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The Logo Saga- Adventures in Crowd Sourcing

Chicago Executive Coaching Logo

What Was I Thinking?

I’ve worked to develop the Chicago Executive Coaching brand since 2006.  Kinda.
Plain Hat
What’s Missing?
I say “kinda” because I was really giving Lip Service to the effort.  I once successfully led the re-building of a consumer product company in the late 90’s.  I regularly collaborated with graphic designers on product packaging and catalogs for the product line.  Some of our packaging received design award nominations.  Our quality designs helped us to gain valuable shelf space at major retail chains.Despite that knowledge and expertise, 2017 marked Chicago Executive Coaching’s 11th year without a legit logo.  I was aware of the missing piece.  I habitually ignored the issue.  My professional services brand was like the barefooted shoemaker’s son. Logo design was one of those projects that I’d take care of when I got around to it.  How many underwhelmed prospective clients silently moved on? I’ll never know. I certainly knew that my branding was missing some important pieces.  But I swept the issue under the rug.

Round TUITThe Round TUIT, Wake-Up Call Moment

A few months ago, I had a marketing conversation with a young professional who works for a large professional services firm.  I received some really candid criticism of my marketing materials.  He was highly critical of my self-designed business cards and the poor mobile rendering of my website.  Full disclosure; the young critic was my son, Kevin.The criticism was embarrassing as I immediately knew he was on target.  I knew that you never get a second chance to make a first impression.  And when it comes to graphic design, a little bit of knowledge can be a dangerous thing.  Simply having PhotoShop skills doesn’t make a person a proficient graphic designer. What was I thinking?  I got my Round TUIT. Getting a professionally designed logo moved to the top of the task list.

New School Solution for an Old School Marketer

I’d heard about Crowd Sourcing as a approach to securing graphic designs.  It’s an internet service that facilitates competition with designers from around the world. Designers submit designs on speculation.  If you pick the winner, that designer wins the contest and gets paid. The losers receive nothing.I knew about a local company, CrowdSpring.  Another, 99Designs, was also recommended.   I chose the later.  They had better reviews and a nice system for submitting my project parameters. I utilized their system for polling acquaintances to gain outside opinions via virtual focus group.  The process progressed to the point where I chose the final six designers. Then came the first speed bump.  One of my favorites of the six designer finalists, was abruptly disqualified/kicked off the system for a terms of service violation. Her design entries disappeared.  That annoyance was quickly remedied with a phone call. The offender was reinstated for my project.I then did more polling which convinced me to put the reinstated designer into 2nd place.  I had a winner.  I thought.  But not so fast.  The winner refused to move forward because the bitter, 2nd place finisher logged a complaint about use of generic content.  It was like the virtual pot calling the virtual kettle “black”.  That delay was also remedied within a day by another phone call.  To the credit of 99Designs, they have competent customer service folks who answer the phone during US business hours.

The Winner

I finished the procurement process made an executive decision.  The shoemaker’s son has a new pair of shoes.  Thanks to all who participated in the polling and feedback process.CEC logo200hHere are some takeaways from The Logo Saga that you might find useful or amusing. Ideally both.

Back To School: Old or New?

Where will I go for my next graphic design project?  Crowd Sourcing was a worthy experiment.   My negatives:
  • There was a slight language barrier with most of the designers, who I believe were from places like Malaysia.
  • There was a lot of copying of design concepts submitted by competing designers once they could see positive ratings.  Having paid for an upgraded talent pool, that was discouraging. The 400+ entries were a lot of mediocre stuff thrown up against the wall to see what would stick.
 Crowd Sourcing failed to deliver bang for the buck and the levels of quality and creativity that I imagined. My issue with the the system is:
 How many top-notch graphic designers are willing to create quality work without a promise to be paid?
I believe the answer today is “not enough”.  It’s true that winning contests can lead to new customers who buy more.  But, how loyal are those customers?  For some designers, creating speculative designs is a more productive activity than waiting for the phone to ring.  My selection created a “win” for a nameless, faceless designer with a screen name on the other side of the world.I’m not disappointed with my result. Just not yet sold on the approach. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.Overall, I missed the collaboration and synergy of working with a trusted, talented designer.  When it’s time to go back to the drawing board, I’ll chose to collaborate with local talent.  Once again, less is more.

Lessons Learned

  1. We have a lot of tools to secure services virtually.  But just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.
  2. When it comes to procrastinating on potentially important marketing decisions, do as I advise. Not as I’ve done.  Solicit feedback, evaluate the business validity and execute.
  3. Sometimes we tend to filter advise and criticism we get from significantly younger people. And when you once changed his dirty diapers, the filtering is more intense.  But at some point, you can actually get valuable (tough love?) business advise from your children.  Especially once they’ve earned advanced degrees and corporate experience.  In the words of Crosby, Stills & Nash; “Teach your children well”. It can pay dividends if you’re willing and humble enough to listen when they eventually teach their parents well.

Previous Adventures in Self-Marketing

WordPress Plugin Recommendation

My (do-it-yourself) web design improvement efforts have led to discovering a new WordPress Page Building Plugin called Elementor.  I find it much easier to use than the popular Visual Composer or Divi.  And Elementor works inside of most existing WordPress themes. The basic version is free with enough features that I don’t yet want to upgraded Pro Version.

One Response

  1. Great post. I’ll add my thoughts on your takeaway. Not only would collaborating with a local talent likely give you more satisfactory/higher quality results, it will give you a trusted resource and relationship to use on future projects. Glad you took that advice 😉

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