#big spaceship

[realspaceships]

Crewed Mars Mission on Philip Bono's Mars Glider

[adventuresinclientservice]

Message in a bottle.

Some readers like The Art of Client Service, some do not, but regardless of what people think, few take the time to tell me.  Hearing from someone is seemingly as unlikely as discovering a beached message in a bottle.

One of those messengers is Ava Pravlik; she was kind enough to reach out to me a message on LinkedIn.  Ava currently is serving as an account management intern at the agency Big Spaceship.  I thought about summarizing her note, but realized it is far preferable for her to speak for herself, so what follows is her note to me, followed by my reply. 

“Hi, Robert! I hope you are doing well. I wanted to share with you a few ways in which The Art of Client Service has helped me in my first couple of weeks as an account management intern at the agency Big Spaceship.

1. "’Improve the work, don't approve it.’" I am currently helping my mentor draft feedback for our creative team on an account that often frustrates our creatives, as the client frequently changes their mind about what they like and what they don't. Your guidance has shaped the way I structure my feedback; I make sure that I find something positive to say about each creative execution before bringing up concerns.

2. “Your chapters on creating briefs and budgets were very informative and have led me to ask some great questions at work. Those chapters inspired me to meet individually with different account and strategy people at my agency in an attempt to understand each individual's approach to these tasks. I believe that this curiosity, along with a baseline understanding of the processes, will help me stand out as an intern.

3. “Overall, reading this book was one of the best things I could have done to prepare for the start of my career in account management. The amount of knowledge and perspective I acquired through reading has given me a noticeable leg up; while I certainly won't claim to know even a fraction of what I hope to one day know about advertising, I find the whirlwind of agency culture to be much more digestible with the foundational knowledge this book provided me.

“A few more lessons from the book that I keep at the forefront of my mind:

“There are parts of humanity that data can't capture. Know when to look it up and know when to make it up.

“If we don't hang together, we will all hang separately.

“The simplest explanation is usually the correct one.

“All that is to say - thank you for your wisdom! 😁

“Best,

Ava”

My reply:

“Many thanks for sharing this Ava!  I'm both flattered and gratified you found The Art of Client Service helpful. “When people ask me why I wrote the book, I reply by saying I didn't do it for the money, or for acclaim, but rather for you and others who I want to help as best I can.

“BTW, my publisher John Wiley & Sons will issue a  substantially revised fourth edition of the book on November 25; if you're willing to share a street address -- I could use Big Spaceship's if this works -- I will mail you a signed copy of the new book, with compliments.

“Best, “Robert “P.S.  How are things going at Big Spaceship?”

There is nothing more fulfilling than knowing what you’ve written is helpful; thank you again, Ava, for taking the time to reach out.

Ava is just starting out, so the book likely provided guidance as she unlocks the  mysteries of stellar client service tradecraft.  I also know that more veteran client service people will benefit from the book, if for no other reason than to serve as confirmation of what they already know. 

As practically informative as The Art of Client Service is, it is by no means a substitute for hands-on training – nothing replicates the experience of having an expert on hand to address client service issues in real time -- but with most agencies no longer training their people, the book serves as a low-cost, readily accessible alternative.

[findstoday]

20 Ways to Become A Better Strategist – Doug Kleeman

There are plenty of articles swirling around the web offering very practical processes, frameworks or new perspectives aimed at building the future of brand strategy and account planning.

This is not one of them.

See, planners love to talk process. Rarely do we discuss practice.

I’m talking about those small, simple, surprisingly enriching habits we can do to help us operate better as creative people. Routines we can return to and repeat, over time, in order to compound our creativity. Interests and skills that can prevent us from devolving into lifeless robots.

More on Medium

[shingo2000]

StarWars.com | Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Star Wars Rebels & Games

Visit the official site for Star Wars, featuring the latest on Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Star Wars Rebels, with daily news, games, and videos.

[webbys]

WHOA. Big Spaceship is taking over our Twitter account today.

Follow and join in on the weirdness: http://wbby.co/twitter

[webbys]

Big Spaceship channels Brent Rambo & more for their #20thWebbys poster. Read about it here: wbby.co/BSCantStop 

[salimmohamed]

The agency’s role is not to reflect the structures of their clients. Clients are stuck in their silos because those companies tend to be very large and their internal organizations have been established for a very long time. An agency that’s very siloed is working against the needs of the clients by reflecting their structure. The more that people are thinking horizontally or in a more concentric way rather than in a very vertical, siloed way, the more successful they’ll be in really understanding a digital world. As soon as you have a creative department, you say explicitly and implicitly that there are some people who have ideas and are there to be creative and some people who are not. Whether you say you accept ideas from everywhere [or not], you have to back that up and walk the walk within your company and how you structure it. We’ve never had a department or called anybody creatives, and we generally solicit ideas from analysts and account people, and not just solicit from them, but it’s part of their obligation. I’ve said a million times that creativity is an obligation, not a vocation. It’s a simple thing, but it’s actually not commonly practiced. Advertising is undergoing a transition right now where it’s harder and harder to break through with a novel piece of interactivity. It’s very hard to surprise someone [with display advertising] when they know where you’re going to be. But that’s a great bar to set, and I’m sure that we’ll see some great display this year. Every time a new bar is set, the industry comes and exceeds it. It’s very easy to award work that speaks with a very loud voice, that’s got a great stunt attached to it or is big and shiny and polished in some way. But a lot of work that’s really genuinely great is quiet, simplified to the point of producing no friction in an experience whatsoever. So how do you reward the best user experience that feels seamless, almost transparent, and just gets out of the way?

Words of wisdom from Big Spaceship’s Michael Lebowitz

[chrislebron-adman-blog]

Who Am I?

I'm no secret agent that's for sure, but, I often wish I had that movie star quality, debonair, high fashion in my closet. Whether its Archer's finely tailored suits or James Bond's to die for tuxedos and cars I love that clean 00-awesome style. It is probably why I enjoy working with lifestyle brands.

My name is Chris but by virtue of being raised in New York City and playing sports all my life my friends and acquaintances call me LeBron. In fact a lot of them celebrated my name publicly when a certain basketball player came into the lime light. I am a Nuyorican from Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan that grew up with one of the craziest families and diverse up bringing one could possibly ask for in America, think "The Birdcage" only bigger.

My passion for advertising and marketing did not come to me one day contemplating life, while lying down in the quad on a sunny afternoon in college, but from my childhood. I grew up in the shadows of Time Square in the 80's, before the days when giant 4K fixtures were mounted onto the sides of sky-scrappers. Billboards were static, or if you were lucky to have a budget like Coca-Cola, Kodak, Cannon, and Fuji animated with bright neon, when steam coming out of a giant cup of coffee mounted 30 stories high was ground breaking content. My father, ever the resourceful man, collected Warhol prints during his 20's and my access to that and MoMA filled my mind with wonder.

When it comes to content strategy it is that unique diversity which allows me to build out of the box concepts, and see the early utility in new technology for my clients' campaigns. I love playing with new tech, new mediums of media, and examining the value of the tried and true standards of our industry.

As an account manager my ability to build, and maintain relationships with clients/strategic partners is attributed to my multi-cultural family and multi-lingual friends. Being raised in a Spanish speaking household has its perks when catering to the needs of clients all over the country and Latin America.

Stay tuned for most posts on here high lighting my methods, fandom off new tech, and changes in industry strategies that are really avant-garde.