Some advice for eric jordan!!
Quote:
Originally posted by ejordan
I will reiterate the words I have delivered to other forums in matters such as this...
Once in a great while I have time to pull my head out of Flash and do a bit of surfin, see what people are up to. And then I stumble across a thread like this one, and I start to get a nauseus feeling in my stomach, the kind that fueled the fire for the 25 milligrams video. Its a feeling that you can only have when you are on the other side of the grass, looking back at things, but almost not being able to cross over and explain the situation because it is almost futile in the long run.
It's tough when you get phone calls from clients all day long asking, can you basically design my site exactly like 2advanced.com, but just change out the logo? Although we would never stoop to such a level, we fight and we plea and we get down on our knees...."please let us do something different." And then you realize who you are dealing with. The client is sitting across from you, making hand gestures and talking passionately. He's describing the motion he wants to see, he's talking about wanting his site to look like it is straight out of the year 3010. He's asking you to add that legendary 2advanced touch that we have been pigeonholed with, and can't seem to escape 99% of the time.
The 2advanced team sits back in their chairs and chimes back, "But what about your brand?"
It is a question we ask time and time again. And the response we get back is always the same, with a bit of variance in verbage of course; "We came to 2advanced because we want to do what you guys have done, awed and inspired with websites that appear ahead of their time. I don't care if people dont understand or if people are a little jaded by it at first. Oh, and we want it to be all blue as well. We love the way it looks on 2advanced.com."
The 2advanced team glares at one another with the collective understanding that we are not going to make this client budge.
But then we wonder...."Why should we?"
The clients and their particular audiences we service do not surf the web like flash designers do. They do not spend countless hours in front of the glowing screen scowering portals for the latest and greatest. They are regular normal people, and they rarely come across a website that is truely built with passion, quality, and care.
We do what we do because we love it, we build exactly what our clients desire, and we have fun every step of the way.
One thing we do not do, is design for the approval or disapproval of the design community. So please, for the sake of artistic evolution, tip your hats for the hard work we put into every site we build if you feel it is deserved. Or else save the disheartening comments that turn my stomach every time I venture out to the boards, as I have a team that puts their blood ,sweat and tears into every ounce of work they do. It pains me to see them take the wrap for our clients wishes and desires.
Good evening.
Eric Jordan
President
2advanced Studios
http://www.2advanced.com
Ok people might think that I have no right to give eric jordan and 2A as a company advice, they are successful in what they do, but erice you are obviously not happy with the trend that you are being forced to follow by your clients, you quoted saying "what about your brand?". I can give you some simple advice if you want to change the way that your business works and ultimately be happier with your work:
I have noticed that most of your clients are relatively small in terms of there global brand importants and hence their brand is not key to the success of their business, here me out here, I presume that the majority of your work comes to you without the need to painfully prepare pitches to companies in order to win contracts, you may prepare demos/presentations once they contact you, but to get contracts with the big organisations you will need to pitch to them, anyway my point is this, larger organisations, for example "Nike", "Intel", I don't know "kellogs", etc, etc have very strong brands and believe in representing that brand in the most appropriate way, they have whole departments who manage the way that there image is portrayed, not just a project manager or director saying "I want the site to be really cool like 2A's", so if you want to work with companies who wan't to build web sites with your skills and THEIR business in mind then you need to target bigger clients, instead of just taking work because it is offered to you on a plate, mainly because of the reputation you have created for yourself on the web.
Do this and you will see an end to these kind of threads, It may make life harder but you have the basis to make winning large contracts very possible, and trust me if you get contracts with companies like "Nike", you don't get $150,000, you get $750,000+, these companies have marketing budgets of $5,000,000 a year and the web is now considered to be a large percentage of this.
You seem to only post in the forums when you are saddened by what you read, so here is an obvious solution to your problem.
Good luck in what ever you decide to do to and keep up the inspiring work, even if you are not happy with having to design in the same style, it still keeps a lot of us inspired.
cheers
Nevil
Re: Some advice for eric jordan!!
Quote:
Originally posted by nevil
Ok people might think that I have no right to give eric jordan and 2A as a company advice, they are successful in what they do, but erice you are obviously not happy with the trend that you are being forced to follow by your clients, you quoted saying "what about your brand?". I can give you some simple advice if you want to change the way that your business works and ultimately be happier with your work:
I have noticed that most of your clients are relatively small in terms of there global brand importants and hence their brand is not key to the success of their business, here me out here, I presume that the majority of your work comes to you without the need to painfully prepare pitches to companies in order to win contracts, you may prepare demos/presentations once they contact you, but to get contracts with the big organisations you will need to pitch to them, anyway my point is this, larger organisations, for example "Nike", "Intel", I don't know "kellogs", etc, etc have very strong brands and believe in representing that brand in the most appropriate way, they have whole departments who manage the way that there image is portrayed, not just a project manager or director saying "I want the site to be really cool like 2A's", so if you want to work with companies who wan't to build web sites with your skills and THEIR business in mind then you need to target bigger clients, instead of just taking work because it is offered to you on a plate, mainly because of the reputation you have created for yourself on the web.
Do this and you will see an end to these kind of threads, It may make life harder but you have the basis to make winning large contracts very possible, and trust me if you get contracts with companies like "Nike", you don't get $150,000, you get $750,000+, these companies have marketing budgets of $5,000,000 a year and the web is now considered to be a large percentage of this.
