Working With Us

The New Biz Process

posted 02/16/08

Or, “Getting your ‘job’ turned into a “JOB.”

Assessing your needs

Our number one goal in the new biz process is to figure out exactly what you need done, and the best way to go about it, given your timing and budget constraints. SO. Why are you hiring us? What do you want out of us? What do you not need? We do a lot of things here. We do mechanical. We do consulting. We do HTML. We do crazy AJAX and Ruby on Rails development. We do awesome creative concepting. We will help you pitch a client. We’ll build you a database. We’ll solve your digital business problems. We’ll take your comps and turn ‘em into moving pages. The odds are good that you do not need all of our services. The first thing we’ll do is try to get our head around the goal or problem you have, and what we can do to help.
One of the things we’ve learned, though, is that there are times when you might need more, or less, help than you were planning on. When we present you with pricing on a job (more on that in a moment), bear in mind we’re presenting you with a number we think will get the job done as well as can reasonably be done.
Perhaps a real life parable is in order here. We have seen some clients look at our bid and do their thing. You know the thing, the thing producers do – that they are paid and trained to do – where they look at any bid and immediately find ways to cut this 20%. It’s your job, of course it is. The thing to keep in mind, I guess, is that we’re not padding that bid with a bunch of extra services you don’t need. If you shoot to get the bid reduced by 20% – and yes, of course we will help you achieve this goal – you will be reducing the work we do by 20%. This is noremally a good thing and well understood and awesome, but we have seen with a few clients who are new to interactive production that in their mind it is similar to broadcast production. Nothing could be further from the truth. More on that later. In the instance we’re talking about here, though, you will see a lot of things on the bid that may not seem very important to you, if you’re new to interactive production. Like copywriting, even though you are supplying copy. Like QA (Quality Assurance). First time producers LOVE to cut QA time and costs. It often seems like fluff to them.
Now, we will cut these costs – you are our client, and the boss, and we will follow your lead. What often happens, though, is that later on, we will be in a conversation with you and you’ll say “how come you can’t do that or that? How come everything we ask for costs more?” And we’ll remind you that it wouldn’t’ have cost more, and we would have been very happy to do these things, had you not insisted on cutting out all of those services to begin with. We’re just sayin’.
And then there’s the “maybe you need less than you think” side of the equation. Sometimes we get excited and decide that a project can be the greatest thing ever if it’s THIS BIG. But maybe it doesn’t need to be THIS BIG. Maybe we should just build it “yea big.” No problem! Let us know. It’s all about finding a range that you feel good about.
For example, in your pricing worksheet, there may be a big, fat, line item in your costs for art direction and design. Do you really need this? Does your art director want to do it all themselves? Or, conversely, do you need more? Do you have a designer dedicated to this project that can flesh out the other 11 pages of the site that haven’t been designed yet, or do you need us to do it? These are the sorts of things we’ll walk you through.

