Clients that suck the life out of you

Most agency folks can share a horror story or two or three about clients who just drain you emotionally, spiritually, creatively.

I can’t believe how they can chip away at you, piece by piece. How?

• By blowing off scheduled meetings.
• Not responding to urgent messages.
• Ignoring timelines.
• Nitpicking outrageous stuff.
• Doing other things during your conference calls.
• Taking phone calls during your meetings.
• Missing deadlines.
• Changing scope repeatedly and haphazardly.

Agency folk strive to act on the best interest of their clients. Yet we get stepped on continuously. For some reason they envision our side of the fence as creative free spirit fancy free-for-all that gouges the client whenever possible. Yet, many times over the years, I’ve watched clients switch from client to agency-side and fail because they couldn’t envision how challenging it really is.

I have no advice to give to my agency-side brethren. Just smile, be respectful, do your job, and look for new opportunities to replace the poor ones.

It’s the client who will lose in the long run, when he/she can’t inspire, motivate or rally agency folk to help in times of desperation.

-Roland

Roland Reinhart is an interactive marketing professional. His observations can be found at Chaos365.com and AdMadMan.com.

©2006 Roland Reinhart. All Rights Reserved.

Pigs with checkbooks

Many years ago I read a book by Peter Mayle called Up the Agency. It is essentially the observations of a former ad guy about the insanity he witnessed during his years (1970’s-80’s)working in the advertising profession. It was very funny and I highly enjoyed it at the time.

Several comments and observations left an indelible mark on me after all this time. One was a chapter where he described clients as “Pigs with Checkbooks”.

While it’s fun to think like that, and sometimes your clients may leave that impression on you, I can’t stress enough how important it is to avoid falling into that trap. Likewise, stop your co-workers or direct reports from thinking like that. No matter what you think of your client’s behaviour, show him/her the proper respect.

Always keep in mind that the quality of work you do for your client now will ultimately reflect on you at some point in the future.

-Roland

Roland Reinhart is an interactive marketing professional. His observations can be found at Chaos365.com and AdMadMan.com.

©2006 Roland Reinhart. All Rights Reserved.

Spring cleaning: Get your professional life in order.

It’s Spring and it’s time to clean up the professional side of your life.

- Clean off your desk.

- Go through that pile of Post-it notes by your phone.

- Throw out the paper business cards that you’ve already typed into your personal contact manager (Outlook, Palm Desktop, etc). If you don’t have one, check out the Palm Desktop. It’s free and works even if you don’t have a PDA. Windows version is better than the Mac OS version.

- Look through your contact vCards and get rid of old contacts (more than 3 years old) that you know you will never do business with again.

- Throw out old magazines, stacks of papers you should have filed 9 months ago, etc.

- Do something to brighten up your office or cubicle a bit. Hang a poster/picture, bring in a plant, set up a display of creative or brand packages you worked on.

- Throw out (into your recycling can) all the old paper files from 2+ year old projects. Chances are you should have digital versions of them anyway. But always keep the contracts and documents with approval signatures.

- Clean up your project files/folders on your server. Move the old projects to another sub-folder (i.e. “2005_Projects” or “Completed_Projects”).

- Clean your desk, monitor, whiteboards, etc. to get the dirt and sticky stuff off them. (Ask your IT guy for monitor cleaning solution.)

- Throw out anything that’s broken. If you haven’t fixed it by now, chances are you’ll never have the time to fix it.

- Get rid of some of the personal stuff and replace it with some fresh stuff. Switch out photos in frames, get rid of the old Dilbert comic strips on your wall, etc.

- Take all that junk you’ve picked up at trade shows, put it in a box outside your door with a sign that says “FREE STUFF”. I guarantee the office vultures will take most of it by end of day.

So take an hour or two and clean up today. It feels good to throw stuff out. You’ll be happy you did when you come into a nicer work space next week.

Enjoy the weekend!
-Roland

Roland Reinhart is an interactive marketing professional. His observations can be found at Chaos365.com and AdMadMan.com.

©2006 Roland Reinhart. All Rights Reserved.

Use common sense during your job hunt

Over the years, I’ve read many resumes. It amazes me what people include.

Suggestion #1:
Do not put your current work email address on your resume and don’t send job search emails from that account.

Think about it. Your employer keeps records of every email sent, and most likely has archive backups of them — even the ones you think you deleted.
Simply signup for a free Web mail account: Gmail, Yahoo!, Hotmail, AIM. You can check them with a Web browser and it’s less likely that you’ll leave a trace.

Also, use a name that sounds professional. JohnSmith@domain.com, JSmith@domain.com are easy to recognize. TummyKitten69@domain.com is bizarre and puts a negative idea in my head about your level of maturity.

Suggestion #2:
Please be clear about when you worked at each job. It is so annoying to see sketchy dates. It just makes me suspicious that you are trying to hide something. It’s okay if you have a gap in your work experience. (It’s understandable that people take time off, travel, change careers, etc.) Just don’t try to hide it.

