Process Insight - Week 1
This week, writing from Chicago, has been a mad dash of struggles that feel exactly like sophomore review. People still asking me for files, weeks before they are needed. I'm getting a little tired of this "instant and great" design culture that we all feed into. Basically, good works takes time. I'm the kind of person who prefers not to do things twice, just like the "measure twice, cut once," mentality in woodworking. After setting up a Basecamp for the entire team, my personal tasks for this week encompassed many different things.
We hosted a successful sale in Chi-Town right in the Lincoln Park area on June 26/27/28. The Indy market is nice because of the open areas. In Chicago, there is nowhere to park, nowhere to put lawn signs, and no where to advertise. So, out of our typical market, we find ways to adapt and bring in customers without breaking the law or upsetting the locals. In the urban areas of Chicago, the answer is pretty clear. It's staring at you from every telephone pole on every corner: the flyer.
The biggest problem with flyers is typically their inefficiency. An 8.5"x11" flyer wraps around a telephone pole in such a way that the overall message is lost every time. In my time walking the city, I developed a simplified solution to this problem. Capitalizing on the vertical nature of the wooden poles throughout the city, I realize that 1/2 of 11"x17" is only 5.5" wide, making it the perfect width for a pole. Also, with this technique, its possible to fit two flyers onto one page, making it more cost efficient than a single 8.5"x11".
So, after flyer-ing up the city, I had to confront my big task for the week, which was to finish up the big EsateSales.net Conference 2015 presentation. Our talk, entitled: "Cut-throat Branding: How to Axe the Competition," was not my idea. I told Lee that the idea would reveal too many secrets about our brand, creating a lot of competition for us without any gain. It seemed like a move to collect recognition. I prefer to work in the shadows.
Still, I met up with Lee, and we discussed the rhythm of the presentation. I showed him what ideas I had developed, and the direction I thought we could take to talk without revealing too many ideas. My plan was to make the other companies feel shame for being so unprofessional with their image. The three main points of the speech I presented were: Companies, Clients, and Consumers, Consistency Creates Constants, and The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly [or what not to do.] After agreeing on these topics, we plotted tasks for the rest of the week. I would finalize the visuals for the presentation and work on the scrip, while Lee worked on learning the script, and creating some adaptable, tele-prompting, iPad follow-thru. It was a big task to finish in a week. The talk had to be 45 min long.