I’m a Cancerian. I wear my heart on my sleeve, and I often say what is on my mind. I am also unbelievably impatient. That combined with the heart-on-the-sleeve ingredient proves to be a bone of contention because I speak my mind and that usually means I forget to fully consider what might come out the pot-hole that can be my mouth.
More recently I have decided to be more honest, particularly with clients. Taking a more direct line of communication with them; answering a question as honestly but as respectfully as possible. Part of me believes that it’s because I’m 33 and I am aware that I’m getting older and whilst the design industry is a youth fueled one, nothing beats experience. So as an attempt to evolve as a human being whose a designer – I consciously try to preach what I practise.
Where this usually falls short is with ‘new business’. Whenever I have given a seminar, or shown my work to students I’m often asked ‘How do you find new work?’. My usual answer is quite simple ‘Alot of hard work!’. Which is true, but I’ll come on to that in a minute.
The real answer is that I’ve come to a slow, nine-year-long conclusion that perhaps the process I’ve adopted doesn’t really work. Here’s a typical attempt:
I try to get an introduction, failing that a cold-call-email as a means to introduce myself with an informal, but profession ‘Hello, I’m Steve, I do this, Can I do it for you’ type of email. Then a second, follow-up email to see if they read the first or just deleted it. Which is lame; Nothing beats meeting face-to-face, or calling to talk to the person on the phone after the first email. Emails can be deleted, and although calls can be screened if you catch them, you’ve at least got a shot.
I’m writing this, maybe sounding like I know a little bit about what I am talking about? The truth is, of late, I’ve very rarely follow up with a call if I’ve had no response to either email. I’m not bad on the phone (I think), I just hate the entire process of dialing the number, and talking to someone who I don’t know, who doesn’t know me. Perhaps it is the fear of rejection, or the fear that I don’t always know what I want – my current site is far too broad and disorientating. I’m fixing that was we speak.
Over the past nine years almost every project/client has come from someone recommending me. For example, here are just some of the most recent and the reason I was involved:
The Shop at Bluebird: they were recommended to me by a good friend, Thank-you Geoff.
ArisingArtist: a project that came along as a result of a great friendship with the clients consultant who brought me on board, thanks Meredith.
Friends of the Earth: A good friends’ brother was the Creative director, thanks Ben.
Festival Annual 09: Josh Jones, Editor is a long-standing friend and pier recommended me, thank-you Josh.
Entity Partnerships: Brought in by Craig; a good friend, and consultant to the client.
LD Communications: Their FD is a good friend of mine and has been since the Oven Digital days, thank-you Neil.
RedDot Clothing: Josh Jones, again.
HSBC Investments: A good friend worked there and brought me in, Thank-you Hannah!
In Japan it is a well-known fact that within business the culture of ‘new business’ is a process of endurance. Often taking years of ‘relationship building’ to gain business contracts; like some of their TV shows where contestants are forced to have worms stuffed in to their pants whilst hanging upside down over a vat of bubbling baked-beans.
The recent recession has perhaps only served to prove the importance of those relationships. Reliability is crucial, and a founding ingredient to maintaining strong working relationships. And reliability works both ways. A client who may need a design agency is less likely to go elsewhere and risk spending money with new people, so maintain relationships, even if that means a coffee and a natter with no new business.
New business is not necessarily about cold-calls, or emails. It is about relationships, and making sure that those are maintained. Although I never like to feel like I am using people so I will try to keep in touch with clients as much as possible and not just with news about myself, but if I see something that I think is interesting I’ll send it to them, even if it is porn.
Most people that I know who partake in a role to bring in new business are not (typically) ‘fresh out’ of college. They’re address book has been crafted, updated, digitised and backed-up for years. I’m a slow learner, but writing all of this actually helps me to understand it better; which is the entire point of this blog.
There, simple. Done. Or is it? Well, no, you can see it’s not the end. Having written all of this tripe I am now going to undo any good impression that I might have sewn and reveal a recent cock-up.
Now that I am living in Bergen I am seeking new clients to work with in a country whose language I don’t (yet) speak, under a company that is not registered in Norway. But I like challenges, so I’ve been using very simple avenues to start this process. I’ve been observing places, companies and brands in Bergen/Norway that I think I would like to work with. I have been getting the odd email/telephone number for contacts from friends. Web sites like Linkedin have become much more relevant and important in my quest for locating people who are, well, local. Linkedin is a great potential hotbed to find people and then trying to get an introduction to them. Like a game of cat and mouse, only this game has things like ‘Mortgages’ and ‘Bills’ as penance for not succeeding.
So for the past few weeks I have been looking for a contact at the Sundt department store here in Bergen. Why? Because I walk past their store four times a day and whilst I think the store and the building itself are quite cool, their window displays could be much better. Then on Friday last week I found someone who was, pardon the pun, ‘linked’ to the store’s marketing department. I have my Linkedin request accepted. I emailed the person in question. I got a reply on Saturday. Oh, hang-on… That’s not… They seem to be… Upset? What? Oh dear.
What had I said? Well, it’s not what I said, but what I had written, and not in the email. I am talking with about my piece concerning the Sundt department store windows. I thought my comments in this article were quite tame, and approachable; I said that the whole display of the windows was ‘lacking’, and that perhaps they didn’t have enough ‘budget or time’. Lost in translation? About as subtle as a hammer? Upon reflection, probably. A friend, Nille (of Sweden Graphics) commentated, via Twitter, that my blog was good but ‘Hurtfully honest‘ in relation to my ‘review of Norwegian presentations‘.
