and tricks. In case you missed any of these, here’s your chance to get some fast, free pointers. Enjoy! 

• How do you write for a celebrity? Most of our assignments—and likely yours—address rather arcane B2B concerns. This one didn’t. Get some cool tips for writing for celebs in this fun article, based on our assignment working for an international celebrity. 

 

• When does “no production value” become “better production value”? Talk about a counterintuitive topic: This is a case of “way less is actually much more.” Intrigued? Want to see how you can do a ton on a non-budget? Read on! 

 

• How to sell creative ideas… creatively.  Sure, as a creative pro, you’re all about coming up with new concepts. But how you pitch them requires its own type of creativity, if you want those ideas to reach prime-time. Learn how to win at the subtle art of head-gaming in this insightful article. 

 

• Cashing in on personification. Intellectual or emotional concepts—such as fear or desire—can be hard to convey visually. A handy tool: Personification. Sure, you know how this works, but do you know all the tricks and questions to ask yourself when you proceed? Get some great pointers, right here. 

 

• Why we love extreme examples. You’d never develop a campaign featuring murder in it… would you? But you might be surprised to learn how useful your over-the-top ideas can actually be. This article will help you not only with assignments, but dealing with recalcitrant clients. Check it out! 

 

• How do you do creative on a big budget? Seems like a nice problem to have, right? But sometimes it truly is your problem to solve. Simply throwing more money at a creative challenge won’t solve it creatively—or appropriately for the budget. Learn how to spend big—and wisely—in this cool article, based on a recent high-end creative assignment. 

 

• The joy of visual metaphors. Sometimes you can take your client along for a huge creative leap—easier than you might have thought possible—with the help of an outrageous visual metaphor. Get inspired from some real-world stories in this fun and useful article. 

 

• Abuse yourself into writing a good email campaign. Yes, we actually talk about this, in this article. Read it. It will help your next campaign bring in more leads. No pain, no gain! 

 

• Creative for political campaigns. How can you remain apolitical while working as a hired gun? Should you even accept that assignment? Learn what to do, what not to do, and how, in this straightforward article about a touchy subject. 

 

• When can you have fun with serious topics? Want to see one of the dumbest headlines we’ve ever written? It’s in this article! Seriously, though, you can have some serious fun with un-fun topics, if you know your guidelines, and how and when to cross them. Get inspired; check it out! 

 

• The pitfalls of search-and-replace. This basic computer time-saver can also create some serious headaches and embarrassments if you’re not super careful. Want proof? Learn from our missteps! Cash in on cringe-worthy lessons learned in this surprisingly helpful article. 

 
Have suggestions for topics you’d like us to cover next year? Contact us. We’ve love to hear ‘em. 

Lessons from the front lines of corporate video scripting services 
 
We’ve been creating a ton of videos for our clients recently. And when we say “we,” we mean a team. As providers of corporate video script writing services, we’ll gather the client input and pen the script itself. Then we’ll work with/direct a number of other people, including internal resources at our clients who know how to edit video, external/freelance video editors, animators, and, as you might expect from the title of this article, voiceover artists. 
 
In fact, it’s hard to think of a video we’ve done in the last year that hasn’t utilized a professional voiceover. 
 
With all this practice, comes experience, and lessons learned we can pass along to you. 
 
Steps for creating a corporate video
 
Unfortunately since the pandemic, we haven’t been sending out camera crews to do shoots. (Although we look forward to the day in the not-too-distant future when we can hopefully resume that practice, a lot.) This means that on-camera talking heads are limited, pragmatically, to captured Zoom call footage or other webcam input. It’s not the highest-quality video. 
 
Stock footage, on the other hand, is. 
 
So we’re using lots of stock footage to elevate the production value of the videos we help produce. That will be combined, typically, with on-screen demos of our clients’ latest offerings. There will be titles and motion graphics and animation and music, but the real thing holding it together is that voiceover. 
 
So let’s dive into what makes a good one, how you can get one, and, best of all, how you can basically get more than your money’s worth from your next one. 
 
How to script a corporate video
 
The voiceover is really the “backbone” of your script. It’s what ties all the visuals together. The music helps to set the tone and pick up the pace. 
 
Quick note, quite literally: We’ve found, thanks to our clients’ diligent research into YouTube metrics, that most viewers will stop viewing a corporate video right around the two-minute mark. So that’s been our guideline for scripting limits. 
 
