7 Items Every Contract Should Have

I’m not a lawyer and I don’t play one on TV. But over the course of the years at Firstborn I’ve had experience working on many client agreements with the help of our attorneys. What follows is a distillation of some of the items we always look for and while this is based on our work as a digital agency, most of these issues can apply to any company selling creative services.

As a rule, there are 2 types of contracts that we work with. A master services agreement (MSA) is what we usually sign when we’re an agency of record for a client or will be doing ongoing work with a particular company. We then sign off on individual statements of work (SOW’s) for each specific assignment that comes up and the terms of each SOW are governed by the MSA. For work that’s on a project by project basis, the terms and SOW are combined into one proposal document.

Scope of work
The SOW contains a detailed and unambiguous description of what it is we’re delivering to our client. The format may vary and could include a content outline, set of wireframes, creative brief, illustrations or a combination of the above. This is the road map that will guide our work and provide the reference point for both parties should any items fall outside of the initial scope. In some instances, defining the scope of work is part the assignment and in those cases, we charge a fee for an initial discovery phase, out of which a detailed scope, cost and timeline document is delivered.

Limit of Liability
We ask that there be a cap to the amount we’re liable for, usually the amount that we’re paid for the project. Having an open ended liability puts us at great risk, especially a relatively small company such as ours that can be put out of business by frivolous lawsuits.

Indemnification, Representations & Warranties
As a creative agency, Firstborn warrants that our work will be original. However, we need to be very specific about what exactly we’re liable for. In many cases we may be using materials ideas or product claims that are supplied to us by our clients and so we make sure there isn’t a broad representation that would include those materials we’re not responsible for.

Payment terms/schedule
The payment terms and schedule are clearly laid out in all our agreements. It’s Firstborn’s policy to receive 50% to start work and the rest paid out during various milestones in the production timeline.

Ownership
Since what we create for our clients is a work for hire, our clients own all the deliverables. We do, however, retain ownership of our source code, the reason being that we have a right to the methods and knowledge that we use in the production of work for all our other clients.

Termination
If the contract is cancelled for a reason other than our negligence or misconduct, it’s only fair that we be given reasonable notice so that we can re-assign the team that was allocated to the project.

Credits
The ability to showcase our work is very valuable to us and so we ask that we be able to publicize our participation in the project subject to, of course, our clients’ permissions.

Goodbye Captain

I was saddened to read about the death of Lou Albano recently. Lou was most famous for his appearances in a Cyndi Lauper music video but made his living in the world of professional wrestling. Back in the '70's pro wrestling wasn't the huge juggernaut of the current WWE but was still very much a fringe entertainment. It was even hard to find on television back then since the "sport' was often relegated to UHF channels that were hard to tune into as opposed to the regular over-the-air stations that had the monopoly of programming before the age of cable. As my friend Roger said to me recently, before the WWE, wrestlers weren't all the steroid-built hulks of today but in large part were just a bunch of fat guys from New Jersey. Enter Lou Albano. Like Freddie Blassie and The Grand Wizard of Wrestling Lou's role was a manager of various villain wrestlers such as Ivan Koloff, the Valiant Brothers and the Wild Samoans. Lou's modus operandi was being totally off the wall during matches and interviews. I think what appealed to us about wrestling when we were kids - and of course we knew it was fake - was the sheer wackiness of it all and it was kind of cool to follow something that was out of the mainstream. Being a manager of a bunch of "bad guys" is not a role to aspire to, but the self proclaimed Captain sure made me laugh a lot.

NFL keeps blacking out

Whether you're a football fan or not, the NFL is one of the strongest brands around. Just look at how Fantasy football has become such a big business (I've been in a league for 17 years now) so much so that the NFL has gotten in on the action with its own fantasy game to further generate interest in pro football. There's a disconnect however as far as the NFL's policy of blacking out games in local markets if a particular game hasn't sold out as pointed out in a recent posting in Tech Dirt. Game blackouts might have made some sense back in the day when there was no cable TV and internet and the media wasn't as everywhere as it is now. However, by restricting fan's access to seeing their favorite teams - then and now - is the NFL increasing or decreasing interest in its product? With ticket sales down this year, the league seems to be shooting itself in the foot by continuing this outdated policy. Let's face it, the NFL is a sport that has evolved based on television anyway, with instant replays and its use by the game officials to make close calls, breaks in the action for commercials, etc. There will always be fans that enjoy going to games and ones that would rather watch the action from home or a bar with friends. Rather than fight this reality, the NFL should embrace it and find ways of getting people to games other than depriving those who want to continue their team loyalty via TV, mobile or the web.

RIP Dominick Dunne

Almost lost in the Ted Kennedy news coverage was the death of Dominick Dunne. Dominick was a writer who reported on high profile criminal trials, most notably O.J. Simpson's. I always enjoyed his articles in Vanity Fair and would make a point to watch any of his television appearances that I came across. He had a no nonsense style and made no bones about his bias toward the victims of the cases he wrote about, no doubt stemming from the fact that his daughter's killer got away with less than 3 years of jail time. Mostly though, I admired his tenacity. He went against his doctor's orders last year when he was very ill and insisted on covering O.J.'s kidnapping trial. And he re-invented himself as a writer after a failed career as a Hollywood movie producer. He really told it as he saw it and that's what ultimately made him so influential and popular.

