The process of critique, part 1

Sometimes pulling together all the images, all the text, all the photos in a format that sells your company or your product is the easy part. Getting others to see it as the way to go can be the hard part.

My life is much easier in this aspect in my current job than at AT&T where it could take weeks to get a brochure, a postcard, a website, a press release approved. Sometimes I can get something approved in a couple of minutes at Brooks.

There were 3 scenarios at AT&T.

1. An advertising agency was getting your okay on their work.
2. You were getting your work approved in-house to be printed, posted, emailed, etc.
3. You were in the approval process for a co-worker's work.

The first should be the easiest right? Wrong. This will sound like I'm bitter at first, but I actually understand why it has to be. An ad agency sees time as money. If they said they would present three drafts, you'll get three draft lay-outs. Chances are the last one they show you is the one they're going to sell you on.

There's a reason why your agency's account representative is a salesperson. Not only do they need to get your business but they need for their company to make a profit on your business. A sales victory is coming back with a sign-off on the draft that they've pushed and with very few changes.

A good agency will have a draft proposal that truly fits your business, your product. Sometimes you need to be sold on the idea because you're too close to the business/product to see how will the proposal fits. It's awesome when the agency hits a bullseye and you their customer knows it.

Good example: Some years ago I was pulling together the marketing campaign to interest application developers into developing applications for the AT&T Lotus Notes Network. Most agencies would've come back with some Star Track theme, but this agency came back with a 70's retro look and feel to all the individual components. Our target market were baby boomers that would remember (or not so clearly remember) their youth in that decade. The killer piece of collateral was a tie-dyed t-shirt that was mailed out if the developer requested an information kit. We had to reprint the info kit twice and beg the tie-dyed t-shirt man to go back to the vats.

Bad example: Post - AT&T I worked for a technology solutions company. The firm needed a presentation folder and the agency presented 3 lay-outs, each fraught with problems.

One lay-out showed a close-up of a dot matrix computer cable, there are people in the workplace that don't even know what those printers are. But our customers would recognize it as old, not old technology or old hardware, but an out-of-date cord.

To my horror, I realized the agency was pushing for the lay-out with an abstract concept that I'm not even sure they grasped. The front was a copy of the artwork that shows a business suited man with a apple instead of his face. That was it and that alone was enough to scrap it. The fact that the company didn't work with Apple computers didn't dawn on them yet a simple perusal of the reception area with IBM and HP logos stood would have told them enough.

Sometimes agencies are eager to get their collateral pieces in glossy trade magazines, the apple-headed man stood a chance of getting in the next quarterly read by potential clients.

To me a company's presentation folder should reflect exactly what the salesperson would be saying as he or she kick starts their sales presentation with their arm outstretched to the customer with presentation folder in hand. I couldn't see any salesperson starting their sales talk with "it's like wearing an apple for your head."

Please note: Coming from such a large company like AT&T, my experiences with ad agencies are distorted. I never selected an agency out of the blue. I was usually told which one I was allowed to work with. Before an AT&T-approved ad agency could even talk to me, they were given overall marketing strategies that were boiled down to certain formats the agency could use in pulling together work for my product or service. The agency's allegiance was never with me but with the corporate marketing group that allowed them to do work on my product or service.

Making set formats for 1,000s of AT&T products and services is tough. The year they decided to go with a format that included polka dots prominently displayed on a black background on the collateral's front cover or main piece was the worse. I was allowed to choose the color of the polka dot. I choose dark gray for all my products. Luckily I had most of my collateral thru the presses before I was called on it. The light and airy look they wanted with pinks, yellows and lime greens took on a more industrial look with my grays. My Product Managers and sales teams loved it. I was in the corporate marketing dog house - never a good place to be - until someone saner came in and banished the dots.

Note in passing: Sometimes getting what I needed from an ad agency was fighting an uphill battle. Most of the time, ad agencies - regardless of how much leeway time you gave them - would give you one lay-out in a timeframe that gave you just enough time to get it approved, hence no big changes. That would happen only once with an agency. I always had plan B, sometimes using my own lay-out and printing a small run on a local printing press to give me more time. Or plan C, tell them my deadline was sooner. Once an agency was on to my using one option, I had to move to the other. Kind of pathetic, but life in a big corporation meant doing pathetic things - at times.

more to come...

The new papaya box

The new papaya box is coming along with strange-to-me twists along the way.

Because I didn't want to throw cold water on the full color box option, I pulled together 10 lay-outs. 7 were my own and 3 were a graphic designer's which I've pulled in to help. The lay-outs ranged from three color to full process color.

