R|com Creative Blog

If you are a positive person, you might say the U.S. auto industry is reinventing itself right now. With GM and Chrysler both looking to start anew, Ford has been able to stay clear of shrapnel, although it too has suffered substantially as a result of the overall economic situation in the United States, not to mention the rest of the world.

But Ford is truly using the downturn in the economy and the drama with its Detroit cousins to get up and deliver. While quality may have been their long-term mantra, Social Media may now be at the top of their marketing agenda.

Scott Monty is the head of Social Media for Ford. He clearly gets it. On a daily basis, Monty is working to let people know that Ford is not a building, not a car, but a company that is made up of people. Not only does Scott understand Social Media as a marketing tool, he understands the audience. GM and Chrysler both use the typical Social Media mechanisms, including FaceBook and Twitter, but just like their current overall situation, the effectiveness of their use of these tools leaves something to be desired.

According to Trendrr, a Social Media trending firm, in May of 2009, Chrysler had approximately 850 Twitter followers, while GM blew past them with more than 5,000 followers. On the other hand, Monty’s Twitter audience jumped to 20,000 people. That’s not even in the same solar system.

Ford created an effective and useful promotion using YouTube to market the introduction of the new Ford Fiesta. By creating a series of contests, Ford drew thousands of submissions, created a steady stream of Twitter “tweets,” and got substantial blog and news coverage. The bottom line: Ford reached a broad audience, interacted with them, and saved literally millions of dollars in advertising.

We like to collaborate with our clients to ensure they understand both the commitment that is required when diving into the Social Media pool, and the rewards for a job well done. It isn’t a mysterious endeavor, but it does require care, focus, and a strong understanding of whom the customer is, what they expect to see, hear, and read – and how to share things that will generate a response.

If you’re interested in how Social Media can work for you, please give us a shout. We’d love to hear from you.

One of the most important things when creating any design is to consider the office of origin. It’s no good putting together a set of modern design elements when the client is an organization that centers on history – basic concerns, but it’s always interesting to see how personal taste figures into these things.

Considerations for styling cues aside, the breadth and variety of customers means that I’ve always got to keep in mind what they might like, in addition to what suits their needs. The most beautiful design in the world counts for naught if the client doesn’t approve, in the end.

Designing by committee, finally, is one of those inevitable issues, when working with the top level of an organization. The best things I’ve learned here is to aid the group in staying on task, in the scope of the project – as a designer, it isn’t enough to just make something beautiful, but provide insight and suggestions for the committee’s use. Perhaps the answer is not to design by committee so much as design with committee.

Examples
LAFD Museum Website
LAFD Greater Alarm Gala Event Website

One of our challenges involves the creation of budgets for custom web application budgets. The reason is that web development is, basically, unpredictable. There are typically three elements to web application budget development: database expense, application expense, and UI (user interface) expense.

The most straight-forward of the three is database expense. The rules, roles, and execution of database code is fairly predictable. The interaction between application code and the user experience is a completely different animal, and not for reasons you might assume. Our biggest challenge in this area is keeping our client on track with the original specification.

Often, as we develop and deliver custom application code, our client(s) will think of new things to add, change, or eliminate. Now, keep in mind that our work Agreements include a design, feature, and engineering freeze clause, including dates related to the overall project. At the same time, our job is to satisfy each client with the best possible solution. In many cases, these individuals aren’t experienced with application development, so their eyes are their biggest connection to the code they thought they were going to see. Often, what is delivered inspires them, and as such, they want changes – and they want those changes included in the original spec budget.

For our team, the key is often to spend some extra time in the pre-production phase of the project. On occasion, we’ll even add a separate “pre-production” design phase to a budget, so we can work more closely with the client to ensure there are fewer changes as the project moves forward. Even so, there are times when clients want to make changes, regardless of how the preparation process was developed. And, while it is often an opportunity to add revenue to a project, the end-result is delayed, and that has a cost to both parties.