IN SEARCH OF: THE PERFECT CLIENT

By Vivian Santos

I know what you’re thinking: nobody’s perfect. Although, when my son, Raymond, was about 8, he lost a Spelling Bee to a classmate, Rebecca. I tried comforting him, by explaining the fact that “nobody’s perfect”, he instantly disagreed, stating that in fact Rebecca was perfect; best speller, most A’s, great at drawing and she could out run all the boys. Crap! She was perfect, but I wasn’t about to let him know that. So I brought out the secret weapon - “Only God is perfect, Ray.” He nodded in agreement and reflected before adding, “And Rebecca.”

Like Ray, we all have an ideal of what is perfect. Me, I’m always in search of “The Perfect Client”. After 30 years in this business I’ve been lucky to have a few (still do).

Now, before I give you my top 3 attributes of The Perfect Client, there is certain criteria that is a given: The client’s product (service) must be a good one.

TOP 3 QUALITIES OF THE PERFECT CLIENT

1. THE PERFECT CLIENT MUST BELIEVE IN ADVERTISING!
They must have a sense for what is good and let The Agency show them the best Advertising they can get. Like my friend slash copywriter Mary Ellen once told me: “Clients get the Advertising they deserve.”

2. THE PERFECT CLIENT MUST SEE THE AGENCY AS A STRATEGIC PARTNER NOT A VENDOR.
That means you’ve got to trust The Agency and share essential marketing information with us. Keeping straightforward communication with your Agency will fuel the passion we need to feel for the Brand. This passion is contagious, it’s what keeps this business of ours engaging and stimulating for both of us.

3. THE PERFECT CLIENT UNDERSTANDS THAT THE AGENCY NEEDS TO BE FAIRLY PAID.
If you leave no room for the agency to make a profit, the end product will suffer. Just show The Agency some respect and we’ll do amazing things for you.

OH AND ONE MORE THING: You’ve got to actually like each other, if you don’t have a real connection the relationship is doomed. Yes I know, that makes it 4 Qualities instead of 3, but hey - nobody’s perfect (except Rebecca?).

A Panoramic Picture Tutorial With a TSotwist (or a roundhouse kick in this case).

By: Daniel Timiraos

I’ve been toying with the idea of shooting The Living Room in our office for a while now. This is the space where, among other areas, we generally hold our client meetings, staff meetings and over all get-togethers. It has a sweeping view of downtown Coral Gables and affords amazing sunsets thanks to the floor to ceiling windows of our building. It’s our epicenter if you will.

   In order to capture this, a panoramic shot was a no brainer. I’ve created many of these for our clients so I went to work on one of our own. Tutorials on this abound on the web, but it case you’d like to know how I went about it:

 -Set up tripod at corner of the room that would provide the sweeping views. The image is shot in pieces and then stitched together in Photoshop CS5 using the photomerge feature. Without the tripod it would make things WAAAAY more difficult than need be.

- Set up camera to shoot vertically. I know it sounds weird since it’s a panoramic your shooting for, but in the end your final stitched image will be overall large and have more detail than is you’d shoot horizontally. Also this way you avoid shooting wide, which would distort the image causing your more “headache time” in Photoshop.

- Find and set your exposure manually to assure even exposure through the images in the stitching process. I shot with a 17-35 set at 35mm and the Aperture set at F11 to provide sufficient depth of field.

- Start shooting. Each shot should incorporate 20% - 30% of the previous shot to ensure a seamless stitch.
- Load the images into Photoshop and let in work it’s magic.

- Retouch and color correct final image.

- Rinse and repeat.


Simple enough and as you can see the results are pretty dramatic.

The only problem was that the image was missing the one element that really makes the room come to life; the quirky and charismatic bunch of people the make up VSBrooks Advertising. Without them it’s just another room in another office building - looks great but has no life. And more importantly, how can I show and accurate depiction of the Living Room with having Veronica roundhouse kicking our punching bag!?!

   So I re-set everything up with the exception of having me shoot it (thanks, Jimmy!) at a time when we were in our goings on at the office. Veronica randomly kicks the dummy throughout the day so I’ll fess up, that portion of the shot was staged. The slices would have to be strategically shot so as not to cut anyone in half. Also, in order to show motion, I had to drag the shutter to achieve the effect.


Voila! The Living Room comes to life!

   Now with people in it, the image is a panoramic with a twist, much like everything else here in the office. The people in the shot make something good become great. It’s our specialty. We interact with (and around) each other “seamlessly” (pun intended), making great things happen for our clients. It’s a slim slice of the dynamic life at VSBrooks.

If you'd like to see a larger version of the final image, head over to our Facebook page.

Hey clients! If you think your customers aren’t paying attention…. Think again my friends.

By: Diana Brooks

It seems that Gap, the retail chain, who in my opinion, is a branding champion, recently launched a new logo on their website. They've spent the last two years working hard "evolving" the brand, convincing themselves within the confines of their four walls, that they needed a new contemporary and hip logo, that still honored the heritage of the brand.

Not a big deal to your common, cattle-herded customer, right?

   So here’s the funny part... they changed it, very quietly, as part of an overall rebranding strategy. And their customers went nuts! They flocked to their social media outlets, enraged and betrayed by the brand they had been so loyal to. As an agency owner, I have to admit I feel vindicated.
   After years upon years droning on to clients about how important a logo is, and a brand is, and blah blah blah ad nauseum… I feel great to be able to read this article and say :

“SEE!!!!????

I TOLD YOU SO!!!!!!!!!!”

   Even the greats have to learn the hard way how important your customer is, how you have to keep them in mind every step of your strategic way, how RESEARCH will SAVE you money and more importantly, how people EMOTIONALLY connect to your brand.

Read on and learn more….http://adage.com/article?article_id=146353