The first 'winner' of the above lot was this one (one of mine, I might add). I love the dynamic wave that seems to rush out at you while passing to the other side of the box. I was thrilled that they like the abstract papaya; it hasn't been that long since we use a rather 'botanical' illustration for our advertising.

It turns out my boss hates red. He wanted more white space, and way less red. The 'Caribbean Red' header was too fancy, more sophisticated was what they wanted.

I'm always amazed at what comes out of my mouth during such times when I'm arguing for a particular design. It's all the unconscious logic that bubbles up. In a casual conversation, had you asked me 5 minutes before why I choose the font I probably would have shrugged my shoulders. But in the meeting when the 'chocolate' font - so aptly named, don't you think - was being ousted, out of my mouth came "don't forget we need a font that helps make 2 words one. Truly sophisticated fonts won't often do that." Then I made him think of art deco and how an art deco font wouldn't pull two words together. There is a reason why art deco hotels over on South Beach have only word to their names. The chocolate font is history but super elite fonts won't be on the box either.

I walked away thinking we were still on solid ground, lots of nits but all doable. It turns out I wasn't as far down the path as I thought.

I got my super graphic artist back involved and he churned out these three drafts. Why he had to play around with the papaya, I don't know. I got it approved, move on. Header approved, my papaya remained approved, other nits like the word 'papayas' too big all fixable. Yet my boss wanted more white space and I was losing the wave dynamic.

The graphic artist whipped out three new lay-outs. The one with all the white space I thought would get my boss to eagerly jump on the wave bandwagon. Turns out he loves it.

However, the VP of National Sales showed it to his wife and another woman. God bless them, they love the wave!

Meanwhile I was intrigued by the whisper of the wave in the third option.

Big boss was wavering but had ideas. VP of National sales had ideas. More ideas meant back to the drawing board. I left the graphic artist out of it. We were back to doing some rough drafts.

So I did these with varying saturations of red, color opaqueness.

I'm not liking this.

These are their ideas. The first shows 'waves' that will go between boxes while they're on a pallet.

The second and third pull in the graphic design from my factsheets.

I'm not handling the approval process very well. We are nowhere yet so much ground has been covered.

Parting comment, PhotoShop World

I can't leave the subject of PhotoShop World without detailing the insightful comment made at the "I'm a Stranger" dinner.

This was a group of folks like myself that are finding the world of marketing collapsing or imploding with a single person's area of expertise covering much, much more. Software like the Adobe suite and the internet are allowing use to broaden not only how we work but compelling us to do so much more.

Yes in large companies you still have a PR group, marketing communications group, advertising group, marketing strategy group, product marketing groups, etc. Of course in small companies, one person does it all. But it's truly phenomenal that in medium sized firms that one person or a couple of folks can do so much, so fast, so effectively.

For example, before I left for PhotoShop World, I was told that when I got back I needed to change a photo of a box of Caribbean Sunrise papayas for a flyer to go out to customers. The color on the fruit was too yellow; it should be greener. Within an hour, I took several photos and got the okay on one and PhotoShopped it to get into the flyer. Created the jpeg and pdf and I was done. One hour in 2009 would have been a couple of weeks 5 years ago.

The insightful comment was:

With everyone doing everything you'll have to pay a lot to get a specialist to make something fantastic. Or choose the 'jack-of-all' and get something that's not fantastic but does the job nicely for a lot less.

Is marketing evolving to be mediocre?

Parting comment, Boston 2

My last post made me think of something I want to share.

While eating at restaurant in Harvard Square where I ate on a long narrow table facing outward about 1.5 stories above street level, I conversed with a fellow long-narrow-table eater while we both 'people watched.'

We watched a woman literally run helter-skelter down the street and into the liquor store just across the street from where we sat. She quickly made her purchase and exited only to run back and turn on a side road into the Cambridge suburbs.

My eating companion said, "I wonder what made her do that?"

I know of one scenario for I've done the very same thing and I'm racking my brain to remember if it's the same liquor store.

My Boston true love's sister and brother-in-law lived in a 200 year old Cambridge home. I was to meet them for the first time at their house for dinner. I volunteered to bring the dinner's wine. Yes I forgot the wine and only recalled it sitting at the dining room table seated next to the room's open hearth slightly warmed by the one log fire. When I realized why we weren't drinking any alcohol, I jumped up and said the wine was out in the car. True love said by the incredibly short time he took to remember we came by subway not by car, I had already turned the corner on the way to the liquor store.

True love's brother-in-law now teaches at some mid-west university, otherwise I might have tried to find them the other night.

Parting comment, Boston

Boston is so into its colonialism. Move the revolution to another town and even a Celtic would fear the loss of its soul. The only place more modern day 'colonial' is Williamsburg and they charge for it.