You seem to only post in the forums when you are saddened by what you read, so here is an obvious solution to your problem.
Good luck in what ever you decide to do to and keep up the inspiring work, even if you are not happy with having to design in the same style, it still keeps a lot of us inspired.
cheers
Nevil
I think it is obvious that 2A is working to get to that level Nevil (hehe), One thing though..you have to Survive while you work your way up there. A small company cannot just sit idle and work on internal projects and demo reels and expect to land those clients based upon those. Internal Projects, Wallpapers and demo reels do not pay the bills, nor pay the people who work there. You have to work your way up so to speak, fine tuning your skills, fine tuning your style, getting your name out there all along the way.
As far as Targetting those people, yes..you target them, and I think 2A is making that attempt. I mean look at Ford, and the Pittsburgh Penguins. I think that is definitely a step in that direction. And if you have to do a couple of RealtyBids & Ultimatte's to pay the bills. So be it.
I used to work for marchFIRST and worked on the Mazda USA Website. Why did marchFIRST get that engagement with Mazda? Because marchFIRST was a big name at the time, and people knew who they were (but not necessarily if they were any good). What is one (only one) reason why marchFIRST isn't around anymore? They would only bid on the HUGE projects and not take any of the smaller projects that might have kept design teams busy and growing creatively, and more importantly keep a little extra cash flow in the pipeline.
Remember that 2A isn't necessarily here for the Design community. Decisions on clients are made for the good of the company and the livelyhood of it's partners and employees, not for the approval/dissaproval of the design community.
Shane
http://www.pixelranger.com
Re: Re: Some advice for eric jordan!!
Quote:
Originally posted by pixelranger
Quote:
Originally posted by nevil
Ok people might think that I have no right to give eric jordan and 2A as a company advice, they are successful in what they do, but erice you are obviously not happy with the trend that you are being forced to follow by your clients, you quoted saying "what about your brand?". I can give you some simple advice if you want to change the way that your business works and ultimately be happier with your work:
I have noticed that most of your clients are relatively small in terms of there global brand importants and hence their brand is not key to the success of their business, here me out here, I presume that the majority of your work comes to you without the need to painfully prepare pitches to companies in order to win contracts, you may prepare demos/presentations once they contact you, but to get contracts with the big organisations you will need to pitch to them, anyway my point is this, larger organisations, for example "Nike", "Intel", I don't know "kellogs", etc, etc have very strong brands and believe in representing that brand in the most appropriate way, they have whole departments who manage the way that there image is portrayed, not just a project manager or director saying "I want the site to be really cool like 2A's", so if you want to work with companies who wan't to build web sites with your skills and THEIR business in mind then you need to target bigger clients, instead of just taking work because it is offered to you on a plate, mainly because of the reputation you have created for yourself on the web.
Do this and you will see an end to these kind of threads, It may make life harder but you have the basis to make winning large contracts very possible, and trust me if you get contracts with companies like "Nike", you don't get $150,000, you get $750,000+, these companies have marketing budgets of $5,000,000 a year and the web is now considered to be a large percentage of this.
You seem to only post in the forums when you are saddened by what you read, so here is an obvious solution to your problem.
Good luck in what ever you decide to do to and keep up the inspiring work, even if you are not happy with having to design in the same style, it still keeps a lot of us inspired.
cheers
Nevil
I think it is obvious that 2A is working to get to that level Nevil (hehe), One thing though..you have to Survive while you work your way up there. A small company cannot just sit idle and work on internal projects and demo reels and expect to land those clients based upon those. Internal Projects, Wallpapers and demo reels do not pay the bills, nor pay the people who work there. You have to work your way up so to speak, fine tuning your skills, fine tuning your style, getting your name out there all along the way.
As far as Targetting those people, yes..you target them, and I think 2A is making that attempt. I mean look at Ford, and the Pittsburgh Penguins. I think that is definitely a step in that direction. And if you have to do a couple of RealtyBids & Ultimatte's to pay the bills. So be it.
I used to work for marchFIRST and worked on the Mazda USA Website. Why did marchFIRST get that engagement with Mazda? Because marchFIRST was a big name at the time, and people knew who they were (but not necessarily if they were any good). What is one (only one) reason why marchFIRST isn't around anymore? They would only bid on the HUGE projects and not take any of the smaller projects that might have kept design teams busy and growing creatively, and more importantly keep a little extra cash flow in the pipeline.
Remember that 2A isn't necessarily here for the Design community. Decisions on clients are made for the good of the company and the livelyhood of it's partners and employees, not for the approval/dissaproval of the design community.
Shane
http://www.pixelranger.com
"wallpapers"!! where do wallpapers come into a pitch! anyway you may be right, but maybe eric might have said something along those lines if that was the case, instead he spoke as if it was a situation that he would never get out of, and as far as paying the bills, I am sure that the profits from the dozens of contracts currently under their belt would secure time to produce some top notch pitches, if they have time to create free demo sites for erains swift 3D product(which I think is great, I to have created some stuff for erain), then surely they have time to create proper pitches. If budget is not sufficient to allow for this kind of activity then 2Advanced have already got themselves into a position where their over heads are too high and they are risking placing themselves in a vulnerable market position.
