We’re fond of saying that “’creative professional’ is an oxymoron.” There’s a constant tension that exists in this field like nowhere else. The mere idea of selling a creative idea feels almost wrong. But it’s part of the biz. In this article, we’re going to relate a recent story in which we had to do just that. But pay heed: This is more than just “pitching the idea and seeing if the client buys it.” It was more subtle than that—and the way we succeeded here can help you, too. There’s a little bit of mental head-gaming going on here; let us explain. What’s your take on video? For this assignment, our client (a professional-services consultancy) had the opportunity to be featured in upcoming videos by a big enterprise which sort of straddled the line between “partner” and “client.” The important thing to note, for this story, was that the enterprise was going to be footing the (substantial) bill for the video production. So it was our job to basically pitch our client’s story to this enterprise, so that the enterprise would hopefully feature them in their upcoming videos. Note that this enterprise had tons of companies to choose from. Thus it was, in our view, a competition. We had to make our client the most video-worthy choice for this “Hollywood” enterprise. So what do you do in a situation like this? You listen. Reading between the lines The head video person at this enterprise (we’re blurring some lines here to protect identities) was the one in charge of making the selection of which companies would feature in these new “shows” they were producing. We wanted to learn more. So we booked a big Zoom call, with us, our client, and a few people from the big enterprise, including that Head Video Guy. Here’s where it gets interesting. Remember what we’d said about listening? The more you pay attention, and take notes, the better armed you are to succeed in a challenge like this. Here’s what Head Video Guy told us: “We want to make videos about a great company we’re working with. We want to feature the principal people of that company. But we don’t want to simply shoot ‘a talking head in an office.’ We want to tell an interesting story, one that really works well on video and takes advantage of the medium.” Ta-dah. There it is. We’d left off with the enterprise that we’d think about some ideas, and pitch them to them in a follow-up Zoom call. Building the “un-story” In our next, offline, meeting with our client, we asked the different team members about the kinds of things they like to do when they’re not at the office—and the more extreme, the better. We were pleasantly surprised. These people play as hard as they work:
Do you see where this is going? Pitching without pitching In our initial Zoom call, we picked up the signals that the Head Video Guy loved coming up with creative story ideas. In other words, he didn’t want to be spoon-fed. Read another way: He didn’t want to buy other people’s creative ideas; he wanted to come up with his own. So our job was to essentially pitch him “fodder,” and let him (easily) come up with cool creative ideas that were “his own.” All of the extreme sports listed above made this ridiculously easy. In the follow-up Zoom call, the conversation went something like this: Us: “We chatted and talked about different things, and just thought we’d tell you about what we learned about the different people at this company—specifically, what they do in their off-hours, compared to what they do at the office.” Head Video Guy (intrigued): “Go on...” Us: “For example, one of the top technical people, when she’s not solving difficult software challenges, enjoys going mountain climbing in her spare time. Can you believe that?” Head Video Guy (huge epiphany): “Wait a minute! This means that she’s always striving to reach new heights! What an incredible visual metaphor!” Us: “Amazing!” Yeah. Of course we’d thought of this. But we didn’t want to pitch it that way. The rest of the conversation, as you’ll see, was pretty predictable, but enjoyable and productive nonetheless: Us: “Our top sales rep loves deep-sea fishing.” Head Video Guy: “He likes to reel in the catch!” Us: “The Director of Product Development is an avid surfer.” Head Video Guy: “He’s catching the next wave!” Us: “The CEO enjoys skiing.” Head Video Guy: “He’s carving out the right path for the company!” And so on. The takeaway As you can tell, Head Video Guy was absolutely delighted by this call, and all of the brilliant creative ideas he came up with during it; they were all great for the upcoming video series. Just as important, note what we didn’t do: We never pitched any of these visual metaphors. We didn’t need to. Indeed, if we had, they would’ve ruined the call. We let the other guy make the (relatively easy) creative leap, and enjoy the rush and the glory. And oh, our client came out ahead in this “video competition.” As we’ve said, “’creative professional’ is an oxymoron.” But the more you know about selling, the better you can be at selling your creative. Need help with that next challenge? Contact us. We do this kind of stuff all the time.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Latest tipsCheck out the latest tips and best-practice advice. Archives
June 2024
Categories
All
|