I spent a lot of time in this town I call one of my global favorites. The two years I worked in the AT&T/Lotus partnership (yes spreadsheet and notes Lotus) created most of the time. It didn't hurt that one of the big loves of my life I met and dated in Boston.

That said, I call into evidence yet more proof that Boston is nutso about its colonial past. What you see is a photo of a wall in my tiny hotel room. On the other side of the room was a great reading chair with ottoman but no reading light. To the Bostonian interior decorator, it was more important to put two huge 'colonial' scones over the dresser. A tiny bit of me believes the decorator had the thought "they didn't have floor lamps in colonial days. Our guests will be able to read by sconce light."

Had a burglar burst in the room, I would've pulled a sconce off the wall to hit the intruder. If two huge scones weren't enough light, there was a recessed light in the ceiling above.

OBTW, those are 100 watt 'candle' like light bulbs in those sconces. Turn them on and I instantly knew how it felt to be a deer in the headlights.

Creating a light table

I must have sounded pathetic in one of my recent blog posts. Thanks for the calls. How pathetic can I be with such good friends.*

I really like my light table and feel I didn't do it justice on the last posting. I'm such a bigger is better person. I photograph big papayas and the rinky-dink and expensive 'light tables' - which are no more a table than a college dictionary-sized book - won't work. I seen several pro photographers attempt to perch our huge Caribbean Reds on an 8.5x11 'light table'; this time I am right - bigger is better.

What siren call did I answer to embark on the creation of a light table?** This is the year that I must redo our avocado brochure. It's the brochure as a company we don't want to print, raising eyebrows as we admit there are over 70 different varieties that can be sold as a SlimCado vs. here are your SlimCados, yeah they come in different shapes, sizes and tastes. Who wants to be the salesperson that is forced to sell by variety.***

The brochure itself is rather monotonous, show a photo of each variety, name it, show when in season and give a brief description. However unexciting it may be graphically, it is a popular piece of collateral. And we are running out of the ONE color brochure. Yes one color, it's that old it is. Are there any one color printing presses still out there?****

What's so difficult?** Do a photo shoot, take photos of all the avocados. Not so fast. The avocados are available at different times during the season. For a full color brochure I will need to get the lighting, the angle of photography, the distance from camera to avocado, the exposure, and the focus all the same for each avocado. Either that or do a lot of work in PhotoShop (the positive to that is that I will learn the 3D feature in the application). OMG, I just had an epiphany - what a fantastic idea to do the brochure in one color!

Given all the above, given my ace photographers are not located in Miami (I miss Heather and Dan I've never met face-to-face) and given that I have quashed the thought of overnighting each avocado to them as they become available, I must find a way to do this series of shoots on my own.
I've cordoned off a space in a spare bedroom to do this. The space and equipment will stay put throughout the season. All that's needed are the avocados, which I will carefully place on their marks, turn on the lights, fidget with the camera settings and shoot.

Sounds easy yet I doubted my ability to do it, hence why I set it up so far in advance (avocado season starts in May).

1. Where do I start?***** Lately it's where I always start...the IKEA catalog! I must post panoramic shots of my new IKEA kitchen; but I digess. I'm going to take overhead shots of the avocados. I want no shadows to have to delete in PS. Hence the need for a low light table, like an end table. I found an end table with a glass top and shelf underneath. I would give you the IKEA item number, but they change merchandise so much it's useless.

2. Need the light. Most light tables use florescent because the long bulbs distribute the light from end-to-end on the light table. It's true you want diffused light, but I want to go incandescent so I took apart an existing floor lamp (Wal-Mart $10) and got light bulb, electrical encasement and switch, and cord. I'm kidding myself if I think I went cheap. The floor lamp I replace this one with will be much more expensive. I'm sure a trip to Lowe Home will get you the same for even less. I put the business end of the lamp straight up on the lower shelf (my table has a 'wooden' 2nd shelf so I had to drill a big hole).

3. Surrounded the light with reflective surfaces. Aluminum foil on the shelf and foil poster boards the size of the distance between bottom shelf and glass shelf. Taped the sized poster boards together on the ends to form a 2D box the width and depth of the end table.

4. Bought opaque plexi-glass in 1/8th width sheets cut to the size of the end table's glass top. This way instead of buying 1/2" and having too little light come through, I can build up the plexi-glass to get the amount of light desired.

5. Clamped on two cheap desk lamps, yes IKEA. The cheaper the better, since cheap desk lamps only allow you low wattage bulbs.

