Dave Kelly

I wanted to blog about something that I’ve noticed is becoming more and more common a request from our clients. The inclusion of a logo design with their website.

Now, that’s not an unreasonable request – in fact it’s something we’re happy to look at. However, what is worrying me is that the majority of clients are considering their logo/brand as an afterthought. Further more they aren’t always willing to put any extra budget behind it.

Common requests are along the lines of: ‘It just needs to be text.’, ‘Nothing too complicated – a quick logo’ or ‘I don’t care as long as it fits with the website’.

What really gets to me is the seeming lack of value people are placing in their brand/logo. Despite me giving most of them ‘the talk’ about the importance of branding the majority seem reluctant to attribute time or budget to getting it correct.

Anyway, I’ve always been of the opinion that you can’t skimp on brand, it’s the first point of contact a client will have with you and is how you’ll come to be recognised. I have to say that our design team has worked wonders with little/no budget - coming up with amazing logos time and time again. (Below are a few of my favourites – I must note that a couple of these did have a small budget behind them.)

What I really want to know is, from those of you who are business owners and have a brand of your own, where does it fit in your priorities (be honest!)? And to those of you who are designers/webbies – do you get similar requests for logos to be ‘included’ as an afterthought with other design? How do you deal with it?

This week was another 1st for Storm – one of our much loved family, Dan, will be leaving the team at the end of June, heading for the super-awesome Headscape. Whilst losing one of our family is a massive disappointment to the whole team, news of his departure wasn’t the biggest surprise of the day…

As you’d expect, we announced Dan’s move on Twitter and within 90 minutes, I had 5 CV’s in my inbox. The quality of the applications coming through was phenomenal, especially for people in their early 20′s, it really did open my eyes not only to the kind of people waiting to jump into our industry, but also to the amount of talent around the Bath area.

Having lived in Bath for almost 6 years now, and having been a part of the ‘tech / digital’ scene for about half of that, I was starting to feel like I knew / had bumped into / recognised the majority of people who live in Bath and work in our sector. How wrong I was.

Suffice to say, I can’t wait for the interviews – so watch this space. A new Stormtrooper will be joining our family shortly!

Update: For anyone reading this who wants to meet fellow Bath people, as Phil suggests below, Storm are hosting a tweetup on the 16th of June: http://tweetvite.com/event/btu5

On Tuesday night, I had the pleasure of spending an evening with Creative Bath at the Innovation Center in Bath. The session was a panel discussion on the topic of “How to value your creativity” – a topic close to my heart.

It seemed to me that the resounding response from of the panel (Mark Wood, Liz Brewer, Adam Haywood and Andy Braithwaite) and indeed the audience was – it’s tricky, there may be no perfect answer.

I felt that the reason a good number were struggling with an answer is because the question was slightly misleading – creativity, being intangible, cannot necessarily have value applied to it directly. Instead, I suggest that value is attributed to the trust you instil in a client. If you have the ability to justify a price to your promises – through showing passion, use of past successes, statistics (where possible) amongst other things, then you’ve indirectly valued yourself or your company as a creative asset. I could be accused of indirectly suggesting a “whatever you think you can get” (or Perfect Pricing) model is the best approach – so perhaps whilst considering the above it would be prudent to ask yourself ‘What am I worth to the client / how much will the client make from my ideas”. Once you have your answer, justify it to the client.

Rightly or wrongly, the above does somewhat indicate that business pitching skills, knowledge of business psychology and an understanding consumer behaviour are almost a ‘must have’ in the arsenal of any creative or creative company.

On a side note, business psychology is something I feel has really helped win pitches for Storm over the past 12 months. Anybody who is interested in a little further reading, I can recommend these:
How To Win Friends And Influence People – Dale Carnegie
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion – Robert Cialdini

And for those interested in a look at the broader area:
Consumer Behaviour: A European Perspective – Michael R. Solomon

Earlier today an interesting statement passed through my twitter feed:

“Everything is done in the pub in the UK.”

Interesting thought eh? I expect there will be a fairly 50/50 split of readers out there now – one lot thinking ‘Yep, That sounds about right!’ and the second ‘I bloody wish!’.

It occurred to me that perhaps given the quantity of communication that happens by phone and email, especially externally from a company, fave-to-face meetings are more a premium than ever before.

I’ve noticed over the past month or so that the most pleasant and productive meetings / catchups that I’ve had – have indeed been set in a social context. Be it taking a client for lunch or meeting with like minded people at events. I think it’s especially important for smaller businesses who spend perhaps a huge amount of their time ‘in the office’ working, to try and take the time to get out and see the people they speak to every day.

As a bit of an experiment, I’m going to coerce some of the Storm staff at a design and development level to go for a drink with clients/collaborators that they talk to frequently and get them to feed back on how the relationship dynamic shifts in the following months.

What are your thoughts on this? I’d be interested to hear.