Suggestion #3:
It may be cool, but I really don’t care if you belong to a medieval re-enactment club. Career advisors no longer suggest to put on personal life interests. It’s irrelevant to the conversation and I need to quickly figure out if you are the right candidate for the job.

Suggestion #4:
Things I typically want to learn about you during an interview…
- Tell me about the teams you worked on.
- Tell me about your managing style and tools you use.
- Describe how you’d handle difficult situations.
- Describe how you’d plan a new project.
- Tell me about your project from hell.
- Tell me about your professional goals?
- What will make you happy in a new job?
- What will discourage you in a new job?

I’ll ask these types of questions to help me piece together what type of account/project manager the candidate will be. I’ll want to get a sense of the candidate’s…
- Competency
- Maturity
- Experience
- Common sense
- Energy and enthusiasm
- Response under pressure
- Willingness to learn from mistakes
- How well he/she will work with internal and external colleagues

I hope you find this useful. Please add your thoughts below.
-Roland

Roland Reinhart is an interactive marketing professional. His observations can be found at Chaos365.com and AdMadMan.com.

©2006 Roland Reinhart. All Rights Reserved.

Life lesson: My long road to Mac happiness

In the early 80’s I was lucky that my parents invested in an Apple IIe for me (which I still have). However, I spent most of the last twenty years using one dull gray Windows PC after another, suffering every kind of hardware conflict, and of course, the blue screen of death.

Last fall, my PC notebook failed on me again. (Toshiba Satellite A35-S209 was a poorly designed piece of junk.) My wife has always been devoted Mac user and took pleasure at snickering at my blue screen of death woes. I’ve been long overdue for upgrading all my software, so I nervously bought a G4 iBook instead of another WinPC.

This thing improved my life. It just works and that makes my life a bit easier and even fun. I also got an iPod so I could listen to all sorts of Mac and tech podcasts during my commute. We got a used iMac for the kids. I even bought an iBook for my mom so we could get rid of her Win98 Pentium III. Now I can spend time talking to her and not troubleshooting her stupid PC. I am much happier now and wish I had listened to my wife years ago.

Trust me, Macs just work. Everything I plug into my iBook works. Networking works. Macs aren’t perfect. But it’s unreal how less stressed I feel. Sometimes you have to let go of the old, comfortable way of doing things and embrace change.

If your software is old and you spend too much time fixing your WinPC, check out what’s involved with switching to Mac.

Also checkout:
GoodLogo.com
Wikipedia: Apple Computer Co & Apple IIe
Original Apple IIe specs
MacWorld’s 30th Anniversary Story

My personal computer history:
1983: Apple IIe
Late 1980’s: I used computers, mainframes, terminals at college and early jobs
1990’s: generic 8088 PC with MS-DOS 3.1, 3.2, 3.3
1990’s: Gateway 80286 PC with Win 3.1 (The first MS-Windows with graphical user interface. It was hard switching from keyboard commands and overlays to the mouse.)
1997: Gateway Pentium II PC tower with Win 95
2001: Micron Pentium IV PC tower with Win 2000
2003: Toshiba Pentium IV PC notebook running Win XP Home
2005: Apple G4 iBook running Mac OS X

What’s your story?
-Roland

Roland Reinhart is an interactive marketing professional. His observations can be found at Chaos365.com and AdMadMan.com.

©2006 Roland Reinhart. All Rights Reserved.

Instant Messaging when you can’t install software

Shhh! Don’t tell the IT guy!

Tip: Instant Messaging when you can’t install software. IM with your Web browser instead!

In recent years, company IT departments have cracked down on letting end users install software on company computers. It’s justified, since administrators are tasked to make sure the company complies with software licensing agreements. Also, giving employees too much freedom to install software eventually leads to computers that may experience decreased performance and lead to significant downtime for employee and administrator to fix. Not to mention the risk of introducing virus’ and other malware into the network.

If you really need AIM, and you can’t convince your company IT dept to install IM software, check out these apps that work in your Web browser:

• Meebo
  Platforms: AOL/AIM, ICQ, Jabber, GTalk (Google Talk), Yahoo!, MSN
• eMessenger
  Platforms: AOL/AIM, MSN, Yahoo!
• AIM Express
  Platforms: AOL/AIM

Personally, I enjoy using Meebo, especially since I can aggregate several IM platforms within a single login. Additionally, you can create a Meebo Me mini chat application on your Web pages and have your Web site visitors IM you.

What are your thoughts? Please post your suggestions. Thanks.
-Roland

Roland Reinhart is an interactive marketing professional. His observations can be found at Chaos365.com and AdMadMan.com.

©2006 Roland Reinhart. All Rights Reserved.

Instant Messaging with Treo 650

Back in the mid-90’s, I used a simple Day Runner paper planner to “organize” my life. My wife urged my evolution up to a Franklin Planner, which was more of a leather bound philosophy and way of life.