The Extra Foot

Sometimes, little actions can go a long way. About a month ago I bought a pair of shoes at Brooks Brothers. Yesterday I got a hand addressed, hand written note in the mail from the salesperson I dealt with thanking me for coming in the store and letting me know to contact her if I ever needed anything else (she also enclosed her business card). While I'm used to getting and immediately discarding the mounds of junk mail that I get on a daily basis, receiving this note really knocked me out.

There aren't many chains that will send you a hand written note these days and this salesperson took the time to follow up on her sale in a very classy way that reflects well not just on her but on the company she works for. I'm not a huge fan of Brooks Brothers so I don't know when I'll be back in the store again, but I know that with this small gesture this person has built up some memorable positive equity with me that will make me more likely to return.

One of my favorite quotes about business actually comes from a former baseball player, Lou Piniella, who's now the manager of the Chicago Cubs. I don't remember the exact statement but when asked what makes a great ballplayer he said it's how well you do the small things. So, when you're in a service industry like we are, you don't have to always go the extra mile. Sometimes the extra foot will do just fine.

Word Power

Reader's Digest has just filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy so it looks like yet another venerable American Magazine is biting the big one. Not that I was ever a fan of the publication (it's a bit too right of center for my tastes) but whenever I think of Reader's Digest I think of my grandparents who were long time subscribers. Visiting them in their apartment in Jamaica Queens was my only exposure to the magazine and I can picture it now, lying there on their coffee table. I came to enjoy testing my language skills with the Word Power section that was my favorite feature (and really the only part of the magazine I paid much attention to). Sure, I can sign up and play the quiz on the Reader's Digest website now but it is, of course, not the same experience. My grandparents and visits to their home in Queens are long gone and now so too is their favorite magazine. I'd like to think that in addition to the fond memories I have of them, I can truly say that it pays to enrich your word power.

Legal Kryptonite

The heirs of Jerome Siegel have been engaged in a long standing legal battle with Warner Brothers. Siegel along with his creative partner Joseph Shuster are the original creators of Superman but signed away their rights to the character years ago when they were hired by Detective Comics. As pointed out in Techdirt, after years of litigation and changes in the copyright law, it's gotten down to Siegel's family getting back ownership of depictions of Superman's origin, the planet Krypton and his real parents, with Warner Bros. having rights to Superman's ability to fly, the term "kryptonite," the villain Lex Luthor, Jimmy Olsen, and some of Superman's powers. This mishigoss is a case study of how ridiculous copyright law can be. You can read the whole story behind this case here.

Brothers from Another Planet

Someone was bound to come up with this idea.

A group at Cosmos Magazine, in honor of National Science Week in Australia and the International Year of Astronomy, has launched a site in which you can send an SMS message to Gliese 581d, a planet, possibly Earth-like, 20.3 light years away in the constellation Libra.

People are posting from all over the world and while I'm not sure if these entries are moderated in some way, a sampling of messages includes:

"we're a mob called human beings. we make lots of mistakes but we basically mean well most of the time, although i wouldn't trust us as far as you could throw us". ' Deb from Australia

"Do you have beautiful and sexy women that are always willing to share their love and DO NOT MAKE stupid comments? Bring some to the Dominican Republic PLEEEEASE" Jose from Santo Domingo City

"We are but primitive specks floating amongst the stars. Take solace in the fact that you are not alone should this message reach you. Love, Earth." Patrick from Flushing

Obviously, many of these are humorous but in a very unscientific perusal of some of the entries, it's interesting to see the themes that emerge if people had a chance to communicate with people on another planet and how these messages reflect how we see ourselves. A lot of people talk about what a hostile species we humans are, how we're destroying our own planet and the need for peace.

If extra terrestrials ever receive these messages, would they bother to respond?

One Small Step Revisited

This week marks the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission to the moon and the event is being commemorated in a number of different ways. The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library has come out with a very cool website called We Choose the Moon (created by our good friends at Domani Studios) that will recreate the entire mission in real time. Today, the NY Times had a dedicated section to Apollo 11 which includes a great reminiscence by John Noble Wilford as well as comments from numerous celebrities from a variety of fields about what landing on the moon meant to them.

Each generation has its own defining moments, whether triumphant or tragic; events that cause you to remember what you were doing when you heard the news that...fill in the blank. For those of us lucky to have been alive at the time, landing on the moon was just such a moment. Fuzzy as those television images of Armstrong stepping onto the lunar surface were, it was an unforgettable event. And to think, the Apollo 11 crew had at their disposal computing power that was probably not much more than today's Blackberries!

