creative briefing

While trying to make a point to a friend, I went looking for the Student Price Card (SPC) website. I was shocked to find that the URL is www.spccard.ca. That’s right, it’s student-price-card-card-dot-ca.

Somebody didn’t think that one through.

It’s been a bit of a struggle keeping up with blogging since I started full time entrepreneuring (is that a word?). Blogging is still very much an escape for me, and not a hobby, as I described in one of the 12 lessons I learned after 3 months of blogging. Nonetheless, I still enjoy using this site as an outlet for ideas, praise (of great work I come across), and new learnings acquired from each day that passes.

Today I checked in with our favorite friend FeedBurner, who joyfully reported that I had reached a new milestone of 44 RSS Readers. Woot. If I haven’t ever expressed my gratitude to the followers of creative briefing (though I’m sure I have on multiple occasions), here it is: thank you! But one thing still has me baffled…

Where are all the commentors?

Of the handful of people who do regularly comment here, I can count only about 2 or 3 who may actually subscribe and make up part of the 44. So who are the other 41-42 other creative briefers?

So go on, speak up! I’d love to get to know all of you. And while you’re at it, let me know why you may not have spoken in the past, and what I can do to change that going forward. If you’re just not a commenting kind of person, that’s cool. If you have no interest or thoughts on what I write about, that’s also cool. Just let me know, I can take it.

I write here because I like to write and express my thoughts. I don’t write necessarily to build some kind of a community or to drive creative discussions (though that would be nice sometimes). So whether 1 person comments or all 44 of you comment, I’m still going to continue writing. But I was just curious to see who all of you were, that’s all.

This site has always been about testing new things and learning along the way. Asking you all to speak up is another test. I figure 3 things can happen:

1. The handful of regular commentors will say hello. A great deal of you who have never commented here will also leave a quick hello. Maybe I’ll get to know a bunch of you. Maybe I’ll figure out how to be more engaging.
    
2. Only the regulars will comment and leave thoughts on how to increase comments and interaction (still awesome).
    
3. Nobody comments because you’re all appauled that I want to get to know you and think that’s kind of creepy (not so awesome).

Time will tell. Regardless of what happens, thanks for sticking around, even if you don’t comment. :)

Update

I’ve hit 46 readers since posting! Woot + 2. I’m also happy to know that this test isn’t a complete failure thus far as I’ve gotten to hear from 6 readers - 1 of which is a regular, 2 of which I’ve seen a few times before, and 3 of which I met here for the first time! Thanks to Satish, Téa, Jon, Malcolm, Kate, and Renata for chiming in!

Looking forward to hearing from more of you. :)

Last Friday I attended the second annual LIVE Conference Awards Gala which marked the end of a grueling two-day national student business competition. My agency has had the pleasure of being the creative partner of this one-of-a-kind conference since its inception almost 2 years ago, and from our involvement with the experience, I’ve learned 2 very important things:

1. Student organizations like the Management & Economics Students’ Association (MESA) who pilot innovations like LIVE Conference are breeders of tomorrow’s most promising business leaders.
    
2. Sponsoring a great organization or initiative could be one of the smartest moves you make for your growing business.

Two years ago, some colleagues of mine had asked for my help to launch an ambitious vision they had for a new breed of undergraduate business conferences. They needed some online firing power and I, reluctantly at the time, had accepted the honour, offering the services of my agency in exchange for potential exposure. Little did I know that that decision would ignite a long string of relationships and successes that would help us get to the point where we are at today - with the good fortune of being able to imagine ourselves doing what we love full time.

From our involvement with LIVE Conference 2006, we met one of our best clients who has not only personally provided an ongoing stream of projects for us, but has also referred us to a handful of other great clients. Additionally, our success with working with one of the co-chairs encouraged even more positive word-of-mouth, consequently spreading the good word to all her subsequent new business contacts. From these two buds alone have grown several long and fruitful branches of success that have helped us reach many new milestones throughout this past year (how’s that for an overly-developed metaphor?). We recently closed off our fiscal year with a nearly 200% growth rate from the previous year. Though other factors played a role in our growth as well, many of our successes trace back to our sponsorship of LIVE.

Yes, there’s a point.

Requests for sponsorship are not uncommon in any industry, especially not for creative agencies. Often times, growing agencies hardly have the man power to support sponsorships because it means sacrificing man power from client work which inevitably pay the bills (and the men and women that provide the power). However, I encourage you all to sidestep this [reasonable] excuse and consider for a moment the often-unseen benefits that can arise if you play the cards right.

If bad PR is still good PR because there’s no such thing as bad PR, then good PR must be awesome PR (just follow the logic…). Exposure from sponsoring a successful initiative will put you in the good light with the other corporate sponsors (read: potential clients), which, as our story has shown, can bring many promising things.