Here’s another convention we’ve discovered. Many of the two-minute corporate marketing videos we help to create follow a basic three-act structure: 

1. The problem. 
2. The solution. 
3. The call-to-action or CTA.

 
All of this affects the voiceover, including the way you script it, the announcer you hire, the way you direct it, and the way they read it. 
 
This is a gross oversimplification, but it goes something like this: 

• The problem. This is the “before snapshot” of the relatable situation you’re depicting for the target audience. “How many times has this happened to you?” or “Is your enterprise struggling daily with this insurmountable issue?” Here, the script—and the voiceover, and even the music—should convey the soul-sucking/stress-inducing/budget-busting  situation that your target audience is currently enduring. The worse you make it sound, the better. Not only will it be more dramatic, but it will make your soon-to-be-unveiled solution all the more impressive, by contrast. 

 

• The solution. This is the “Imagine you could...” moment. Typically, the music will kick into high gear; so will the announcer. This is the whiz-bang portion of the video, in which the seemingly insurmountable problems of Act I are miraculously solved, thanks to your client’s offering. If you (hopefully) have numerous sell-points to reveal, line them up from simplest to sexiest. You want to keep building and building, with the solution continually looking better and better, as you go. By this point, the audience is breathlessly asking, “How can I get my hands on this?!” To which you helpfully offer them... 

 

• The call to action. This is the simple “Book your complimentary consultation” or “View our screen demo” or “Sign up for your free download,” or whatever. It’s got to be quick, simple, easy, and compelling. And it should feel like the logical conclusion of the video. It is, quite literally, the last word. 

 
Casting, booking, directing
 
We’ve been using tons of talent from Fivver lately. We’ve been getting great talent at great prices. 
 
Not easily, mind you. You really need to listen to the demos and read the reviews and scour all the fine-print for what-they-charge-for-which. But once you assemble a stable of good talent, you’re off to the races. 
 
Some quick tips: 

• Include direction. You can put it directly in the script, and/or in your cover-note instructions to the voiceover artist. Be as specific as possible, e.g., “We’d like you to do this read in a similar voice to your Toyota sample, but with about 20 percent more energy. The product we’re going to reveal at the mid-point of the script is the first of its kind ever on earth! Corporate execs will be amazed when they see this, so be sure to convey that level of enthusiasm.” 

 

• Spell it out. Never assume the artist knows the pronunciation of acronyms you take for granted. Spell them out. For example, we recently mentioned FIS and scripted it like this: FIS [“F-I-S”]. That’s so they don’t say “Fiss.” 
  
  There are other words you’ll need to spell out. Is the word “read” pronounced “reed” or “red”? Let the announcer know. 

 

• Don’t be shy. If the announcer flubs a line, get a retake. Similarly, if you find out, the hard way, that you’ve got a flub in your script which the announcer followed (correctly and professionally) “out the window,” politely ask for a recut—acknowledging that you’ll need to pay for that one. Sometimes, being nice—especially with an artist you give a lot of work to—can end up getting you a favor. If you get one, show your gratitude! Life happens. We’re all human. 

 
How to save money on video voiceovers and production
 
We’re often getting two-minute Fivver reads for under $100, so we’re hardly complaining. That said, reworks require time and money. And here’s the important thing to bear in mind: 
 
It’s easier to cut than to add.
 
That should be your mantra. If that video needs to time out at two minutes, but the script feels like it might come in at 2:15, record it as-is. Because, with any good, professional voiceover, it’s pretty easy to edit out, in video, passages that you no longer need. This is fast and easy and gives you a safety net. We’ll often create a “red ink” version of a script, for our editor, after the V.O. is recorded, with cut-able passages called out in color, like this: 
 
Now we’ll enter the account number—the one we got from the spreadsheet we just created.
 
See (or rather, “hear”) the natural pause at the em-dash? That’s an easy and “invisble” break. So we’ll simply rely on the editor’s discretion to bring the project in on-time, letting them choose the “red-ink passages” they need to cut. 
 
And if you want a separate, longer version? It’s already in the can. And paid for. 
 
Get help with corporate video scripting and production
 
We know about this stuff because we help our clients with it all the time. And they’re making a lot of money off of these videos. Everyone wins. 
 
You can, too. Contact us today to learn more and get started!

Hint: If you think it’s easy, you’re wrong
 
It happens all the time. You slave over a creative piece, you pour your heart and guts into it, you turn it in, proudly and/or terrified…
 
And then it tanks. 
 