Reasons for Reasons

5 reasons for writing a list of reasons

1. There's not a lot of writing (but, hopefully, a lot of thinking).

2. It's easy to read if people don't have a lot of time.

3. Your opinion/advice can help someone.

4. You can promote yourself or your company without promoting yourself or your company.

5. In your research/thinking you may come up with an idea that you can use.

Requiem for a Pitch Man

Billy Mays is dead. The brash, loud television pitchman was found dead by his wife in his home yesterday morning. Billy certainly wasn't a cultural icon the way Michael Jackson was or even Farrah Fawcett. Nor was he a television staple as long as Ed McMahon who with his boss Johnny Carson was part of what may arguably be thought of as the most famous 2 shot in the history of TV. No, Billy was just a guy promoting Orange Glo and OxiClean on commercials. And yet, I feel really sad that we won't be seeing him anymore (unless his estate has the ghoulish idea of continuing to run his spots). For one thing, I really didn't mind the intrusion Billy made on my television viewing because he was just plain entertaining. He was a hawker who didn't make any pretence that he was trying to get you to buy his product and got in your face to do so. In many ways, he was a throw back to the old informercial stars of yesteryear (Ron Popeil must be shedding a tear) but in Billy's case, he was saying this is my style, I don't care if I'm too loud because I really believe in the products I sell. (One of the funny stories I read in one of his obituaries is that he gave all the guests at his wedding samples of OxiClean and did his pitch on the dance floor). This was a guy who loved what he did for a living. And if he really didn't, then he was a better actor than we can give him credit for. Billy Mays was as everyman as you can get, an anti-star and yet an icon in his own way for advertising and I'll miss his over the top 30 seconds of hawking.

Hats off to Zugara

Waiting for a client to give you a project is nuts. It's far better business sense to create your own platforms that a client will by dying to get in on if they solve an immediate problem in an exciting way. I really admire what the people at Zugara have done by creating an application called the Webcam Social Shopper that uses augmented reality and motion capture so people can try on clothes virtually, using their webcams and a print-out marker. It's a great idea and from viewing their video demo, it looks like a cool experience. While this doesn't seem to be created for a specific client, I could see how this would pique the interest of a multitude of apparel companies who sell online. And the idea of creating a need where there was none before is a great way to get business.

And the winner is?

Awards seem to be very important in our industry. As I write this, the ad industry is abuzz with news of the Cannes festival. Everyone likes to get recognition for the hard work they put into a project. Lots of companies publicize their honors in their marketing and new business efforts and Firstborn is no different. A recent article in Ad Age pointed to the fact that some agencies spend tons of money on their awards submissions. Then why do some people think awards shouldn’t matter so much? Should the focus be on doing great work for your client no matter how you think it’ll do if you enter it into a competition? Is it all a bunch of smoke and mirrors? Do clients really care? As long as it matters to the marketing and advertising world it seems that you’re left behind if you don’t follow the herd and toot your own hardware.

Twitter & Hugging

Last night the good folks at Rackspace invited me to sit on a panel at an event they held at the New York Stock Exchange for some of their agency clients of which Firstborn is one. The discussion focused on social media and Twitter in particular and I was asked towards the end of the evening whether I thought these networks could be monetized by companies. It got me thinking about a wonderful tweet I read the other day by Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos who I follow on Twitter.

Twittering is like hugging. Just because it's hard to measure the return on investment doesn't mean there isn't value there.

That statement struck a chord with me since the work that we do at Firstborn largely has to do with user engagement rather than raw commerce. Sure, the projects we create are implemented with detailed metrics and we're able to see incredibly large amount of time spent which is one indicator of success but is this enough? Getting back to Tony's quote, I think it's going to require a change in mind set of marketers about how they measure ROI and be comfortable about other bench marks that add to brand equity. After all, will Twitter be ever used to directly sell products or services in an e-commerce model? Probably not. So we should all get used to the fact that the social media are more of an indirect sales tool whose monetization must be thought of in new ways.

Discovery Channels

5 Reasons Why a Discovery Phase Makes Sense:

1. The scope of work hasn’t been defined. A thorough discovery phase will allow you to establish the business, creative and technical requirements of the project.

2. You’re engaged with the client sooner. If the project’s scope hasn’t been established in detail, signing an agreement for discovery allows you to start the relationship rather than having to wait for someone to figure it all out.

3. It’s a great way to become immersed with the brand. You’re way ahead of the game if you can become an expert in the client’s business.

4. You can test the waters to see if this is a client you want to work with. A discovery phase is limited to a relatively short period of time so you’re not committed if you need to bail. Likewise, the client can see how wonderful you are to work with.

5. You may discover other business problems that need to be solved and hence, more potential work for your company.

Buzz Off

Ours is an industry that just loves its buzz words. So, boys and girls, let's look at some of these bon mots and how they've been used to the point where they have no meaning.

Viral. As in "we want to do a viral campaign". Is there any successful campaign that can't be considered viral? Does viral just mean a funny video on the web? A micro-site that lots of people go to? An app that gets sent around? Can't traditional old school television commercials be considered viral e.g. "Where's the beef?" and "I can't believe I ate the whole thing" if people tell their friends about them? How about a print ad that someone cuts out of a magazine and passes on to a friend? All of the above or none of the above? If you're trying to be viral, chances are you'll fail anyway if you don't have a good enough idea that people will want to tell other people about. So let's please retire the use of the word viral.

