Coach
Related Posts
Hi all,
I’m looking to relocate to Seattle. Does anyone know if any of the Big 4 are still recruiting campus hires to start in Summer/Fall 2023? I’m open to either Audit or Tax, but I have internship experience in Tax.
I applied and received an offer at a Big 4 in San Francisco (campus hire), but I’ve decided Seattle is the better fit for me as it will be closer to my hometown and family in Vancouver.
Thanks!
KPMG EY PwC Deloitte
More Posts
They asked for all documents for releasing offer letter. After uploading that, they sent BGV links which was completed way back in April. Now its June, still i am waiting for Offer Letter. Recruiter not receiving calls! Ghosted by the firm or these things happen at the firm regularly? Wipro
What did I ever do to Bob Barker?
Additional Posts in Brand Side
New to Fishbowl?
unlock all discussions on Fishbowl.
I’ve been promoted from a senior designer role to now being the creative manager for our team in healthcare. I’ve been at this company for about 7+ years and I must say, this has always, always, been the biggest issue for our creative team. I’ve found that it’s critical to pick and choose your battles including the stakeholders behind them. I’ve also found it useful to get ahead on strategies that are visibly helpful to clients/account managers, such as developing templated tools that we are in full control over. It’s hard though, and frustrating because healthcare always seems to be way behind the curve in terms of marketing and design and the ones making decisions don’t seem to value our industry experience.
I'm in the marketing department of a large company that drives creative development with internal and external creative and it's just typical. Sucks for everyone. But you could start with the leadership that is requesting it because it's usually the source of the issues. They don't really get the process and don't care. sometimes they need reality checks, but doesn't help when they also want final approvals on everything.
Our internal creative services team will remind us what's part of their scope or not and always on us about capacity. It's actually easier for them to push back than our external agencies.
It’s a tough needle to thread - implementing a chargeback model could help reduce some of the revision rounds, unstrategic projects, etc., but then you’d start getting requests to estimate projects (which can take time to understand and do), only to learn there’s no budget. The chargeback model also changes the way you can staff your department, typically.
A few things I would consider:
1. Split projects into two buckets when they come in: important to business growth; not important to business growth
2. Anything that is the ‘Important to business growth’ bucket can be reviewed with a member of executive leadership (or the highest level person you can get access to) to make sure it gets prioritized, is strategic, and doesn’t get off track.
3. Anything in the “Not important to business growth” bucket gets put second, and empower your creative team to enforce the brand guidelines (to the extent of good taste). Get compliance involved if you think that will help.
Coach
One hypothesis I have is that the digital communication creates problems. Filling out a request form is easy. Ignoring emails from the creative team is easy. Would requiring kickoff and feedback rounds to be zoom calls increase respect for the process?
I’ve had my team implement “creative consultation calls” at the start of projects/clients we may see as potential problems. It’s helped reduce rounds of revisions but that’s mainly just in the case of a supportive/capable account managers that relay the message to the actual client. With how a lot of our deadlines are, our account managers are always acting like they don’t have time for feedback calls/rounds.
My account is contracted with state healthcare. The work I do all depends on whether it’s part of the base contract or special projects. If my projects are part of the base code, then the client can pretty much do whatever they want (lots of revisions, disappear, reappear with unrealistic timelines). But if my work is outside the scope of the contract and is part of special projects/new business add-on, then we can bill back those hours if they go above the original estimate.
Completely sucks when working with people who don’t understand the creative process. 😒
Absolutely. And agreed it can get sticky and complicated in the beginning. Sort of like building the plane in the air while flying it. Estimating hours can be tricky especially if the client changes scope of the project midstream. We’ve learned to have those conversations/expectations established up front so there’s something to revisit/refer to if the hours go off the rails because the client wants more work done/needs more staff than originally estimated. Completely necessary, though, when balancing multiple projects, especially if there are multiple groups within one client system. Weekly check-ins, either via short meetings or updated doco in a system everyone can access helps visually establish the work that’s being done.
Why isn’t the account or business director dealing with this?
Coach
Still learning my way around the place, but it doesn't seem those roles exist.
I report up to the VP of Mktg/Comms. Lateral to me are various Mktg Dirs. It seems they can help wrangle the internal clients to some degree, but in some cases, they're the requester and are contributing to the problem of a churn-and-burn environment with poor brand discipline.