What do you do? Did you fail? Should you fight back? 
 
In this article, we’re going to touch on the touchy subject of criticism. It’s universal; every creative soul faces it. Creative professionals get more than their share; it comes with the job. 
 
Fortunately, there are ways to deal with criticism that’s aimed at your creative work. There are ways to actually improve from the experience (even when said criticism seems patently boorish or unwarranted). Better yet, there are ways to avoid even getting the criticism in the first place. So get ready for lots of tricks, both procedural and mental. 
 
A chronological approach
 
Tracing a typical story in chronological order will help you to spot opportunities for improving your lot. 
 
It goes like this: You’ll be handed a creative assignment, either by a client or a superior/sponsor within your own organization. And when we say “creative assignment,” we mean something that requires interpretation. It won’t be something like “Make last year’s orange layout, blue.” It will be something like, “Figure out an exciting way to reach this specific audience via a direct mailer, with a given form-factor, based on our available budget.” 
 
Then you take that input, you huddle in your creative cave, and ideate your brains out. You choose what you believe to be the best idea, develop it, hone it, and turn it to your client/sponsor. That’s when they reject it/hate it/ask you what you were thinking/what you were smoking. And you try not to take it personally, but it still hurts. Because there are pieces of you all over that thing. 
 
Identifying the gaps
 
The story we just spun is ripe with opportunity. In other words, it’s rife with glaring gaps in the narrative. Do not take such a story for granted. If this is the way you receive, and then deal with, creative assignments, you’re shortchanging yourself. You’re making it too easy to get disappointed—and to disappoint others. 
 
Let’s take that “direction” that was given in the above story: “Figure out an exciting way to reach this specific audience via a direct mailer, with a given form-factor, based on our available budget.” Seems pretty detailed, right? 
 
Wrong. 
 
You can, and should, spend a lot of time with your client/sponsor at this point. “Tell me more about this specific audience!” That’s an hour-long conversation, easily. “What are we offering them?” “Why do they need it yesterday?” If you can’t get good answers, you can’t do good work. Be prepared to push back at this point; to quote the old computer adage, “garbage in, garbage out.” 
 
Here’s another gap in the supposedly gap-less story above: “You choose what you believe to be the best idea, develop it, hone it, and turn it to your client/sponsor.” Oops. That’s a lot of work in a vacuum. Instead, show your client/sponsor early/rough ideas. Don’t commit to in-depth execution without their sign-off. We have a great article devoted entirely to this topic: It’s called Why We Have Layouts.
 
Then what?
 
Let’s say you plug all the gaps in the above-spun story. You get good input. You follow a “gated” process for execution. And yet still the criticism comes raining down. What do you do? 
 
There are two important things to understand here. 
 
One: If you have indeed gotten good input and followed a “gated” process for execution, you can rule out those factors as the basis for the criticism. We can’t overstate the importance of that fact. Consider the opposite: If you didn’t do that, you wouldn’t know where to start, nor how to react. 
 
Two: The criticism probably has merit. Yes, there are always bone-headed clients making ham-handed suggestions; that’s part of the business landscape. But even the most brutal and seemingly senseless critique has, as its core, valuable intentions. Your job is to find them. 
 
Now you might expect us, at this point, to say, “Swallow your pride. Act professional. Find out what’s needed, so that you can minimize your time and effort on the next-round revisions.” 
 
That’s only partly true. Because advice like that ignores basic human behavior, especially if you’re the creative type. To wit: When you first get that heat-seeking email, you want to scream.
 
So scream. 
 
Indulge in some good old-fashioned primal therapy. Rant. Rave. Curse. Throw things. Burn off the anger and the aggression. Here’s the only trick: Do it privately. You may need to “take a breath of fresh air” and head out to the parking lot. You may need to simply close your office door and work out with a stress-relieving device like a spring-loaded finger-strengthener. Just get out all the knee-jerk anger first. Then you can take a nice long breath, consider the criticism, and work up your line of questions to help you nail that next draft. 
 
A parting word 
 
Creativity is subjective. You, as a creative professional, are an arbiter of taste. So sometimes, that first-round version you’d submitted is, actually, really really good. You’ll just need to make a new version, going in a slightly different direction. And other times, you’ll have to admit, that first-pass effort wasn’t your best. No one’s a machine. So be grateful for the second chance. 
 
