(AdAge, 4/27/2009)

Coke has recently announced that it will push the advertising industry to adopt value based pricing models as a standard practice. And, this call-to-action is likely to force a change in SEO and online marketing pricing models quickly.

The argument made by Coke, and supported by other heavy hitting advertisers like Anheuser-Busch and Procter & Gamble, is that effort doesn’t necessarily equate to value. Even companies with marketing budgets in the billions want to see maximum return for each dollar spent, and they don’t want to pay for anything short of success. Is the economy forcing the marketing and advertising industry into a new era of accountability?

Let’s look at how Coke is breaking from their old advertising compensation methods:

“BEFORE: Agencies and Coke negotiate in advance how much profit the former will see on a given project.

AFTER: Agency is guaranteed only recouped costs, with any profit coming only if certain targets are met.

BEFORE: Agency decides what Coke should pay for a project based on the time it expects to expend on it.

AFTER: Coke tells agencies how valuable a project is based on strategic importance, whether other agencies could deliver the same outcome, and other factors.”

Coke’s agencies include some of the most creative in the media and agency worlds, including Wieden & Kennedy, Crispin Porter & Bogusky, Starcom MediaVest Group and Mother, among dozens of others. Some agency executives, speaking privately, said they couldn’t argue with the theory behind the shift, but had concerns about how it might work in practice.

Read the entire AdAge article here.

Content.  The bane of my existence as a Project Manger in the web industry. Every schedule I have ever created includes “Content for the site”, the Functional Templates I put together, although tedious, shows every page of the site that will need content. Yet when the time comes for the content to be sent the first words I hear are, “I have most of it”. (No you don’t )Now I admit, perhaps we (Project Teams) don’t explain ourselves very well. We should be very clear. Yes, content does include the words that will be on a page. What you may not realize is that content is also every picture on the page, taglines, PDF’s you may want to include, charts, white pages, email address, links to other sites,  headers, EVERYTHING you want on your site.



How many  content items do you see in this picture? If you guessed 7 content items you are correct. Anything less and you have to take a step back and look at the content you will be creating for your website. 

While it is easy to look at your current website and think, “I’ll reuse this copy”, once you really look at it you realize that you really dont want to put out the same old message. If you have waited to have this realization the night before you are to deliver the content then you are now in a jam that could cost time and money. The more realistic you are about what you will need to accomplish, the less inclined you will be to put off the task until the night before the vendor is putting it on the site. 

You have settled on the scope of the project, the project has started and then you realize it, you forgot a feature, forgot a stakeholder, forgot to think about what happens after you start getting all the email. Heck, it could be that your hairdresser came up with a great idea and you want to incorporated it now. What happens next…

Client said – “Jennifer, we need to talk about XYZ. I know we haven’t discussed this before but it HAS to be here. It is one of our biggest requirements. The WHOLE reason we are doing the project.”

I don’t know what the big deal is, just fit it in. Yeah-Yeah, I’m sorry I forgot it right up front, but come on, how hard can it be to add? It’s just a tiny thing that leads to this form that needs to be sent to our 3rd party vendor and then sent back nightly so we know what the customer did and if they have been here before. (You would think that they have been doing this job long enough that they could do it in their sleep.)

Plus, isn’t it their job to expect things to change? How should I know what is hard and what is easy to do? If I had time to do their job I wouldn’t have had to hire them in the first place. Plus, I’ve got to get this project done and off my plate. Especially if I want to be recognized within the company. This is huge.

Vendor said – I don’t see why they don’t get it. This is why we discussed requirements in the beginning of the project. I don’t understand why they didn’t talk about it earlier if it was so important. I mean sure, it looks easy, but it isn’t that easy and now it’s going to put us back in the project timeline because we have to redo the architecture of the project. A=d to top it off the client is going to be mad because it’s going to cost more=and I’ll have to explain why and have them ask how to do it cheaper.

Seriously, I don’t know why in this day and age people just don’t get it.

Conclusion – The truth is, when you take the personal feelings out of this situation, what you have is a change. Don’t fool yourself, everyone knows where the other side is coming from. The client really does know that it is going to take more time and more money and although they really don’t know how much they do know it is a change and that they are the ones that are guiding it.

And on the flip side, the vendor really does know that you hired them for a reason. Yeah, it is going to change the timeline and the price, but the purpose of putting together the requirements and documenting the process as you go is so that it is a level playing field for everyone.

And seriously, the client doesn’t know that you hear this 3 times a week from anyone else, they only know that they need to accomplish something and it needs to look good for their bosses/organization/mother.. Any number of people. They are just trying to do it right.

The point of the story for both client and vendor is this. When you start a project and you need to add/edit/change something, step back and take a look at the big picture. Remove all personal feelings and write up the change request. Include why the change was asked for, what the change is, how it will work, how it won’t work, what it will effect and how much time/money it is going to take to change it. One of three things will happen; they will accept the change and you move on. They will reject it and you will move on, or they will decide it can wait until the next phase of the project… and you will move on. But change happens, it is the only thing we know to be an absolute truth.

Plan the work, work the plan…This statement makes project planning sound so easy, but in truth many projects fail before they even get started. How is that possible you ask? Failure to plan.

Sometimes the “need” to get something done outweighs the need to plan correctly for it. Or so some think. Have you ever heard, “We will make a decision when we get there”, or “Lets investigate some options and I’ll let you know”, or my personal favorite, “I have to see it working to know if it is right “. While working in this fashion feels good to start, it is not the most direct route to getting the work done and it is a heavy load on the finances as well. Both for the client and the company.

One way to help avoid these problems is to have a detailed discussion at the beginning of the project. A discussion where you gather the stakeholders and discuss the scope of the project. (The scope of the project is the sum total of all of its products or features.) Make decisions together on the direction to go. You should decide the way features should and will work. Write them down; include assumptions about how they work, and assumptions on how it won’t work. Being clear up front gets everyone on the same page and moving in the same direction. Do not count on the proposal to cover features in this much detail, it doesn’t and it isn’t supposed to. While having these talked up front may not curb the occasional “that’s not how I thought it was going to work”, it will, if documented, help to avoid rework of things that have been done.

Keep in mind that planning the project SHOULD take a big amount of time. The more planning and discussion done up front the less that needs to be done later. This means less rework to correct issues or misunderstanding and less money and heartache to the client, the team and the bottom line. Changes may come along, but your whole project is one big moving target if it isn’t planned correctly to begin with.
( That is putting it nicely)

So instead of groaning when the Project Manager wants to talk about the nuts and bolts of a project, next time rejoice that someone cares enough to want your project to be a success.