Stickiness. Is sticky having people come back to your site on a regular basis? Does that mean that a website isn't successful if people only visit it once? What if they engage with the brand for over 10 minutes and then never come back? Is that then a measure of failure? Of course not! No more stickiness.

Synergy. I think I knew what this word meant but I admit having heard it thrown around so much I had to look at Merriam-Webster to get the official definition. Okay, so it means participants or elements coming together to achieve a common goal. (I think.) Question for you buzz-worders out there: is there any initiative in which you want disharmony and disunity amongst participants whether they're creators or audience? There was definitely a lack of synergy when the Confederates fired on Fort Sumter to start the U.S. Civil War.

Nimble. This one is bandied about when comparing how small companies operate versus larger ones and I have to admit that I've used this one in the past when talking about Firstborn. Is there a salesman out there who wants to present their company as being bloated, lethargic and slow to move? So let's use some other adjectives instead of nimble from now on.

Low hanging fruit. For some reason, this conjures up some bizarre images in my head but perhaps that's the result of my childhood. Fruit is fruit. Sales is sales. Opportunities are opportunities. Low, high and everywhere in between.

Social networking. I'm treading on a minefield by including this one in my list since it's the red hot topic du jour in marketing and advertising. Isn't every medium social in some way or another? Did we just invent the transmission of ideas in a social way? You could argue that when Guttenberg created his printing press he was creating a bit of social networking. I'm not denying the importance of this phenomenon in our modern culture but it's time we stop throwing it around whenever we talk about communication.

So if you're looking for some long hanging fruit that's a sticky, nimble viral campaign with synergy and social networking please keep it to yourself.

Mmm...donuts...

Today is National Donuts Day. Who knew? To commemorate this sacred holiday, Dunkin Donuts is giving out a free donut of your choice with each beverage you purchase. According to Dunkin Donuts' Brand Marketing Officer Frances Allen, "We hope our free donut offer will create an opportunity for people to celebrate donuts and bring some extra happiness to their day. "

CaT Conference

I really enjoyed attending the recent Creativity and Technology conference (CaT) sponsored by Creativity Magazine. Not only did I get to see clients I haven't talked to in a while and make some new connections but I learned a lot about the different ways technology is being used to tell brand stories.

Some highlights for me included a presentation by Nick Bilton and Derek Gottfrid who are technologists at the New York Times. They discussed how the Times has opened up a number of API's to outside developers who have created some interesting applications. For example, one app called Watch Instantly ties in Netflix with the Times movie reviewers' top picks. I think the way they're focusing on Times readers more as users rather than readers is a very clever and helpful way to drive traffic to the Times website.

And, of course, Firstborn's own Dan LaCivita was on a panel moderated by Nick Parish of Creativity with Winston Binch of Crispin Porter and Daniel Illic of North Kingdom. Each participant walked the audience through some recent work and how each company has used technology to communicate ideas. Dan showed the Puma project we did for Droga5 and how we combined live action video with 3-D elements. Seeing our work presented to an audience really reminds me just how cool and innovative the work is coming from Firstborn and our top competitors.

Bad Research

At Firstborn, we've never been a big advocate of focus groups and this is a good example why.

7 elements every proposal should have

1. Make sure the layout conveys the level of professionalism the client will get if they hire your company for the job but the design should never get in the way of the information. At the end of the day this is a business document.

2. Less is more when it comes to text. Let’s face it, the first page people turn to is the pricing. People shouldn’t have to wade through paragraph upon paragraph of copy which no one reads anyway.

3. Save selling for the cover letter. The pitch in your proposal consists of your solution to the problem you’ve been ask to solve so no need to lay on the superlatives about how great your company is.

4. Let them know who will work on the project. Meeting the principals of the company at initial meetings is crucial but letting the client know exactly who’ll be on their project team will add to their comfort zone.

5. Make sure you answer the question: what makes your approach to this project unique from your competitors? Just regurgitating what the client has written in the RFP won’t get you very far and since you’re most likely vying for the business against other companies, you need to make a splash.

6. Having multiple people write different sections of a proposal is fine and necessary in most cases but when you’re ready to put it all together during the final polish make sure the document speaks to the reader with a consistent voice.

7. Give them more than they ask for. A little extra can go a long way to telling the prospective client that you really want to win this business.

Here Comes the Judge

While my blog has been primarily about business development in the digital industry I wanted to put on my political cap for a moment; or my judicial robe as the case may be here. I've been reading about President Obama's choice to replace David Souter on the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor. This woman grew up in a housing project in the Bronx and since her father died when she was 9, her mother worked 2 jobs to put Sonia and her brother through school. She eventually went to Princeton, graduated summa cum laude, then on to Yale Law School and from there worked as an assistant DA in Manhattan before rising through the ranks as a judge. What a story. It's a cliche to say this is yet another example of the American dream (there, I said it anyway) in which hard work can reap many rewards. Now that I think about it, this has everything to do with business development in the digital industry.

From the Horse's Mouth

I attended an interesting panel discussion last night about digital marketing for CPG at the Interactive Advertising Club that featured panelists from Schering Plough, P&G, Kraft and Mars. One of the questions that was asked to the panel was what they think makes for a good sales presentation. The consensus seemed to be the following:

1. Differentiate yourself from your competitors

2. Understand their business of the marketer you're meeting with and the problems they're looking to solve

3. Show them results

I've discussed topic before on my blog and it's also part of an ongoing focus within Firstborn but thought it very helpful hearing these thoughts from the type of people we're hoping to work with.

