Craft Topics - Bad Work
Bad Work
Except on the whole we don't. In a service business bad work rattles around giving rise to bad word of mouth and creating patterns which all too often repeat themselves. Here's
the first cause of bad work and this is an easy one. Other people.
Or as Jack Black in School of Rock would call The Man. The system.
You can see a turkey long before it gobbles
but once the The second cause is the client's brief. Half of all complaints are the customer's fault says Philip Crosby. But they don't like to be told do they? They know what they're looking for. And even when they don't they believe they'll recognise it when they see it! And by definition all work which doesn't fit these rather narrow criteria is bad. Right? Well I would argue no. Off brief work isn't bad. It's just off brief. It's ridiculous to call a spanner a lousy screwdriver. I think agencies beat themselves up over this - largely because they have to whinge at each other - there's no where else they can get it out of their systems. Miscommunication Thirdly
there is miscommunication. Its different from bad briefing. It's
ambiguity. Everyone is using the same language but actually we
mean different things. The trouble is that at the start of a
project there is a need for consensus and it can be very irritating
to keep challenging what exactly is meant. But in my experience
this accounts for more bad work than anything else. It is particularly
problematic when working across communication disciplines. I remember
a telephone conversation with a brand manager for a charity for
a project about brand reputation where the deliverable was a
PR communications plan. We agreed with each other for 100% of
the time but it was evident that we were both becoming Fourthly there is inexperience. Coming fresh to something gives you the opportunity to do something new and different. It also means that you are likely to make basic mistakes which someone with even a little experience in the area would not make. This does result in bad work but as long as there is time for amends it is correctible. You just need someone who has got more experience to check your work.
What to do about bad work? Well I try to ask my clients for feedback. Always. And the feedback I get is always helpful if sometimes unexpected. And having got the negatives out of the system they are more likely to use me again. I've never had a client so unhappy that they refused to pay. But you do wonder why certain clients don't come back. That's why the feedback form is useful - it flushes this out potential problem areas. And of course I get a lot of positive feedback as well. Which is great for testimonials! I append my feedback form which I use for the planning and research projects I do. I'm supposed to have designed another one for when I do facilitation work but that's still on the drawing board.
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Is
a bit of a mystery. Because we don't like to talk about it
do we? But it happens. Statistically a proportion of the work
we do has to be below par. So deal with it.
process is rolling it is very difficult to
turn the process. Mostly we try to stop the assembly line and
start again. But turkeys emerge relatively late in the development
process when the client and senior suits have agreed the direction.
So
if you want to make a rep for yourself being a turkey spotter
things get very heavy very fast. Its easier to let the turkey
flap its way
out
of
the shed. There will be recriminations of course but across the
entire team. If you give advanced warning you become the scapegoat
for being smart enough to spot the turkey but not smart enough
to have wrung its neck. There is also a nasty tendency for people
to get labelled as turkey producers - not that they survive long.
And it is on the whole unfair to label people because a team
ought to be able to root out turkeys. But deadlines and politics
keep the turkeys going. The only remedy for reducing the incidence
of turkeys is to develop longstanding
relationships where people can talk plainly and trust has built
up. This curiously enough is not a quality of many account teams
which are thrown together and where personnel are changing continuously.
It's not fair to blame the client for turkeys. After all we have
to hatch them before the client buys. And very few clients brief
us to produce turkeys do they?
increasingly
alarmed at the language the other was using. It could probably
have been ironed out but neither of us wanted to take the risk.
When I first worked in direct marketing at ehs there was a policy
of hiring progressively one person from client side, one person
from advertising and one from direct marketing. And we were warned
to challenge and that not everybody would always understand what
we wwere saying. There's a lot more leakage between communication
disciplines but there's also still a lot of ambiguity. I'm convinced
that most of the projects where the parties haven't been satisfied
with the result have come unstuck because of miscommunication
and unfilled expectations. I use the 
Lastly
- there is the rather sensitive matter of just not being very
good at something. I know I am going to sound like Prince Charles
but there is such a thing as talent. And you will do some things
a lot better than you do others. There are some things you can
do but will struggle to do. The wider your range the more you
will be exposed. Specialists always have an advantage because
of their focus. But if you are a generalist you have the compensation
of crossfertilisation and
broader experience - but you will also have weaknesses. You pays
your money and you makes your choice. Like turkeys this is bad
work which you can anticipate. But you're unlikely to get any
better at it unless you practice. Which is why you will be tempted
to say yes and have a go. What you also need is a rigorous reviewing
procedure afterwards to decide whether you did in fact improve
or whether you repeated previous mistakes. You're not supposed
to practice on your clients but we all do it!