Need help with that next creative assignment? We practice what we preach. Contact us today for a no-obligation assessment. 

Not sure about you, but 2018 positively flew past for us. In what has by now become an annual tradition, here’s our roundup of the year’s top best-practice blog posts for creatives, replete with links to each. 
 
Use this handy list as a refresher, or to simply check out any you may have missed. Enjoy! 

• The V-8 trick and other creative brainstorming techniques. Some really good tricks for squeezing more creative ideas out of you, than you’d thought you’d had in you. The “V-8” portion is way cool. 

 

• Screw ups, flubs, and outtakes. By all means, learn from our mistakes! To err is human, to profit from it, divine. Plus you’ll enjoy some good laughs, at our expense. 

 

• Help with creative assignments: New approaches to stale stock images. We love this post. It shows you how to get super creative with super un-creative input. And it helps you save money, too! 

 

• Jingles need to stage a comeback. In this article, we make a strong case for bringing back the motivational power of one of advertising’s most proven techniques. Plus it contains a dose of trivia: How many of the jingles that we mention, can you remember… and sing? 

 

• Good riddance to old tech. Some people get nostalgic about the pre-digital world. We don’t. Find out why—and find out which single tool from the old days still works as good as new. 

 

• Choose the middle name last. Here are some really important ways to keep that creative challenge of yours on track. The title of the blog comes from a real-world analogy. 

 

• How to build business by breaking the rules. It’s often said that rules are made to be broken, but if you don’t know the rule in the first place—or why it exists—you’ll simply fall flat by breaking it. This article will help you with everything from visual composition to copywriting. 

 

• Don’t be so literal! Know what “slide-show creative” is? Better yet, know how to avoid it? “Slide-show creative” is the antithesis of synergy; this article tells you how to avoid the former, and leverage the latter. 

 

• Tag your characters. Why is it not just desirable, but necessary, to draw your reader in? This article explains why storytelling is an essential tool for business-building. 

 

• Spooky creative. Know what “FUD” is? Know when it’s downright appropriate to make your audience uncomfortable? We timed the posting of this article to Halloween, per its title, but its lessons are applicable—and valuable—all year round. 

 

• Creative turkeys. Yet another holiday-themed title with info you can use all year. This article points out common creative pitfalls that can impair your impact—and how to avoid them. Take advantage! 

 
Which of these articles was your favorite? Which ones might warrant a sequel? Let us know; we’d love your feedback. We’d also love to help you with that next creative challenge, taking advantage of all of these powerful lessons learned. Contact us today to get started. 

Everyone messes up now and then. Learn from our embarrassing war stories!
 
We know a guy who always seems to get everything just right. He always knows exactly what to do, in virtually any situation. So once we asked him: “How do you do it?”
 
Without hesitating, he replied, “I have screwed up so many times, that I’ve done everything else wrong and have been able to rule them out!”
 
Wow. Love that honesty. But it’s also helpful. What happens when a plane crashes? The NTSB rushes in to find out why. They publish a report. It’s a lesson-learned. So others can benefit from it and, hopefully, it won’t happen again.
 
(Incidentally, one of those old “Airport” movies was based on one of those true reports. A plane had crashed because both the pilot and co-pilot suffered from food poisoning. To this day, the pilot and co-pilot are each served different meals, to avoid that problem.)
 
And so goes this article, which is a follow-up to our earlier post on goofs and gaffes. Interestingly, all of the stories we’re going to share here date from our days in agency-based automotive retail advertising: hard-sell radio and TV for car dealers.
 
The professional actor
 
We once directed a TV spot, on location at a car dealership. It was a fairly big-budget shoot, with a union film crew and talent.
 
The star of the spot was a terribly handsome actor, who looked smart and professional: the perfect spokesman type.
 
He had one big line: “We’re big! Big on savings!”
 
So we called “Action!” and he said, “We’re big! Big on action!”
 
*sigh* At least it got a laugh in the editing room.
 
The funny spot that wasn’t
 
We once sent a script over to a radio station for them to record a spot for a car dealer. We had a good relationship with the production people there, and they thought they’d have some fun with us this time.
 
So they played around with the script. They actually recorded a fully-produced commercial in which the announcer excitedly offered “two-for-one Chevy’s” and new cars for as little as “50 bucks,” all buttoned with the name and address of this very-real car dealership—one part of the script that they didn’t change.
 
As part of the quality-control process, we would always request a phone playback of any spot before it aired. So when we heard this one, it certainly scored its intended shock value.
 