Outsourcing Sales

We’ve never outsource business development at Firstborn. As a creative digital agency, the types of projects we work on and the technologies we use are constantly evolving. In fact we’re a different company than we were even a year ago. Whoever sells for us needs to be inside our 4 walls in order to have his or her finger on the pulse of the shop to understand the nuances of how our projects are conceived and built. I’m not a techie by any stretch of the imagination but I know enough to be able to speak to our process and methods.

We’re also a very team-centric company without any silos; designers and developers work side by side from the start of an assignment. That culture of collaboration needs to be reflected by whoever sells on our behalf since that’s a key part of who we are. Speaking of collaboration, while my assistant and I are the only dedicated business development people at Firstborn, everyone from our senior staff and our team of producers contributes to getting work.

Sure hiring an inside person is an investment in salary and benefits as opposed to an outside solution but if they bring in one sizable project, they’ve already paid for themselves. Maybe it works for large agencies but we’re a boutique-sized firm and as such we don’t see the need to ever outsource business development just as we don’t use freelance designers and developers for the most part. The quality of our work has to remain high level and that applies to the sales process as well.

Pitch during the Pitch

I've discussed in the past about how a pitch meeting can very often be a gauge of the type of relationship you'll have with a prospective client. Last week we had a meeting with some people at a research foundation that does some incredible work in making the world a better place. The CEO of the company gave us an overview of the foundation and I have to say it was one of the most compelling presentations I've seen. Not only did he have such incredible stories to tell us but the way he told the stories was remarkable. Talk about interactive presentations, he even had us go around the room and read flash cards which described some of their work in various disciples so we were all involved. I can image how well he does in fund raising meetings. This made us want to work with this client even more, not only from a monetary perspective but from having the opportunity of being a part of the telling of their wonderful stories.

Some of my best friends are horses

Those of you who know me are aware of the fact that I'm an avid equestrian. Learning how to ride horses is both a joy and a challenge because it's such a metaphor for life. Horseback riding is so counter-intuitive to everything we do on the ground so it's all about letting go. If this sounds a lot like Zen that's because it does have that quality and you never stop learning how to ride.

The lessons I've learned from riding my horse are often ones that I apply to my life outside of the stables. The other day in preparation for the first competition of the season I got very frustrated about what I perceived to be my lack of progress. My instructor, Tara Bowles, then asked me if I want to get high scores in the horse show or if I want to ride. I thought that was such a great question and statement at the same time and (here comes Zen again) it really reminded me that it was all about the journey and not the destination.

Well, the competition was yesterday and during my rides I really focused on being in the moment. I came in 2nd place and got my highest score ever.

So what does that have to do with being the Executive Vice President for business development at a digital creative agency? Quite a lot actually, I'm pleased to know. My work is all about preparation, attention to the small details and the day to day tenacity that's necessary in order to keep opening doors.

Ode to Sequential Liability

Oh the joys of sequential liability

An adventure in fiscal futility

Omnicom says the cost

Is to sign or get lost

If we did we'd lose all credibility.

Virgin Pitching

Virgin Atlantic is launching an in-flight channel called PitchTV which will feature entrepreneurs pitching their business ideas. You submit your video on Richard Branson's Business Stripped Bare website and then your piece is voted on by the community. Each month the video with the most votes gets to be included on PitchTV. Branson came up with the concept because he wished that he had some platform to pitch his ideas to the people that could have helped him when he was starting out. I love this idea and it totally makes sense in that business travellers are an ideal audience to whom entrepreneurs can connect with. Branson is always coming up with something cool. Time to put my 2 minute pitch together...

The Idea Rules

Great ideas don't need to take a million dollars to execute. In fact, some of the best ones cost practically nothing at all to make. Take for example this hysterical video that's a spoof (I think) of a tourism ad for Cleveland. Very low fi, clever, funny and memorable.

Dominos Delivers

Two dunderheads at a Domino's Pizza franchise in North Carolina thought it would be funny to video themselves doing nasty things to some sandwiches they were preparing for delivery. But the bozos didn't stop there; they went ahead and posted the videos on You Tube. One million views later the videos had caused a public relations nightmare for Dominos. Needless to say the pranksters are now ex-employees and in fact have been arrested for their misdeeds. Dominos has responded by creating a special Twitter account to address its customers concerns and a video of their President doing damage control was placed on You Tube. It's another example of the power of social media. If content is compelling enough people will spread it like wild fire. You can't buy media like that. I think I'll use this as a case study in future sales presentations.

Seth Godin Rocks

This morning, my colleague at Firstborn, Dan LaCivita, passed along this TED presentation by Seth Godin. It’s an oldie (from 2003) but definitely a goodie. Seth talks about how marketers need to figure out what people really want and how to give it to them. Not only is his message fascinating but how he delivers it is awesome. Seth is a dynamic, charismatic, engaging and funny presenter. This is story telling at its best and all under 20 minutes. And there wasn’t one slide that had a bullet point; they were truly supporting his talk rather than competing with it. Coming in with a presentation like this would knock any marketer’s socks off and Seth has done much sock removal in his career.

