Spring 2016. My buddy Zak Scholtz and I are sitting in a stark white boardroom, the kind that’s a tack on afterthought thrown onto a rushed commercial warehouse. The lighting gives you a subtle kind of seasickness. A strategy to keep the weak at bay.
We’re sitting across from a newly minted marketing manager. He’s pumped up with ‘prove myself’ fervor. It’s been about 20 minutes of sparring, discussing advertising, videos, ultimately hoping to land the job. It was a juicy one. He mentioned branded content videos, product overviews, assembly instructional videos, testimonials, commercial cuts. It seemed like a whale worth chasing, but the storm clouds hovered. As the conversation comes to a close, I realize I haven’t shown my fancy Wild and Light business presentation on my iPad yet - kind of corny, I know, I’ve learned.
I get to a section of photography, much of it highlighting a cross country CFL/Shaw campaign I had directed before. The client’s skepticism began to ooze out. He squinted at the pictures, gears turning.
“I’ve seen these images before.” His tone was not complimentary. It was accusatory.
“Yeah, they were part of a three month long Grey Cup campaign last year.”
“Yeah, but I’ve seen them.” He repeated.
“Yeah, I shot them.” I replied.
He gave a big sigh and shrugged. “Sure.”
As we started to pack up, I asked for a brief. “What’s that?” he replies. I walked him through the basics of information that would be helpful to know about the job. It’s kind of wild how often I had to ask for this over the years. I suggested he throw something together in word, a one pager of deliverables, timeline, expectations, and possible details on what tone/type of work they preferred. He agreed with great hesitation.
We shook his clammy hands and went on our way, left with his final pronouncement (threat) bouncing in our heads, “we’re interviewing a few production companies.”
That afternoon we had received a word doc, which was surprisingly fast. I’m used to chasing them down. It listed nearly a dozen large scale deliverables, photography. The kind of project we would need about 5 days to shoot.
The budget? $3500.
Mind you, they had been bragging about their $20,000,000 in sales the previous year.
So if we take that number, and think of it in terms of hours alone (and I never charge hourly) it looks something like this.
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