Here are some other benefits of sponsoring:

1. Gain access to new audiences.
2. Have full creative control over the work being delivered.
3. Get a testing ground for new technologies and/or strategies.
4. Have the opportunity to contribute to a cause you believe in.
5. Meet great people.

It’s not all good…

While I’m encouraging that growing agencies give sponsorship a try, I should also warn that sponsorships can go sour if you’re not careful. The sponsored party can gain a bad reputation which then passes onto you. The sponsored work could take an excessive amount of time and labour that is far beyond what was forecasted and planned. Or, worst yet, after all the hard work, the project you’re sponsoring could fail and never see its launch date.

These are all risks you take when sponsoring, and some risks will be more prevalent than others depending on the party you’re working with. Do your homework and carefully consider all angles of the deal. Free work is tough, but free work for nothing will hurt you considerably.

Survive your sponsorship

Doing pro-bono work isn’t easy. Trust me, I know. So to help you make the most out of your sponsorship experience, I’d like to offer 3 nuggets of advice that I’ve gained from my experience:

1. Pick a relevant cause. The more relevant the sponsored cause, the more potential benefits there are. Pick something that reflects the values you and your company believe in and also something that connects with your line of work. This ensures a more natural transition from your sponsored work to future paid work.
    
2. Do it yourself. Cost is always going to be a big issue. If you can’t afford to pay your team to do work that brings in no revenue, then do it yourself (if you’re capable of doing it). Putting in the hours to support a sponsorship deal is no different from putting in the hours to network with clients to acquire accounts - it’s all part of the business development role that accompanies your entrepreneurial responsibilities.
    
3. Give a little, get a little. Your sponsorship should be as much about giving as it is about getting. As part of your consideration of whether or not to sponsor something, measure the value of the return - whether it be exposure, relationships, or anything in between. It’s also not uncommon to look to sponsor projects that offer you opportunities to learn and do new things that you normally can’t do with paying clients.

With a new outlook on sponsorship, my agency now looks specifically for great new organizations and causes to sponsor every year. In fact, through the connections made at LIVE, we also extended our arms to the American Marketing Association, who we happily work with as part of the interactive team.

So the moral of the blog post is this: as contradicting as it may sound, sponsorship can be a profitable move. Play your cards right and you’ll gain not only in revenues, but in relationships, opportunities, and good will too. For us, we got all of that plus the pride of being the creative partner for the leading national undergraduate business conference in Canada.

Not too shabby for a growing agency!

I know, quite a revelation. </sarcasm>

Brought to light by a close friend today, I’ve spent the last 30 minutes or so watching each of the videos from Marie Digby’s YouTube channel. I have no intention to add another post to the blogosphere that testifies to the power of the social media landscape, but I’m a sucker for acoustic music covers so I thought it warranted a mention. The videos not only portray Marie as a talented and beautiful musician, but also captivates me with the fact that you get to see a side of her that you rarely get to see in other “celebrities” - the human one. And I think this is really where musicians (and artists in any other shape or form) are benefiting most from mediums like YouTube.

People these days are more skeptical than ever about everything they consume - music included. But I think that making effective use of social media tools (whether it be Facebook, MySpace, or YouTube, in this case) helps to reassure us that these are real people and not just some staged and over-produced group of pretty faces (if Britney did an a capella YouTube video, she’d surely regain some positive PR). John Mayer’s blog does it, Bathroom Sessions does it, and Marie Digby’s YouTube channel does it (if you don’t believe me, check out her Halloween post).

Where it loses a bit of its magic is when we find out that it’s all part of an elaborate scheme derived by a marketing team’s attempt to leverage the phenomenon described above. But by then you’ve already gone out and bought the Marie Digby CD, told all your friends about it, and wrote about it on your blog.

So there you have it, another post that testifies to the power of YouTube and the social media landscape. (Oops.)

Now go and indulge in the goodness that is Marie Digby’s cover of Rihanna’s “Umbrella”. Ela. Ela. Eh. Eh. Eh.

I’ve been coming across a lot of interesting reads lately. But rather than create a weekly series of posts that share these great articles (like many sites do), I thought it would be easier to make use of Google Reader’s share function. So now on the far right sidebar right under my profile you’ll find a new section for Recommended Reads for Creative Briefers.

The way it works is that every time I come across an interesting article in my Google Reader, I hit the little Share icon and voila - it’s instantly passed on to you lovely people. If you’re really keen on keeping up with this collection of recommended reads, you can even subscribe to the RSS feed.

And while you do that, you might as well subscribe to this site’s RSS feed too (if you haven’t already)! :)

For those of you using Google Reader, you can add the share widget onto your sites too. Simply click on Shared Items and click the link to put a clip of your shared items on your site.

Enjoy!