The Contracting Process

So, let’s walk through the process. You get in touch with us, we call you back, and we get the ball rolling. At this time, you are assigned a new biz contact. This is a person who will help you and guide your project through to a signed Statement of Work (SOW) and an actual job. They will be your day-to-day contact at The Barbarian Group up until the signing of the SOW. Depending on such factors as the size and complexity of the job, any pre-existing relationships you or your company may have had with us, and the likelihood we’ll be able to help you out, this could be a new biz coordinator, a partner, a producer, or a client service executive. A lot of different possibilities, we know, but it’s really all about finding the person best positioned to help you out. Like if you are new to working with us, but work at an agency where we have a long relationship, we may have a client service executive covering your agency, in which case, they’ll be your go to person. Or, in those situations, all the jobs at your agency may have been handled by one producer, in which case they might be the one. Or, just as equally likely, you may have gotten really drunk with Ben or Rick a week or so earlier and hatched this crazy idea then, and so they will be the one helping you to get it done.
Next we arrange a initial conversation about the project. Now, often, clients think we’re gonna have like a full team of ten people on this call – that we’ll magically have a producer, creative lead, technical lead, partner, client service person, etc., etc. This isn’t the case. What we do is try and find out what you know about the project, in order to get the right people in the loop. We also try and not waste anyone’s time by immediately ascertaining whether your time/budget will fit into our production pipeline. So right away, we have a quick chat with you to get the basics of the project down. This involves one or two Barbarians. It’s just a quick chat to see what the deal is. If you have any comps, or an RFP, or information architecture (IA) documents, it’s good to get them sent over beforehand, along with any timing/budget considerations you have. If you don’t’ have any of these, that is totally cool too.
So, then, after we have this first chat, many things happen, sometimes simultaneously, sometimes sequentially. It all sort of depends on what you need and what transpired in that first call. Here are some of the things that will come out of it:
  • Rough timing and budget: Often, our clients will call us because they have a wacky idea that they want to present to their client but, being prudent individuals, they are hesitant to propose anything that they don’t know for sure it can be done, or how much it will cost. So out of that initial meeting, they’ll just want a yay or nay on feasibility, and some rough timing and cost numbers to work into the numbers and time they put in front of their client. We love these calls, and will gladly supply you with just that. We even have a word template for this very purpose, lovingly titled “the ballpark estimate template.”
  • A larger follow up meeting: Another common result of the initial call is for us to go “oh man, this is awesome we should start doing this right away let’s get a team together and get crackin.” This is common if the idea is so complex and new that we need to start consulting with many different people in the company, and we need them all to converse with you. It’s also common if everything was all buttoned up in the bidding process, and we all know we’re gonna work together, and we’re just nailing down the SOW but we need to get the ball rolling in the interest of time.
  • The technical call: Very, very, very often, projects that come our way are projects that are going to ultimately live in a client’s pre-existing hosting environment or on their machines. Or they need to be coded to a set of technical specs that we don’t necessarily have yet. We have a bunch of developers, all with different skill sets, so knowing a lot more about the technical issues allows us to figure out which developers can do the job and, thusly, how much it’ll cost or whether we can do it. There are tons of things that can make or break a bid in the technical details, and it’s really best to just let the nerds talk to each other. Unless everything is crystal clear, we almost always need to have a tech call before we can get a formal bid or SOW together.
  • The Ideas Document: A lot of times people want to know what we think of a certain brief, or if we have any ideas to go with a campaign. This is so awesome. We love this so much. What we do in those situations is take a few days, maybe a week, and bounce ideas around. We usually assign a creative lead at this point (more on this later), and they help guide the company through this process and come up with ideas, and corrall the ideas from others. We then get back to you with a document with a bunch of ideas sorta thought out that seem like they could meet your needs or are interesting. Now, these are often kind of half baked. And we certainly don’t do a big showy presentation with them. They’re rough ideas that we want to bounce off of you to get to know you and to see what sorts of things you like, and what sorts of things you don’t. To take a temperature. In a perfect world, we then show you this doc, and we have a call, and you tell us what you like and don’t like, and then we know something more than we did before. In an perfecter world, one of these ideas would be so awesome you’d go “yes! Let’s do that! How much will that cost! Let’s do an SOW!” and we’re good to go. Proper.
  • A Proposal/SOW: Sometimes we have all the info we need to write a proposal or an SOW. This is very common with agencies and jobs that are very well thought out in advance, and we are contacted with a full Request for Proposal (RFP), Information Architecture (IA) docs, a tech spec, comps, budget and timeline. Or, perhaps we’ve had all of the above calls made and documents written, and we’re ready now. We’ll talk more about the SOW in a bit.

Getting The Job Sold Through to Your Clients

We should talk about this. So, often you have really great ideas. And then, through the power of collaboration, we have an even better idea on our hands. Now, we need to get this sold through to your client. We are totally on board with helping you as much as we can in this process. We’ll set up a staging server for you so that you can present our ideas right from our server. We’ll be on calls with you. We’ll come visit you. We love our ideas, and we recognize that sometimes we’re the people for the job to explain them and inspire people about them. We’re totally down with that. If you want us to talk to your clients and talk about what’s so awesome about it all, we totally will. If you want us to hide in the back and not talk to them, we’ll totally do that too. We’ll pretend they’re mean ogres and we don’t want to talk to them, and then we won’t feel so bad.

Different Ways to Bid Out a Job

Okay, this is gonna sound a bit money grubbing, but we don’t mean it that way. Believe you me, if we were money grubbing we wouldn’t be doing this anymore. But we digress. SO. We can do this a few different ways. We offer these different ways because different clients have different needs. We’re not gonna force you to do it one way or another. Awesome jobs have come out of each one of these types. Let’s go through the options here:
  • Send us an RFP: If you’re the sort of agency that has in-house interactive art directors, and information architects, and routinely bids out interactive projects to companies like ours, this is a pretty straightforward approach. Send us all the detail, we’ll send you back a nicely formatted document with all the info you requested, including timing, price, strategic and creative thoughts, etc. Straightforward. Easy as pie. It’s why these things were invented.
  • Tell us how much you have and let us come up with awesome ideas for that amount: Reallly. It’s okay. Just tell us. We’ll work within those parameters. We’re not out to steal all your money – we’re out to figure out the most awesome thing that we can all realistically execute. Knowing these parameters helps us come up with ideas. If you’re the sort of company that comes to us to do something awesome on the internet alongside the rest of your campaign, this is really the best approach for you.
  • Let us blue sky ideas based on strategy: Some of our clients like this when they just won a new brand, or they know that things need to be revamped but they’re not sure how. Sometimes this is the best route if you just want the barbarians in your corner, but you’re not sure how yet.
  • Work through the new biz process and hammer out an SOW based on all the meetings, calls, chats, etc: This is, of course, incredibly popular. We do this a lot. It sounds far less glamorous than it is. Really, it can be awesome. It’s a good time. And on the plus side, by the time we do the SOW, everyone knows exactly what’s going on, and there are no surprises. Theoretically1.
  • Put us on retainer: Want the power of Barbarian ideation and execution on your side at your beck and call? Think about paying us by the month, or for a certain set of briefs, or hours assigned to a task. We are flexible!