I thought my comments were more tactful than that, but then I’ll refer you and myself back to the opening paragraph.
Having said that I stand by my original point. If I were in a meeting with them I’d have said the same thing, but the point is I should have tried to get a meeting before announcing to the world that I think what they’re doing isn’t, in my perfect eyes, the best that they could do. Brilliant, well done me.
Without wishing to sound like one of those annoying van’s that beep, beep, beep, beep whilst reversing, I’m going to try and set the record straight; from my point-of-view.
Having lived in London for nearly ten years I can safely say, now that I’m not, that Londoners are spoiled for choice, for art, for culture, for food, for just about everything. Not that I’ve got my rose-tinted glasses on at all. But those are the facts.
For example, window displays. They’re a big thing for the stores in London, and rightly so it is one of the biggest capital cities in the world. Think Selfridges, Heals, Habitat, Harvey Nichols, Harrods, etc. Selfridges in particular have been leading the way in window displays. From featured artists, fashion designers and illustrators all tasked with creating the most flamboyant and extroverted statements of window-display-style as one store can possibly muster. They are a popular spectacle. Why?
Ok Selfridges is a huge store, like Macy’s, or Saks in New York. They have the budget, the means and the presence to make an impact of this nature on a regular basis. Do they do it because they need the business? Would people stop visiting the store if the windows weren’t as elaborate; debatable, but I doubt it. The windows are to a store what the cover is to a book, the headline is to the newspaper, the homepage is to the web site. It’s the calling card, the scene-setter. The one place, the one opportunity that the store has to stamp its mark, it’s style, its voice to the world. It’s like a physical web site homepage, and immense fun and frolics can be had. In fact the more abstract and surreal, the more interest it usually gathers.
The windows themselves become the spectacle. The statement that loyal shoppers wait for. Incase you need proof I’ve taken the liberty of scouring Flickr and finding all of these examples. Mostly from Selfridges, some from Harvey Nichols, and one or two from Liberty’s:
So there is an array of examples of window displays that I know are backed by big budgets and/or sponsorships. Most are extravagant to the point of being a little bit sickening. Regardless, they are all very impressive. They are executed with real artistic and technical focus and have high impact of their audiences – the hundreds of thousands of passers-by who are drawn to them like moths to a light. Which is why I felt these were not doing the Sundt store justice – just as a homepage might not be a true or good representation of a company:
I admit I am comparing London store windows to those in Bergen. That’s a capital city of around 7,556,900 (est) population versus Bergen with 253,600 (est). So it is unfair I know, but the point I am trying to make in a very long-winded manor is that there are endless possibilities for window displays, and ones that I feel are being missed by Sundt; which is the point I was trying to make (albeit badly) to them. Could there be more to handing some drapes, label logo’s and some dressed manakins?
So Steve, if you were hired in to consult and design the windows of Sundt what would you do? Well, thanks interviewer, I would consider…
(N.B. if it is a question of budget, brands are usually queuing up to sponsor a series of windows like this)
Ok, entry level: keep it simple. Create a seasonal theme for the windows, or create a running theme that somehow incorporates the three streets/sides of the building. Or incorporate a local theme; there’s a Peppar Kakor (Gingerbread) competition here in Bergen that all the Barnehagens (Nurseries) enter; this could be a theme in the windows – make everything out of Peppar Kakor, or feature the entries and create a Peppar Kakor landscape with clothes/manakins acting as giants stopping through their biscuit base city?
Like Grazia did at the new Westfield; have a magazine design their weekly issue from the window. It’s like real-time social networking, but it makes the windows become so much more, and this will increase foot-traffic.
Commission a host of designers/illustrators/artists to adhorn a window each. Or have the ‘art/graphics’ bleed out from the windows in to the street. Or, for now, just adorn the window with full vinyl masks with simple text cut out to as to reveal bits of the what lies beyond – this could be great for a lingerie collection? Maybe instead of ‘Sundt Shoppe’ it could then read ‘Se Flere’ (See More).
Maybe just some full window vinyl to mask the clothes that are there - to encourage people to peep?
What about running a Wii competition inviting people off the street to take part in a series of games, which just happen to be in one of the window displays. This could run during half-term and could be a great way to get a lot of foot-traffic in. Or during the Vancouver Winter Olympics 2010? Have the scores and twitter feeds running in the window to commentate on the competition and the real Olympics games – given that right outside this store there are always lots of youths skateboarding – I am sure they would enjoy posting their comments and see them feed in to the window. Yes we know, they’d be naughty, but it would get people following you – then you can use it to promote your store and it’s offers.
Maybe a Wii competition in the window? Run during school holidays
They have a long panel of inter-connecting windows along the side of the building. So why not have a catwalk and run hourly fashion shows? Have them run at different times of the day? Promote new Norge fashion designers during graduation time? The backdrop could be LCD panels that feed a carefully vetting/selected array of images of Bergen fed from and sponsored by Flickr? Or (better still) a random selection of images that use the tag ‘Bergen’. What about running an online competition to find all the models locally?
A night time fashion show?
Fashion show during the day, or winter - different images for different times of the day
Or perhaps take a leaf out of Diesels book (which would be too costly, unless they came over and did it for you) use holograms and models!
I know that the person in question probably won’t bother to ever respond or contact me again, and I’ve learned a valuable lesson – if you are trying to win new business, and you happen to blog about that business you’d like to work with, then think about what you are going to say, or maybe, better still, don’t blog about them at all.
Or remember – if you’ve got nothing nice to say, shut the fuck up.
