Contrary to popular character assassination, I’m quite a laid back person – however there are some things that are guaranteed to make me go a bit loopy and one of those is when people don’t pay attention to the little things.
The photo above was taken at a travel agent I passed and the Concorde plane was in their window.
Apart from the plane no longer being in service, the fact the ‘nose’ has snapped off just makes the impression of the company even worse. Seriously, are you going to book a holiday with an organisation that can’t even get it’s window display right?
I remember a few years ago having a meltdown before a pitch because some of the bulbs in our meeting room needing changing.
I appreciate it might not appear a big deal and that it would be nice to think clients care more about the quality of the work than the environment, but apart from the fact that is [sadly] not true, if you can’t be bothered to get those things right, what’s to say you can’t get their details right either.
There’s a very famous story about the rock band Van Halen who used to demand huge bowls of M&M’s at all their concerts but with all the brown ones taken out.
For years people used to use this as a perfect example of Rock Star arrogance/power/pettines/excess [though I did also hear some people said it showed the band were racist devil worshipers!] however a while back I was lucky enough to meet their then manager who – when I asked him what the M&M situation was all about – explained it wasn’t something the band wanted, it was something he wanted.
You see he was of the view that if a promoter paid attention to ensuring there were no brown M&M’s backstage, he would probably have ensured the countless other demands and requirements of the group were also executed to their liking/standards … so contrary to popular belief that this was all about feeding the ego of some Rock Stars, it was actually a test as to how trusted a person/company could be.
Evil genius.
So next time someone complains your powerpoint chart slightly covers the clients logo or the fonts are inconsistent or the picture is too low-res [more pet peeves of mine] don’t roll your eyes, fix the bloody thing because you never know how many factors you may be being judged on – and while that might sound quite sad or shitty – I would remind you that in life, we rarely ever evaluate people or brands on just one thing so we shouldn’t expect clients to act any differently.