A Few More Notes on Pricing

AICP

If you come from the broadcast side, there are a few things that you may be wondering about. The first is AICP bidding. AICP is the Association of Independent Commercial Producers and, TV having been around much longer than the Internet, they have worked out a whole standardized process for bidding jobs for television commercials. The AICP being a bunch of smart folks, they have also hashed out a few guidelines for putting those television commercials on the Internet, etc. Much – very much – of what we do isn’t covered by anything the AICP does. Often people ask us to make the bid AICP compliant, and it’s not really possible since they haven’t written any guidelines for much of what we do.
Now, of course, sometimes we do do things that are covered under AICP bids. This is when we do some video production for the web. It is our preference to not do an AICP bid, but if you want us to, we will. You should know, though, that it’s generally gonna make things more expensive. The web isn’t TV, resolutions aren’t the same, production values aren’t the same, and sometimes you can get by with a DIY shoot. Just something to keep in mind.
Another thing that the AICP discusses is the whole concept of fixed bid vs cost plus fee. The AICP and some agencies are pretty into this. We will, if you desire, do either of these types of bids for the portion of the job that is covered under an AICP bid – that is, the video production. We do not do cost plus fee bids for the work we do in house. We don’t track individual hours. We don’t even know how.

Casting and SAG

Another thorny area comes with casting and SAG. SAG, for the uninitiated, is the Screen Actors Guild, and is a very popular conversation starter in agencies around the US. As we’re sure you know, some agencies are signatories to the SAG contract, and some are not. We are not. You may be. If you are, we will need to do things in a very specific way to ensure that you do not accidentally violate the terms of the contract. This is all a ridiculously complex situation. SAG has some very reasonable guidelines involving payments and rights of video shot for television that is also used on the web, video that is only used on the web, etc. Your SAG status should be discussed up front if a job involves video and casting. We will help you navigate things accordingly, and sort out the legal issues.
Now, there are situations where your SAGness doesn’t really apply. If we’re shooting a few still photos of a model for the site, and this model doesn’t appear anywhere else, and the site doesn’t have any video, there’s a good chance it doesn’t matter. It’s tricky, though. Another thing to be aware of is that potentially, who contracts and pay for casting may not necessarily be the person who is creatively calling the shots for casting. Like we might be contracting but you choosing. Or vice versa. Something to be aware of. The producers will help you out on this.

Metrics and the SOW

Our base SOW makes it clear that we’re not doing a whole lot with Metrics beyond some log-based analysis tools such as Urchin or AWstats. If you’re concerned about analytics, or your client is, or you have a specific package we with which need to make sure everything is compatible, please raise this issue during the SOW process. We should write out this section of the SOW to include everything that you or your client may want to track. “Everything” isn’t a really solid answer, though of course if you want to say that we will be happy to whip up a list of what we think you might mean, and present that for your approval. Also, bear in mind that metrics in terms of traffic, etc., is only part of the story. Outside the SOW process, we should be helping you, if you need it, to define some success metrics during the new biz phase, so we all know what we would consider a success with this project, and why.

Accessibility And the SOW

It breaks our heats for saying this, but our base SOW does not include any accessibility considerations. This is not because we do not care passionately about accessibility. Because of the nature of our work, much of it is impossible to make accessible (how does one make a meme accessible?) Additionally, often clients are less concerned about accessibility on these projects because of their ephemeral, and non-critical nature. If accessibility is important to your project, absolutely let us know, and we will plan, and produce, accordingly.

