I’ve been away for two weeks now. I was on vacation, so no updates then, then I was at my new job. This was none too fun. I’m not sure how long I’ll last. A huge problem with it all is the way the company came about: This group sold a ColdFusion-backed CRM tool to (primarily) real-estate clients. This turned into “can you build my Web site too?” which, of course, this company knew nothing about. So, a bunch of real-estate and sales professionals all get together and hire a few creative types to make these sites. Now, an agency is born from real-estate sales which means that the work flow is very, very backwards.
In an actual advertising agency, this is the work flow (for a Web project anyway): Account service finds new clients and makes sure they wanna come in. They present clients with a bid based on scope of work provided by the designers and developers. Then, once the client has signed the contract with the scope of work, the developers and designers help put together an information architecture – a flowchart of sorts that outlines the information and navigation – and then that’s approved by the client before a design is even thought out. Then, when the client approves the I.A., the creative team of the designers go to work. They present (usually) 3 comps to the client, an idea of what the final site will look like. The client will go back and forth with the creative team and pick one. Once the client gives approval, the developer team gets to work, cutting, slicing, and coding up the site (while this is all going on, the copywriter is busy writing copy for all the pages based on the I.A. that the client approved and the creative director’s instruction). Once the site is coded, the copy is approved by the client and the copy is then put into the site. Once the finished site is all loaded, the developer ports the site over and there’s a final site hand-off.
In this group: The account service comes to the development team with IA already done (this is really really messed up because the account service team, though experts in sales, are not developers. They don’t understand user interface and user experience like we do). They then give the team a promised deadline (they don’t even ask how long such a project would take, just “We promised the client six weeks” which after all the bullshitting back and forth with the client gives me about 2 weeks to code the whole damned thing) this is often due to the client turning over the keys to the castle to my company which effectively makes the company it’s own client and presents deadlines internally based on previous projects. I can’t argue because the account service (read:sales) are owners of the company. It’s like I’m working in the twilight zone advertising agency. Everything is done ass-backwards. The account service people were telling the creative team which photos to put on a page! This is, to me, wrong on so many levels – the creative director is above EVERYONE in an agency, they take direction from no-one and give direction to everyone. I was amazed at how little control and how backwards everything is done.
For my first three days, I was sweating bullets. I felt like someone had put a stone in the pit of my stomach and I couldn’t get rid of it! The last two days gave me a gleam of hope – I was called in two separate times to two different bosses office to explain to them agency work flow. They wanted to step up to the plate with the big advertising shops, but weren’t sure their process was going to float or sink them. I got to freely speak my mind and really let them know places where I thought they needed work. I made an information architecture that took a three-tiered navigation and 30 pages, and worked it down to just 8, pretty simple pages.
There’s hope yet for me here. I’m gonna try to stick it out for six months and see if I can take it. Wish me luck