When Low Fi is Hi Fi

Our friends at Big Spaceship have just re-launched their website in blog format. EVB and Juxt have also recently revamped their sites using the Wordpress platform. It's an interesting marketing strategy that not only has a low cost factor but also emphasizes the conversations that brands are seeking out these days with their customers. The latest incarnation of the Firstborn site debuted in October of 2008 with a Flashed-based design that showcases our most important selling tool, our portfolio of work. We've no intention of a redesign anytime soon - our previous version stood the test of time for almost 5 years - but nonetheless the low tech trend happening with some of our competitors is noteworthy from the standpoint of how everything old is new again.

Bad Times/Good Times

Awesome keynote presentation at the Mix09 conference by Bill Buxton about experience design that I viewed on the Mix website. Bill is a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research and kicks butt in his speech pointing out how the current economic downturn is actually conducive to breakthrough experience design. Bill cites some examples of innovations that came about during the great depression of the '30s. This is a very reassuring message and while there are probably going to be tough times ahead for everyone, hopefully the brands we work with are even more receptive to the innovative work Firstborn always strives to produce.

The Passover Question

"Why is this night different from all other nights?" That's the question being asked at seders all across the globe. In addition to fond family memories, thinking about the Passover question always reminds me of one of my old playwrighting instructors. He always said that when writing plays you had to have an answer to that question in order to guage whether or not your story is compelling enough. I think it also applies to many other areas. I've been thinking and talking about sales presentations a lot lately, for instance. What is so special about what you have to tell your audience? Why should they listen to you? Why is your company different from all other companies?

Remember the Alamo

I've been to the SXSW conference a couple of times but I didn't know Austin was this much fun. I read on Ben McConnell and Jacki Huba's Church of the Customer Blog about an amazing event at the Alamo Drafthouse movie theater. They were holding a special screening of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn along with a 10 minute clip from the upcoming Star Trek movie. TWOK begins and after about 10 minutes the film"breaks". Who walks out on stage? None other than Leonard Nimoy! He suggests that they show the new Star Trek film in its entirety. And that's what happened. It was all just a stunt in order to stage a sneak preview of the new movie. What a great idea and it made me think of what an awesome moment it must have been for those Trekkies when Nimoy came out. Although limited to just the people who were lucky enough to be in that theater at the time, what a dramatic and thoughtful way to reach hard core fans of the Star Trek franchise. I wonder how this might be applied to other brands?

At the Source

Doing great work and be compensated for it fairly is what we all strive for. As they say, half of show business is business. Firstborn's contracts are structured in such a way that our clients own all the files necessary to run the experience whether it's a website, online advertising, kiosk, application, etc. But when it comes to ownership of the source files that were used in the creation of said project, we prefer to retain ownership. This is particularly the case with all the 3-D work we've been doing. In the past, the 3-D source files that we used for a website project were being re purposed for print and broadcast without our company getting paid for it. Now if a client wants to use our work in a medium other than what we were originally hired to create, we negotiate a separate license fee. This isn't meant to squeeze out of our clients of every penny we can but in fact, it sometimes can actually work to their advantage. There was a ton of CGI work in a recent M&M's site we did collaborating with our friends at proximity Canada. They asked us to do the broadcast spot leveraging these assets and it ended up costing them 70% less than if they had hired another company to produce it from scratch. It was a win for everybody.

Cubed

Hats off to Nissan for plunking down $20 million on an upcoming campaign for the new Nissan Cube, a vehicle not unlike the Honda Element and other dudemobiles marketed to the younger set. It's encouraging that they're willing to do a major push during this economic downturn and not only that but it's yet another example of how the digital world is influencing communications in the world of advertising. The Cube is being positioned as a "mobile device" and as Stuart Elliot points out in his NY Times advertising column today, several other words and phrases associated with the digital arena are being used to describe features of the car such as "search engine" (pretty clever actually), "storage capacity", "browse", "add friends"and "set preferences". It also reminds me of the Dentyne Make Face Time campaign last year which borrowed from the technology lexicon with the tag line "power down, log off, unplug ... make face time". I'm not sure how effective the Cube campaign will be but when it comes to connecting with the younger demographic, more and more marketers are utilizing digital speak to reach these consumers.

Telling Stories

I just read a wonderful book on how to put presentations together called slide:ology The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations by Nancy Duarte, one of the principals of Duarte Design. I really got a lot out of reading her thoughts on how to create ideas and stories instead of just slides. At Firstborn, we've been working on refining our message as well as our presentation materials over the course of the past few months and her book has inspired me to look at our presentations in a new light. A presentation needs to serve as a visual aid to your message not as a document. There's a great quote by Seth Godin in the book: "Communication is about getting others to adopt your point of view, to help them understand why you're excited (or sad or optimistic, or whatever else you are). If all you want to do is create a file of facts and figures then cancel the meeting and send in a report".