I think it was around 1998 when I picked up a Palm III in an office supply store and was instantly hooked. I even had a leather Franklin Planner case that integrated a Palm IIIx sleeve with the paper ring binder (pretty much an oxymoron now that I think about it).

My PDA journey started with the III, then a Palm IIIx, a Tungsten C and finally led to a Smart Phone Palm Treo 650 — simply the best PDA ever!

I swear by electronic organizers to keep me sane. The PDA is also my curse because it is loaded with an everlasting list of tasks to accomplish. Plus, my mom thinks my handwriting is horrible.

Part of being organized and productive is the need for instant access to info. IM is great for that. My co-workers depend on AOL Instant Messenger to stay in touch throughout the day. My family also occasionally ping me rather than call, since it’s less intrusive. I’ve wanted instant messaging (not text messaging) on my Treo, but just couldn’t justify the expense.

Finally, a few free alternative for Instant Messaging on the Treo 650 have surfaced.
Here are two worth checking out if you are looking for simple features. See the full list below for other software solutions that offer more features, yet come at a price.

Free Solutions:

• AtomicCog.com’s Toccer for Treo Agile Messenger 2 BETA for Palm 3.5+
  Platforms: ICQ, AIM, Yahoo!, MSN
  Investment: Free Beta

Paid Solutions:

• AOL Mobile
  Platforms: AOL
  Investment: $19.95
• Chatopus
  Platforms: MSN, Yahoo!, AIM, ICQ, GaduGadu and Sametime, Google Talk, Jabber
  Investment: $16.95
• VeriChat
  Platforms: “An always-on presence on the Yahoo!, ICQ, MSN & AOL chat networks.” Investment: $24.95/$34.95 annual subscription fee, depending on level of features.
• IM+ Mobile Instant Messenger
  Platforms: ICQ, MSN, AOL, Yahoo, Jabber, Google Talk
  Investment: $29.95
• Causerie Messenger
  Platforms: Yahoo!, MSN, AIM, ICQ, Jabber, Google Talk
  Investment: $29.95

Occasionally, Palm software download sites run special discounts. Keep an eye out and maybe you can get 10% off.

The EverythingTreo.com Instant Messenger Roundup November 2005 has a review that compares Chatopus, IM+ and VeriChat.

If you ever need to IM while at a someone else’s computer, or your company IT dept refuses to install IM software, check out AIM Express. It’s slow, but works via the Web browser.

I hope this helps you be more productive. Let me know if you have any experience with the above or other solutions to check out. Thanks.
-Roland

Roland Reinhart is an interactive marketing professional. His observations can be found at Chaos365.com and AdMadMan.com.

©2006 Roland Reinhart. All Rights Reserved.

Customer Relations- Put yourself in their shoes

This past weekend I got to spend 4 hours behind the counter of our local baseball league snack shack. Parents are asked to volunteer time so I figured one afternoon was easy to do. I was not prepared for the non-stop flurry of activity taking orders, handling money and delivering the food. Above all, having to get it done quickly and efficiently, while making a positive consumer experience.

I’m a conscientious marketer, so I really wanted to make sure I did a good job. I greeted each customer with a smile, repeated the order to make sure it was correct, asked for their money and counted out the cash I gave back to them. Finally I wished them a nice day.

I was glad when my volunteer shift was over. The experience did make me think about how easy it becomes to assume others are doing the job they are supposed to. For example, I didn’t need to be courteous or helpful. Sure it’s part of my nature, but I wasn’t being paid or incentivized to do so. My motivation is that I like to treat people how I would prefer to be treated by them.

Marketing Managers: How is your Customer Service Team doing? Have you ever tried to call/email/visit to experience for yourself how the average consumer is treated by your brand? It’s a good exercise, especially since consumers are more likely to remember and speak about a negative experience.

You might also benefit from a day spent working with the Customer Service Team. You may uncover opportunities to improve a product feature or canned responses that need to be updated.

Plus, I bet the Customer Service Team would be highly impressed that you take interest in their work and would be motivated to deliver high quality work if they knew you recognized and respected their work.

-Roland

About me…
Twenty years ago, in the mid-80’s, I spent 2.5 years working at Burger King. At first I learned all the secrets of sweeping and mopping, cleaning the parking lot and washing trays. Soon I was trusted to make shakes, sending meat through the broiler, and deep frying various munchables. Eventually I was given store keys, an Assistant Manager title, an 80 cent raise and “responsibility.” More importantly, I got to trade in my maroon corduroy with yellow collar crew shirt for any plain short sleeve shirt and tie combo I chose. Back then, looking half way important was better for my morale than the title and responsibility.

Roland Reinhart is an interactive marketing professional. His observations can be found at Chaos365.com and AdMadMan.com.

©2006 Roland Reinhart. All Rights Reserved.

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