6. Bought clip on diffusers for the desk lamps, but found that I also need my 'camera shoot' tent. Turns out there's a lot of light to diffuse, avocados are very shiny.

7. Bought a tripod that can hang the camera out and over the light table. This was probably the most expensive item but it's so reusable.

8. Tried it out and found the need for a photographic stand sandbag to keep the camera from slicing out of thin air and making guacamole.

I'm ready for the SlimCado season.


* My punctuation day-by-day calendar spent two weeks on the use of question marks on rhetorical questions. I can't remember its use. The footnoted sentence shows either my obstinence in learning or that I have absorbed it and can't remember doing so. No phone calls please, I know this is pathetic in and of itself.
**This is not rhetorical.
*** Obviously rhetorical.
****So rhetorical yet the '?' makes it so compelling.
*****clueless

Cutting off the nose to spite the marketer

A PhotoShop World conferencee reported an extreme attitude taken by the speaker in a session called "Working with a digital photographer."

Apparently the speaker didn't cover how to work together to get the best shoots for your marketing work. The guy went on a tirade on how marketing people muck up his work. Beyond some general information before the shoot, the marketer should sit quietly in the background in the shoot (if they have to be there at all) and joyfully accept the photos as received.

I was shocked only that PhotoShop World allowed someone with this attitude to present. I wasn't shocked by his attitude. I had sparked this behavior with my local photographer.

I had a run-in with a photographer who wouldn't take a photo of the whole fruit. The photos were great, at the right angle, against a white background, etc. But he cropped each and every photo when I asked him not to. I wanted to use the photos in more than one piece of marketing collateral.

"But the ad you're working on is this shot" he waved his hand submissively. It's true the ad cropped the bottom of the papaya but I wanted a shot of the whole papaya. When I reminded him of my request (and the emails that said as much), he said that he shoots for the ad and that if I needed another shot, he'll shoot that.

"For additional cost!" I said emphatically.

"The photo is perfect, why are you complaining" he retorted.

"You shot the whole fruit. I saw it in your viewfinder. If you want to get paid, I get the image file with the entire fruit."

To get paid, he sent over a jpeg. I waited. Finally he sent the raw file, with a note "next time you don't come to the shoot."

There wasn't a next time. I signed up for a digital photography class the next day. I showed up for the class and guess who was the instructor. I went to another class, and another, and another. I'm not great but I can hammer out 90% of what I need. And when I give myself attitude, I go pour the photographer a glass of wine.

Photography is not that difficult. I won't win awards, although I did win a class award for 'most improved'. Given that I never owned (and still don't, I use the company's camera) a 35mm camera, that's pretty good.

What I learned at PhotoShop World

The most important things I'm taking back with me from PhotoShop World. The list varies from things not so new and so new they're hot.

1. The new context scaling is great. You pick out what you want to emphasize and then enlarge or reduce everything else. How many times have I pulled the important item out of a scene and then had to clone, heal, etc. to get the background just right behind it. This new tools does a brilliant job of changing the background without the hassle.

2. You can make a selection and then use clone, blur, etc. within the selection. The selection won't let you go out of it.

3. Curves is more user intuitive with the simple addition of a button. I can't tell you how many times I go into curves and spend the first minute or two trying to remember how to use it. As time goes by I use curves less and less, when curves should be used over all the other adjustment layers.

4. OnOne software - Mask Pro- you can group your keep/delete colors. Hold down the alt or option button when using the keep eyedropper and you'll get an average color. No, this software's tutorials don't cover it all. Fantastic software, lousy documentation.

5. HDR and panoramas are not just for whooped up photos. There's a lot to be gained for everyday commercial use. HDR should be done, 3 shoots each, and used to bring in highlights or details not available in just one shot's exposure.

6. Smart Objects, I know last year's show jammed it down my throat and I didn't listen, maybe this year.

7. Video and Photoshop, all of a sudden I'm feeling my mini videos are doable.

8. Site Grinder - gotta get. Forget Dreamweaver.

9. Puppet tool - it may be the feature that gets me into After Effects.

10. When there's no tripod around, shoot over your shoulder. Maybe I can finally get sharp photos of fruit in the cooler.

11. Dodge and burn tools have always seemed heavy handed. A little knowledge of the color wheel goes a long way in acheiving the same things with some masking and painting brushing. Is an area too bright, on a new layer paintbrush with white and play with opacity and blend modes (color, luminosity and hue) to get it just right. Too much yellow in a photo, paint with cyan on a new layer. Yellow being on the opposite side of the color wheel as cyan.

12. Go the next step with Bridge. I use Bridge to find artwork but don't use the keywords/metadata capabilities. A couple of seconds on each image and I'd be set. Sounds like a New Year's resolution.