But while it was marginally funny, it was incredibly dangerous. Here was a fully-produced 60-second radio spot, with our client’s name on it, sitting inside a prominent market radio station which already had time slots lined up to air commercials for this exact client! Do you have any idea how easy it would be for that spot to accidentally air?
 
We politely thanked the production crew for their cute joke. And then we downright begged them to erase the spot immediately, and proceed apace with a properly-scripted version.
 
The right spot aired. Phew.
 
Lesson learned? Don’t take anything—not even a written script which your client has approved—for granted. Even a well-intentioned little joke could prove disastrous if it aired to millions of listeners.
 
The sound effect that almost sank us
 
Here’s another hand-them-the-script-and-let-them-record-it story for you. It was a different radio station. And no joke was intended. But again, the stakes were high: millions of listeners, and a prominent car dealer who was paying for all this.
 
As we’d mentioned above, this is all about hard-sell car-dealer ads. So the script for this one opened like this:
 
ANNCR:       Stop!
SFX:                [Car chirps its brakes.]
ANNCR:      Whatever you’re doing, get to [Dealer] and [spend all your money on this great sale before it ends, etc., etc.]
 
Not terribly creative, but terribly straightforward. Right?
 
You’d think.
 
Until we got the playback.
 
In a classic case of what were they thinking?!, the playback that we heard went something like this:
 
ANNCR:       Stop!
SFX:               [Car slams its brakes, skids, slides, and CRASHES INTO A TREE, replete with shattering glass and smashing metal]
ANNCR:       Whatever you’re doing--
 
We didn’t need to hear much more. Suffice it to say, you don’t want to sell cars using the mental imagery of a fatal collision!
 
We politely asked the radio station’s production crew (remember, lots of these people are kids straight out of school) to kindly employ a gentler sound effect, one which hewed to the direction in the script. And rather than just “trust them,” we insisted on a new phone playback, after the revision was made.
 
Lesson learned? Check everything. Taking a phone playback is akin to proofreading print. In our early agency days, we once proofread an ad which had two little photos in it, each with a caption. We noticed that the captions were reversed: Photo 1 had Caption 2, and Photo 2 had Caption 1. Turns out it had been running that way for months. Why? No one took the time to look.
 
The previous story was about a car crash that was merely a sound effect. Our next one is about one that wasn’t.
 
A little too close
 
Here’s one of the silliest car-dealer TV commercials we had the dubious honor of directing: It purported to show this dealership’s “huge inventory!” of new cars. How?
 
If you weren’t aware, all dealer showrooms include at least one set of really big double doors, by which they get the actual cars in and out. This dealership had two: one in the front, one in the back.
 
So here’s the ingenious creative of the spot: You’d see a shot of this dealership, with the big front doors of its showroom flung wide open, and, while the off-screen announcer told you how great this place was, you’d see what looked like an unending stream of new cars driving out the front doors of the showroom.
 
The setup was simple. We just had the back doors open at the same time, with a long line of cars, and drivers, queued up in the parking lot behind it. When we called “Action,” everyone would drive into the open back doors, across the showroom floor, and out the open front doors, toward the camera, where they would follow a curve and continue offscreen. Pretty simple.
 
But here’s the problem. Unlike the high-budget spot that was “Big on action!” which we mentioned above, this one was shot on a dirt budget. We used a cable-company camera crew, and for drivers, the dealer’s general manager simply “volun-told” his various staffers that they were going to be TV stars.
 
When we called “Action,” the first two cars made it. The third didn’t. It hit the front-door door-jamb, smashing the aluminum to bits while ripping up the bumper, marker lights, and trim on a brand-new car with the sticker still on it.
 
The driver? A pretty young receptionist, who was bawling her eyes out by the time we called “Cut!”
 
So what happened? The dealer’s general manager was standing right beside us, behind the camera, when it happened, and he—amazingly—thought it was hysterical. Couldn’t stop laughing. Mentioned something about “insurance.” Consoled the poor kid who had crashed. And demanded that we send him a copy of the outtake, so he could show it to all his friends.
 
Lesson learned? Who the @#$#@ knows!
 
On avoiding mistakes
 
To err is human, as Alexander Pope famously wrote. But that last story really does have a lesson: Sometimes, it’s best to call in the pros.
 
Need some creative accomplished with the benefit of lots of lessons-learned? Contact us. We’d love to help.