Marketing 3 of 4Ps: What exactly IS your PRODUCT?
There’s a small town in Ohio where a lot of big advertising takes place. It's also where most of the talent booking takes place, including freelance design and art direction. I only know this because somebody I grew up with is a male actor (very vain, very fickle, very average) who occasionally appears in commercials. I learned the same thing from Barbara Bills, a seasoned professional and highly efficient production manager for more than a few big ad agencies in her time. She said to me once, “I get lots of calls from freelancers who want to show me their portfolios and I’m always glad to give them a few tips when I have time. But sometimes, I am absolutely baffled when they show up with no idea what they’re selling. They aren’t sure what their specialty is; they like doing one thing but have no samples. They want logo work, but they design silly little detailed logos that no one would be able to reproduce. Didn’t anybody tell them that a corporate identity has to work in print as well as on the web?” Before you go out marketing your services, make sure you know what you want to sell.
This is an easy task. Take a few days to think about what you enjoy doing most, then consider what you do best. If the two coincide, deciding what services to sell will become clear. Art directors and production managers in ad agencies want to know which of their needs you can satisfy. Can they count on you for illustration, concept work, corporate identity or publication design? Are you fast and efficient in production? Learn to think of your skill as a PRODUCT with features and benefits for the person buying your service. Neither here nor there, your service is the product traded for currency. Your customers want your work, you want their money; so a trade is made. This is called THE OFFERING.
One of the reasons it’s so hard to get your foot in the door is all the bad work out there. Agencies are flooded with unqualified and poorly educated portfolio bearers asking for time to show their work. There is always a gauntlet to pass through; a secretary who knows little about what you do but who still must determine if you're worth the time, or a desperate production artist who is the bottom of the rung and sees every freelancer as competition. These folks are stopgaps in a big agency's desperate effort to invest the minimum amount of time wading through a sea of hopefuls. If you are gifted and your work is well worth their time, you must suffer through the mess that’s been created by the mass of wannabees and hope your talents are clearly evident. It pays to be nice to everyone, even those whose job is to keep you out. Sometimes, you may not get seen and that is the real injustice of the system. Play the game, be persistent and always do periodic followup; including dropping off recent samples with your business card and a note attached. Something as simple as “Just off the press–wanted to update you on my recent work. Give me a call if you need some help.” This won’t work if your portfolio is filled with sloppy, unprofessional, or unresolved work.
Take the time to define the characteristics of your service; make sure you meet the needs of your clients while you’re at it—don’t forget Service, Support and Warranty. That old saying, “The customer is always right” is no longer true. Like common sense, reasonable expectations are no longer common. A recent case is the Chung family drycleaning business where they misplaced a pair of pants owned by a judge who sued them for $54 million based on their satisfaction guaranteed sign. The test of reasonableness is frequently applied to injury cases; is it reasonable to find a chicken bone in chicken salad? Yes. Case dismissed. An Associated Press news story on the verdict quoted Judge Judith Bartnoff when she ruled that the Korean immigrant owners of Custom Cleaners did not violate the city’s Consumer Protection Act by failing to live up to Roy L. Pearson’s expectations of the “Satisfaction Guaranteed” sign that was once placed in the store window. Judge Pearson must now pay the Chungs everything they spent protecting themselves against his frivolous lawsuit and he gets the pants, which they found and tried to return earlier.
When service is your product, the list of marketing Ps is extended to allow for the special nature of expectations regarding transactions. I’ll cover those 3 additional, controllable variables next time.
To those of you residing stateside, enjoy your 4 day weekend and celebrate like true colonists. Try to keep all your apendages when playing with fireworks. Rock on.
Thinking of freelancing for a living? Tired of doing the boss' castoffs? Better get some good advice on how to protect yourself from those who would rape and plunder your creative talents. Look for more stories and adventures in advertising design in my book Start and Run a Creative Services Business. It's filled with great links and a full spectrum of experiences. Not an artist? You'll be in stitches as you follow the pitfalls and adventures of self-employment. And if you've been freelancing for a while, you'll find new information and a trustworthy mentor to stand by your side through thick and thin in Start and Run a Creative Services Business. Excerpts are available online at my website.
For a minute I thought your first sentence was a reference to the infamous tinned peas voiceover session of Orson Welles -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJeZ7Hc2AQQ
I think your point is well taken that most of us don't focus enough on what possibility we can be to others.