The social side of PhotoShop World

I didn't realize how much I miss my life in New Jersey. Life in rural and small Homestead is taking its toll; I thought I was handling it well. Up here in Boston, I've been like a kid in a candy store.

I don't sit, I've been on the run. Any spare time from the conference and I'm out of here doing something. Tuesday night, I took the subway to Harvard and wandered one of my favorite bookstores, the Harvard Co-op. I bought a poetry book for goodness sake. Then I had a great dinner overlooking Harvard square. I forgot what I ate but remembered 'people watching' over a slow glass of wine.

Wednesday night, I signed up for a meet-up dinner with strangers. To meet up, we all wore buttons that said "I'm a stranger." Having dinner with people, marketing people, like myself was fantastic. I talked so much, I think I bordered on being obnoxious. More on that in another post.

Tonight, the last conference session ended at 7:15pm. I had been at it since 8:15 in the morning, but I couldn't stay in the hotel. I grabbed the subway and headed to Fannuel Hall, Boston's colonial area. A light rain was falling, and a not so great lobster dinner didn't dampen my spirits.

I had lunch today with a conferencee. Within a couple of minutes, she realized what a great time I was having and asked why I wasn't stay a couple of extra days. All my concerns, things-to-do, worries rushed back to me. I've got so many irons in the fire. What you see in the blog is only the tip, big tip, but tip of the iceberg.

I've got a dream job, if only it was in the Northeast. I wonder how to make it different. I've assumed that I only need to get over some hurdles back home for me to get back on track. I was actually looking forward to this weekend to make some gains on my to-do list. I now question whether I'll get over this feeling of being overwhelmed.

It was twenty some years that I ignored my past.
Just escaped knowing I would be pulled back.
With a job I love, in a town that deserves the same.
I've unwrapped it all finding it's all been tamed.

PhotoShop World

My main goal has been to figure out what's new with CS4 and even what's in the Adobe Master Collection that I have no clue about.

Turns out a lot. I can only come away knowing it can be done with the software and that somewhere in some expensive 'how - to' book, I can figure out how to do it.

Context scaling, Puppet tool, the list goes on. PhotoShop is the first stop 'shop' to do flash, video, video effects, et.al. You start in PhotoShop and then take it to one of the other applications. The going forward orders is for PhotoShop to take on more and more of the other applications' capabilities.

I hope it's not like taking PhotoShop into Flash. That's rough. Image sizes huge, clean selections made in PhotoShop are jagged in Flash, and I can list more.

I now know why the Flash CS4 interface is SO different. Adobe decided it should look more like After Effects. Hello?

However, I need to start working in simple video. And I see the potential. I can't wait to give it a try.

The conference has been well worth the money. I just gotta use all of it to make it worth the company's money.

Web 2.0 tools - part one

Whenever I'm in my car, I listen to podcasts: Grammar Girl, PhotoShop 101, the Digital Photographer and a number of podcasts that deal with the 2.0 web.

Except for the latter, I assume podcasting is an outlet for building an audience for a book or selling a book. Podcasts dealing with the 2.0 web are a totally different animal; these folks are drumming up business for their consulting firms (PR or companies devoted to 2.0 web). That's as good as any reason for creating podcasts. However, I'm beginning to hear disjointed content during these 2.0 web podcasts.

It started back in December with two of the hosts for Internet Marketing agreeing that job seekers during interviews should ask if the company prohibits use of social networks during work. If the answer is yes, no social networking then walk.

I actually rewound (or whatever the verb is for going backwards on a podcasting being listened to on an iphone) and listened again to make sure I heard what I thought.

A couple of shows later, I'm hearing the hosts regretfully passing on their condolences to their listeners who want the hosts to follow they the listener on twitter, myspace...you can fill in the blank. Although the hosts repeatedly say how badly they feel and how little time they have to do so, you know their 'presence' on twitter, myspace...you can fill in the blank is purely business oriented. Places for their listener to follow their show, or more precisely help them build the host's celebrity.

The hosts use the social networks to build 'internecking' or rubbernecking on the internet. Instead of an accident, it's the host's 2.0 web business that the host wants others to obsessively watch as they go on their merry way down the electronic highway.

But yet the hosts of all these shows scream on top of their digital podiums that social networking must be recognized and entered into by your everyday non tech business. It's doom for those who don't. And a lack of transparency if you don't directly interact and just put up a company myspace page.

These podcasting hosts see their use of social networking as the creation of depositories for interaction with them. Not a bad gig if you can get it, I say.

But what does it mean for us, the average marketer.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.