About our SOW

So, now that all this is worked out, and everyone knows what a project’s about, and what’s gonna happen and when, we come to writing the SOW.
The Statement of Work is a document outlining the project. It is everyone’s best guess about what is gonna be done. The goal is to have it be as clear and complete as possible. Of course, there are times we don’t know everything, but those should be called out with phrases like “timing is expected to take about 19 weeks. A detailed timeline will be provided for approval no later than August 12, 2009.”
Now, there are times, through the course of the project, that we will all decide, together, that it makes more sense to scratch a deliverable outlined in the SOW to focus more on another thing. And there are times when we all decide to do a bit more work than is outlined, or a bit more less, for the greater good. And we are all cool with it, and we let it all slide. The key to all of this is the mutuality. We have to both agree to change what we’ve agreed to. What we can’t do is do this one sided. If we have a document signed, and all of the sudden you don’t want one of the things in it, but we are halfway through building it, then yeah, you’re gonna have to get it. We are all about deviating from the SOW when it makes sense, but there are times it doesn’t. We’re not work for hire, and you’re not renting a bunch of resources that you can do anything with. You’re engaging us to build what is listed in the SOW. So make sure it looks good. We’ve written SOWs that are 2 pages and took a week and say things like “we’re all gonna do something awesome.” We’ve also written 40 page SOWs that took six months to complete. We can go either way. The level of detail is more or less up to you. If you wanna keep it vague, that’s cool, it just means you’ll have to take our word for it when we say “that’s too much.”
It should be noted that we also consider the SOW the bare minimum or what a project will be. We always go above and beyond what it lists – that’s our raison d’etre – to over deliver. It says 2 rounds of revisions in the SOW. We always go more. So, if we’re saying “wow, you know, this is a lot more than it says in the SOW,” we really mean it, and you should probably listen. Ha. We’re lecturing again. Sorry.
Our SOWs generally consist of an overview, project detail, team, technical considerations, strategy, creative considerations, timeline, costs and terms and conditions. It’s a good idea to have the appropriate people at your company read over the various sections. Our default SOW, for example, doesn’t include hosting unless you ask for it. This might be a big deal, or it might not. Best to find out from the experts.

Payment Terms

Broadly speaking, our payment terms are usually half up front and half at the end, though there are, of course, exceptions. We’re also one of those companies that insists on a 50% payment up front. Here, we conveniently refer to the AICP and point out that this is not an uncommon policy amongst production companies, which we sort of are. Isn’t it nice how we refer to people like the AICP when convenient, and pretend we’re a production company when convenient? Obviously this is a very malleable rule but there are two things to keep in mind:
  1. If you’re a first time client, we’re gonna need something up front
  2. We need to get something from you before the project launches. It’s really the only leverage we have. Don’t hate us for it.
That’s it. Easy as pie.

Our Terms and Conditions

Our Terms and Conditions (T&Cs) are a curious beast – they’re sort of half way completely standard and boring and halfway unique and fascinating. Like all legal documents agreed to between two parties, of course, we are amenable to changing and modifying these as you and your lawyers deem necessary. There’s a few things we want to point out to you, though.
We aren’t work for hire. This is important to note for intellectual property reasons. We worked very hard on our terms and conditions to make them work for both parties, through years of trial and error. Essentially, we reuse a lot of code. Does the project include a Flash site that has a form to capture an email address? We build some code for that that we use over and over again. It saves us time and you money. But it means that inside your project is some code – some “technology” – that is ours and we cannot assign the rights to you for completely, or else we couldn’t use it legally again. And believe you me, no one wants to spend their time writing new and different code each time we need to validate a zip code. So we have carved out a technology clause that says that we retain ownership so some underlying code, but that you own all your source files (.PSDs, .FLAs, etc.) and that anything in them that we do own, you have a worldwide, unrestricted, non-exclusive license to use. This means you can use it however you want, and do whatever you need, even though we own the IP underneath it. This way, we both win.
Now, we can, of course, endeavor to make a site or project for you that uses none of our pre-existing code. But it will be expensive. Very, very expensive. And slow. In the end, we don’t see the value in it for either of us.
Next, you will notice that the number of revisions is limited. Like we said, we let this number slip all the time. But it’s important to remember that we’re letting it slip as a favor, and in the end, if it gets out of hand, we will invoke this clause.
The same is true for the delays. Yes, of course, of course you can be a day late here or there. And of course we’re not going to cause a big stink. And of course it’s cool if your lawyers are taking a day longer for legal approvals. But in the end, we promised to make something for you by a certain date, and we need to hit that date, so we will, eventually, have to cut you off. Remember that when we say it’s gonna be late, we mean it. And our T&Cs cover us if you’re delayed on your end. We know sometimes there are some ridiculously tight timelines. And we’ve worked out for you, a means to meet that deadline. But it’s a two way street, and we can only meet if our partner – you – can keep things hummin’ along. Just something to bear in mind.

Creative Appropriation

Here’s another one of those instances where we’re gonna ape the AICP. The AICP’s website has this to say about a concept called “creative appropriation:”
Appropriation of Creative Contribution: During the course of the bidding process, production companies through their producers and directors often provide approaches to a project that materially change its overall look or direction. Production companies may also provide new elements, designs or characters for the project. The exploitation of such creative contributions when the job is not awarded to that production company is the misappropriation of the property of that production company for which appropriate compensation is required.[2]
This sounds pretty good to us. We’re gonna do that. Word.
So! With all of that, if everything worked out just fine, we should now have a signed SOW, and we can all get down to WORK. YES.

1 There are always surprises. Ha.
fn2. “AICP Doing Business Guidelines”: http://www.aicp.com/doingbusiness/guidelines.html