Creative Agency Secrets

I got rather excited that the canny Daily Telegraph had signed up Sir Martin to blog for them from Davos. I thought we would get some real deep insight to get our teeth into…

Best so far is

My random poll indicates about two thirds concerned about the inadequacy of FED and US government action. One third agreeing. To be fair they’re probably damned if they do and damned if they don’t.

Nice…. Ok. But then I go to Brand Republic to check out setting up a blog (Thanks Andrew Japp) and frontpage headline is

Sorrell and Levy trade barbs over Google partnership.

And so why isn’t there anything on his blog about his point of view setting his side of the record straight…. that I would gladly get on an RSS feed for regular updates. What is currently there is frankly rather stale.

Here’s what they actually said

 ”What Publicis is doing represents a little bit of a concern that they didn’t get the technology right. I think Maurice is acknowledging a bit of an Achilles heel when it comes to technology.”

Levy hit back at his rival: “I’m sorry Martin said that — it’s really cheap, but it’s probably the result of his lack of understanding of technology.

“He’s a financier, I’m an engineer, and you can see the difference. I’m pleased with what we have done, and I’m sorry that my dear friend has not understood it.”

My family is partly Dutch and today I have been reading the family society magazine, MishpaGazette.
A fascinating article about Struikelstennen (stumble stones). These are the product of a German artist Gunter Demnig who make brass plated cobblestones and lays them in the road or pavement outside the houses from which Jews were deported in WW2. The stones are engraved with the Date of birth, date of deportation and place where the person was murdered.
Over 10,000 stumble stones have been laid in Austria, Italy and Hungary as well as the first Dutch ones in Borne: laid on 29.11.07. These include Jews who worked for our family factory, Spanjaard Textiles.
What a great reminder linking world history with local village homes! Sent using BlackBerry® from Orange

[update] Thanks to Ben Laurie for finding me the Wikipedia entry for  Stolpersteine (German word for stumble stones), which I edited to include Netherlands section.

I get a daily news digest from the Guardian. Attached was an advert from Pearlfinders the agency new business lead tracking service.

I met the owners a while ago and although I have never used the service, it may be worth investigating if you find it hard to get leads or if you are trying to get into a new area of business.

Follow the link http://www.pearlfindersnews.com/landing/uk1.html Sent using BlackBerry® from Orange

Talking to Gill Hunt last week she said something that really resonated with me. “if I find myself doing something for the third time, I find a way to automate it.”

What a fabulous resolution for business this year. I am telling all my clients. