Putting Your Eggs In One Basket

Remember how I was recently pontificating about the need to not have too much of your revenue tied up in one client? Well there's a dust-up going on right now, involving a company who was doing a large percentage of their work with Walmart. Check out the story here.

Lots of ethical dilemmas here. Technically, the production company owns the footage they shot for Walmart, and can do whatever they want with it, including selling it to the highest bidder. But I can't imagine anyone ever hiring them again, not without a specific ownership clause in their contract. But who know...maybe the owners of the production company are looking for multimillion dollar buyout from Walmart, and then planning on shutting down and heading to an island somewhere and living the good life.

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Who Wouldn't You Work With?

Back before we started Pixel Workshop (and before she was my wife), Ilana worked as an assistant editor for several different post production houses in Washington DC. One of them had an ongoing professional relationship with one of the largest tobacco companies in the world, doing training and P.R. video for them. They were a huge and important client for the post house, responsible for a large percentage of their annual revenue. (And remember what we said about having too many eggs in one basket!)

The funny thing about the relationship was that this client specified that they be allowed to smoke in the edit suites. (This was in the early 90s, before there were so many workplace smoking restrictions.) And they let it be known in no uncertain terms that if they weren't allowed to smoke in the edit suites, they would take their business elsewhere. So the post house went along with it. Again, times were different , even fifteen years ago, but still - quite a bargain to make. The deal drove the engineers nuts, because they were constantly having to tear down the equipment in the "smoking" suite to remove the layers of gunk left by the smoke. Other clients refused to use the room because it reeked of stale smoke.

Worth it? Well, for the post house, clearly it was. They went on like this for years, hiring editors who smoked, so they wouldn't mind the situation.

I can tell you that we never would have taken them on as a client, and certainly would never have allowed smoking anywhere inside the facility. Still, in our company history, we've done a handful of jobs for clients we didn't exactly agree with. We've done political ads (always get paid in advance with politicals...always...), we did an ad for an international "Day of Peace" which, unbeknownst to us, was actually a mass wedding ceremony for the Moonies. Oops.

And one time I did an online finishing job for a gent who, when booking the edit suite, said to me, "You don't have a problem with nudity, do you?" (For the record, that's like asking Popeye if he has a problem with spinach...) Turns out his indie film was a low-budget lesbian vampire slasher flick. And I had no problem with that.

But seriously, it's a good mental exercise. Who, if they knocked on your door, clutching fistfuls of money, would you refuse to work for? Politicals that were against your sensibilities? Porn? Religious content? Is it even our job to pass judgment on the products our clients are producing, as long as they're legal?

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Can We Meet?

Years ago we were working on a medium-sized project for a government client, a video production with a good mix of motion graphics, 3D animation and live video. Interesting project, fun subject matter. We were all pretty excited about the job. Not a huge budget, but certainly worth our time. Or so we thought...

A couple of weeks in and we realized that the project coordinator on the government side was a "meeting guy." I'm fairly sure he came to work on Monday mornings, looked at his empty calendar and said to himself, "Hmmm...how can I fill my schedule, so I'll appear to be busy? I know, I'll call Pixel Workshop and set up a meeting!"

The problem was, he would call a meeting, come to our shop, and proceed to spend a couple of hours reviewing things that had long-ago been settled. He was killing time. And costing us money. Even worse was when he would ask us to come to his office, which, after fighting traffic and finding parking, could easily chew up half a day.

Obviously, some meetings are important, and need to happen as a regular part of doing business. But how do you protect yourself from the time-suckers? It's an important part of client management.

Your first line of defense is, of course, to bill for meeting time. When we prepare budgets this goes under "Producer Fees," which is a nice generic container for all of the things that take up time on a project that aren't directly line-item billable. Almost every project gets at least a couple of days of Producer Fees budgeted, and trust me, once you start tracking them (and you do want to track them!) you'll be amazed how quickly they get used. For our meeting-addicted client, simply remind them that they are working against a budget with every meeting. Be polite, but firm.

"Sure, I'd be glad to meet with you, but keep in mind that our budget is limited and we don't want to burn through our time together too quickly. How about we spend a few minutes together, now, on the phone, and that way we'll be sure to have time left toward the end of the project?"

If they insist on meeting, be sure to let them know that budget adjustments will need to be made later on if they run out of hours. This isn't always going to work, of course, and there are times when you just have to bite the bullet and hang in there, knowing that next time you will either budget way more time for meetings, or simply not bid on their next project.

The important thing is for you to set the tone with your clients that your time is valuable, and they are paying for it. You will give them tremendous value for their money, you will go to the ends of the earth to give them what they want, but you simply will not do it for free. Even if you're a one-person shot (especially!) you need to set the ground rules from the get-go. If you don't, you're setting yourself up to get taken advantage of.

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