The Subject is the Subject

E-mail can be an effective sales tool. I'm not talking about all the obnoxious spam we're getting because some poor souls out there actually do buy Viagra and do send money to that guy from Nigeria. What I mean is a targeted, well thought out introduction to you and your company to someone specific you'd like to do business with. I try to be as brief as possible - long blocks of text can send people screaming into the night. One of the most important facets of a sales related e-mail that's often not considered carefully is the subject line. Your subject line is the first element people see when a message hits their in box and you've only got seconds to grab their attention. Again, I don't mean something along the lines of READ THIS NOW! that shouts people to hit the delete button but a few honest words or a phrase that's at the core of why the recipient will want to read on. Make your subject line as good as what you say in the rest of the message.

Believing the Hype

We recently met with a client that markets a cool collection of brands. In doing our research prior to our initial meeting we came across this very clever application they developed that really impressed us. During the course of our praising the client for having come up with such a great idea, we learned that they made it all up and never actually created the product. Well, their plan worked. It certainly got our attention and they had already gotten a lot of press mentions which was how we found out about it in the first place. Is this dishonesty or one of the oldest PR tricks in the book? Technically anything you want to mention can be "in development". Of course, here at Firstborn we would never hype a project that we couldn't show since our portfolio of work is our most effective marketing tool. Nonetheless, just as impressed as we were about this client's idea, we came away even more impressed by their idea of hyping the idea.

Social Schmocial

One of the hot topics of discussion in the marketing world is how to use social media. As Michael Gass points out in his latest newsletter, a report from the Aberdeen Group on "The ROI on Social Media Marketing" says that 63% of companies in their survey planned to increase their social media budgets this year. But what constitutes social media since its meaning seems to be changing all the time? What are the other touch points that marketers can reach consumers other than just having a Twitter Feed, Facebook/Myspace page, corporate blog, etc? Everyone seems to be getting on the bandwagon because in this economy budgets are tight and getting your customers to participate with your brand can be more cost effective than the traditional channels, especially when you consider the fact that consumers are tuning out all the advertising they're bombarded with on a daily basis. It'll be interesting to see in the coming months which marketers are successful in figuring this all out and which ones get drowned out in the conversation. And can we please come up with another term other than "social media" which has fast become old.

Be Prepared

I never made it past Tenderfoot in the Boy Scouts but I do remember the motto: Be Prepared. Preparation is key to any meeting, especially a sales presentation. Who are you meeting with? What's their background and experience? What are they doing with their brand? What is happening within their industry? What have other people been saying about them? What are some of the ways you can help them do a better job and make them look great?

Battle of the Presentations

Godzilla vs. Mothra. Ali vs. Frazier. Kramer vs. Kramer. Obama vs. McCain. Then there's Keynote vs. PowerPoint.

For some time now, PowerPoint has been the de facto corporate presentation tool. It's relatively easy to use and fairly seemless with the other Microsoft Office products. Firstborn's a creative agency and P-Point doesn't give us the oomph that's on a par with the work in our portfolio. Some of my co-workers had suggested using Apple's Keynote on the MacBook we have in our office. Being a PC guy, I was reluctant at first but now I couldn't do without it at meetings.

Keynote allows much more impactful presentations with really simple to use but powerful design tools and transitions. Also, we tend to show a lot of our work using video captures of our projects since we might not have an internet connection. It's just a lot easier to talk over videos of projects rather than having to click around. Quicktimes in Powerpoint just don't work but with Keynote, they're a charm.

Keynote, you won me over.

Show and Tell

The one rule about giving presentations is that there are no rules. Every client is unique; every situation different. In some instances, we may be presenting to a room full of people having to respond to specific questions that the potential client has laid out in their RFP. In those cases, we'll put together a very structured Keynote presentation.

Then there are those meetings that are much more informal. We may be getting together with 1 or 2 people, often in their office, sitting around their desk. It may be about a specific project or it may be just a general capabilities introduction. In those circumstances we'll certainly have an agenda but be flexible enough to change our approach on the fly. Do we show work from our laptop? Do we just talk? Or a combination thereof?

Our approach will also depend on the type of client we're meeting with. If it's a marketer, they're going to be more interested in results and solving business problems than an ad agency client who might want to learn about how we can execute and enhance their wonderful idea.

Ultimately it's about having a feel for the room which is different everytime; knowing when to get in and when to get out. Being prepared enough to be quick on your feet with every different circumstance.

Jon Schneider

I was wondering whether to write about a very sad subject but I'll go ahead. We learned yesterday that Jon Schneider, Executive Vice President, Director of Client Services at MRM, died of a massive heart attack on Sunday. He was 52. I spoke with Jon during the contract negotiations for an Intel website that we worked on for MRM in 2006. There were some tense moments but Jon was always a great guy to deal with. I happened to be at Disney World for my 5th anniversary at the time and remarked to him that it seemed like a Fellini movie with all the noise of the Magic Kingdom in the background. Jon's response: "Fellini? Welcome to my world. Web 8.75 ;)"

Asking the right questions

Sometimes first impressions are the best. I had an initial meeting today with a potential client. We gave our usual capabilities presentation at the end of which he asked us a series of very insightful questions. The net effect of this was 1) This client knows what he's doing so consequently 2) He's definitely the type of person that we'd like to work with. We always say that the best meetings are ones in which the client does most of the talking and it's more of a workshop than a one-way version of our giving our company spiel. Such was the case today and if we do end up working with his brand, we know that we're ahead of the game with a client who gets what we do.

Small is the New Big

Alex Bogusky of Crispin Porter wrote a good article in Ad Age about how much he admires small agencies and what they can do compared to the large firms and holding companies. At Firstborn, we've always had the model of a boutique sized shop; currently we're at around 40 people and don't have plans to ever expand too much past that number (perhaps 50 or 60 tops). We don't have layers of account management; our producers serve that role in addition to their project management duties. It allows us - as Mr. Bogusky points out - to have a lower overhead than the larger companies, and as they say in sales land, we can pass on the savings to our clients. Being a small sized shop allows us to get stuff done quickly and efficiently. I like to point out in client meetings that you don't need large teams of people to produce high quality large scale work. Just look at our portfolio and you'll see what I mean. Long live the small shops.

Sue Me Sue You Blues

I've commented before on the issue of 3rd party infringement warranties in contracts with our clients, particularly our ad agency partners. Essentially, while we say that our work will be original we can never agree to any language that states our work won't infringe on the rights of a 3rd party because that statement leaves us open to frivolous law suits that could potentially put us out of business. Also, agreeing to this means we take on all of the risk rather than sharing it in a fair manner with the agency we're working for. Now comes the news a couple of weeks ago that Omnicom is now enforcing a sequential liability clause in its contracts with vendors which says that even though our contract is with the agency, if they don't get paid by their clients, we don't get paid. Needless to say this scenario is creating an uproar in the production community. Fortunately, we have organizations such as the Society of Digital Agencies (SoDA), of which Firstborn is a member, to push back on these unfair edicts. The net effect of the Omnicom mishigoss could be that companies who are producing great work will refuse to work with Omnicom and the slack will be taken up by crappy companies who will sign to anything and as a result, the quality of production will go in the toilet.

The Sales Cycle

The sales cycle can be a long process - over many months in most cases but years in some. About 4 years ago I had a meeting with a large potential direct client in the Atlanta area (who shall remain nameless for the time being). They really liked Firstborn's work but we never hooked up on a project mainly because they were already committed to their agencies of record. Flash forward to a few months ago when their long time traditional agency approached us about co-pitching on a very large assignment for this brand. During one of the very first calls when we were at the agency and had the client on the phone, they were told that Firstborn was in the room and the first question out of the client's mouth was "Is Kevin Arthur there?" This had to be one of the most gratifying moments of my career at Firstborn because right from the start the client was already familiar and comfortable with their agency's digital partner. Wait until they see the out of sight creative work that our team produced! The actual final pitch meeting is going on as I write this but it just goes to show how a sales meeting can finally pay off years down the line. Thankfully they all don't take that long but in this case, I'll take it.

SXSW

I attended the SXSW conference from Sunday through Tuesday. It's always a balancing act to attend as many panels as possible to learn what other people are doing/saying and to network with people that you know or want to know. So between the educational and social elements of such a conference I supposed I focused more on the latter this year. It's my sense that's what most people lean towards although I'm looking at it from the perspective of someone who does sales. There were still a bunch of people that I wished I'd met but in the end, I was happy with the new contacts I made as well as catching up with friends I hadn't seen in a while.

Augmented Reality

First it was Facebook applications, then it was i-phone apps and now the latest fad to catch on is augmented reality. Essentially, it's a way for people to literally interact with brands and break the "fourth wall" of the computer screen; a combination of the real world with a virtual one. We've been playing around with this at Firstborn and a few possible projects have come in the door. In one form, you print out a sheet of paper with pre-determined coordinates that are tracked by a web cam. What you see on your computer is a virtual object or character that reacts to your hand movements, for example. There's an example of this in a recent GE site that was created by Goodby Silverstein and North Kingdom.

Roger Smith Hotel

I had a meeting today with Adam Wallace who's the new media director for the Roger Smith Hotel on Lexington Avenue between 47th and 48th Street. Chris Brogan wrote about the hotel and it piqued my interest. It's one of the few family-owned hotels in the city and they're certainly under the radar for the most part. The owner is a sculptor and you can see his work and other art throughout the hotel. They're doing some interesting work using social media to reach out to their customers and it was interesting hearing about that.

A. Lincoln

I'm about half way through reading Ronald C. White Jr.'s new book , A. Lincoln: A Biography. I never get tired of the Lincoln story. As Doris Kearns Goodwin pointed out in podcast I listened to the other day about her book Team of Rivals, Lincoln dealt with tragedy from an early age; his mother died when he was a young boy, then one of his sisters and as a father he lost 2 children. He never joined a particular church and wasn't so sure about the afterlife so his ambition sprang from his hope that when he died he would live on through the memory of how he made the world a better place. And he really meant it unlike modern day politicians, although no doubt the ramifications of his acts rippled through the years to the election of the first African-American president. It's really hard to believe that a man such as Lincoln once existed who was both so humble and so great.