March, 2009

A clean shave

A colleague wrote me recently and asked me if I knew anybody who did development for a certain open source platform. I was not overly familiar with it and despite a seemingly robust community of supporters it is not a huge community. I put out a tweet, and put out some direct notes to some of my developer friends and unfortunately, got nothing back.

This incident has proved educational to me: beware of the bleeding edge. When producing work, and executing projects the availability of talent to help you finish the job must be taken into account. Now the circumstances around this situation were fairly extreme, but all projects are a human endeavor, and when dealing with humans there is no telling what situations may arise.

I once had a client, a true innovator in their sector (the innovator in their sector, actually) but when planning marketing campaigns, and discussing the technology to use for them they preferred that their units work — both technically and from the perspective of ROI — rather than be technological feats (I still agree with this, if it makes sense for the brand and its goals then go rad, but never do cool for the sake of cool). We used to joke that they wanted to be first as long as someone else went before them. All jokling aside we did do some bleeding edge campaigns for them, but we worked closely with our vendors to ensure success. I commend my colleague and his company for their use of this young, cool, interesting platform. They were hamstrung at the last moment by a one in a million scenario. Unfortunately, that’s the margin for error on the bleeding edge.

Maria Montessori

My children attend a Montessori school. I have to admit that we didn’t know much about it when we first enrolled them there except that the classrooms were open, children could work on what they want, when they want, and that the woman who founded the method was Maria Montessori.

What we learned, though, is that Montessori was developed as a system to teach institutionalized children life skills starting with grooming, cleaning etc., and proceeding to reading and writing. Montessori then took the system out of the institution and taught developmentally-able, but underprivileged, children similar skills. In a Montessori classroom the child learns through doing, and is free to explore the class room and its activities as he or she sees fit. The teacher guides them and there are steps to each of the activities. There is a right way and a wrong to do things, but by making mistakes the child develops necessary life skills.

I attended two classes with my two Montessori-attending children last week and I started thinking how the best agency processes mirror their classrooms. I’ve been around agencies a long time and almost from the day I started everybody within the organization fretted about “process process process.” Sometimes, there was no process and chaos ensued. Other times process was a thick manual, or required regimented, and required, online classes and chaos ensued.

The best processes evolved organically from within teams from the individuals themselves and as a result suited the personalities and working styles of the team. This is not to say that there was no process, there was. It just was not the be all and the end all — the work and the people doing the work were. A framework — cogent, clear and consistently applied — was in place, as in a Montessori classroom — but team members were permitted to work in their own way to reach the goal, within defined parameters. Adults, like children, will perform when given an environment in which their individuality (their humanity, really) is respected and neither forced to conform to some mathematical model of efficiency, nor allowed to wallow in anarchy. Provide a framework, set expectations, be consistent in them, permit people to be people, and wondrous things happen.

This is the first in a series of posts about interactive producers & interactive production. It reflects my viewpoints after years of doing this work in various agencies, in two cities.

I’ve heard the role of producer described as the most thankless task in an agency. Certainly, there are times when it is. If a project goes well no one really knew you were there and the creative team gets the credit. If the job goes badly, the producer (and also the account team — the most thankless job in an agency if you ask me) takes some major blame. The goal, obviously, is to avoid bad jobs and only deliver good jobs but advertising and marketing being human endeavors, perfection is not always possible.

Good producers go a long way to mitigate the risks inherent in any engagement. The earlier a producer enters the creative process the better they are able to identify the risks and required resources, shape scope and schedule and come to an accurate estimate for execution and delivery of a proposed project. One would think that anybody in an agency, with a certain amount of experience under their belts, could do these things. However, there is a difference between estimates, schedules and staffing plans created by an account person or a creative director and those created by producers. The reason for this is that producers own the work. Account folks own the relationship. Creative directors are brand stewards. The motivations, biases, and pressure affecting each of these players is different and affects their viewpoint on how a job should be executed.

As owner of the work, the producer’s number one job is to tell the truth. This is not to say that account folks and creative directors do not, but the producer, relying on experience, and the maxim to tell the truth can define what he or she thinks should be done, when, by whom and how much it will cost. Once stated, internal negotiations ensue and all parties come to an agreement by which the team, the agency and the client can abide. Once the job is under way, producers (should) roll up their sleeves and get down in the trenches with their teams to ensure successful delivery of the project.

This typically requires in-depth knowledge of every possible project detail, client goals, agency goals, potential risks, and knowledge of team personalities. In the end, this last point is often the most important. The producer is sometimes a task master, though, more often an encouraging friend, a therapist, arbitrator and ombudsman. Working with creatives is a must, and knowing how to do so is very important, but not always apparent. Creatives are driven by different things than others in the business world and they do no react to the same incentives as others. There have been many jobs done in by poor relations between creatives and producers who are not creatively focused.

So what does all of this mean?

In an agency setting:

• Define the role and responsibilities up front to ensure the best match as you staff the need (there is an incredible discrepancy between agencies of how the role is defined and the expectations around it — if they even exist)
• Staff the right type of producer for the job. If it’s a creative deliverable, staff a producer versed in the management of creative projects as opposed to software development, or IT implementation (in which case they will more likely be PMs, more on this in a later post)
• Producers should be brought in as early to assist on a new business pursuit — in this market it’s imperative to define your projects as rigorously as possible, up front, since revenue isn’t flowing like water, and it can get expensive to bring in a producer to fix a job

On the client-side:

• Ask if your project will have a dedicated producer (or PM, depending on the project type)
• Find out how your agency defines the role, and what the agency’s expectations are of this person and how they align with your own
• Ask to meet this person