Imagine for a second Marco Pierre White (or any of his hot blooded culinary contemporaries for that matter) creating a new dish that represents all he stands for. A dish designed to wow diners from the first experience to the last and to leave a lasting impression.
Obviously he’d think about nutritional balance and content, that’s a given. He’d also concentrate on the finer detail. The things that will truly make his creation unique and raise it above the competition. The best ingredients combined in the most mouth watering, tempting way and prepared with experience, with care and with passion.
He’d also think about the delicate balance of smells, the textures, the colours and the way everything fits perfectly together.
He’d visualise the first impression and the lasting impression his dish would leave.
So, would he then say “sod it, let’s just chuck it on a cheap paper plate. We’ve ploughed hours of effort and thousands of pounds into making it as stunning as it can be, but heh, we need to save a few quid so that’ll do! Besides, no one will care really”?
Of course not. That final piece of the experience, the thing that its all presented on will make or break the whole creation. Obviously?
The same principle applies to what we do too!
We recently prepared a piece of communication for a financial organisation to go to director level business people in many top UK companies.
We went through a long creation process. We agonised over the format, the concept, the style of imagery and the finer detail of the copy.
We amended, we refined until we felt we had something that would really resonate with its intended target market and when it landed on their shiny expensive desks would fill them with a compulsion to take a few minutes to read it, be motivated by it and to respond to its proposition.
We discussed in depth what it would be printed on to give it the right gravitas the right feel and the right smell for its discerning recipient.
Then, after all the investment someone with an only eye for budget and no sense of the damage they were about to unleash decided to print it on the cheapest, thinnest, shiniest, stock the printer happened to have on his shelves.
Yes, you guessed, the result was something limp and uninspired that will be unremarkable at best from the users perspective and gave us all a sense of disappointment.
As a company we must impress upon our clients the importance of that final presentation. We must make it totally clear how this can destroy everyone’s good work and more importantly leave the client with potentially no responses to their communication and little return on marketing investment. We don’t want to end up with egg on our faces.
Ok, it may add a little to the bill but it will add infinitely more to the impact, memorability, brand perception and hopefully the financial return of a piece of communication. (It’ll do wonders for our sense of pride too.)
No more paper plates unless we’re having a picnic.
