JOE BLOGS

It’s a big dilemma when presenting creative ideas to clients: what format should you present them in? Nice glossy visuals… or black and white hand drawn scamps? Let’s face it, Mac visuals can look really impressive, but do they clarify or fog the creative vision?

Over the last week I’ve helped to successfully sell ideas to a client using hand drawn scamps. I’ve also witnessed an agency mess up badly with Mac visuals. You see, the trouble with the latter is that they can cause clients to confuse two very different disciplines: design on the one hand and conceptual creative on the other.

It goes something like this:
1) Client receives pdf.
2) Client opens pdf.
3) Client doesn’t even notice the ideas in the work because…
4) Client thinks: “Hey, you can’t do that with our brand! And that’s the wrong logo! And the wrong shade of blue! In fact it looks nothing like our communications! Send me the head of marketing. Literally.”
5) Very bad things happen.

So that’s it, game over. No sale, unhappy client, unhappy supplier, no chance of the work ever seeing the light of day and no chance of any future contracts. Yet there was nothing wrong with the ideas – they could have worked well with a little client direction. It’s true that Mac visuals bring work to life, but they can also overemphasise minor design glitches that could be fixed in a snip.

There are other problems too. If you sell in an idea with a rudimentary Mac visual, you might find the client likes it too much, preferring it to the more considered idea you present later on. Oh, and I haven’t even mentioned the time and expense of putting visuals together for first stage presentation.

So, as you can see, I’m a big fan of presenting simple scamps. And if the client doesn’t like it they need to learn. Creative presentations are no place to discuss the minutiae of brand guidelines (especially if the client has just undertaken a major re-branding exercise). How good the work looks is irrelevant. This is not a beauty parade, it’s about what works and what will make money.

If the idea is strong enough it shouldn’t need the support of glossy printouts. What’s needed is engaged and strategic thinking that involves the client and let’s them see the work as it develops. After all, this is a team effort and everyone enjoys a good idea – don’t they?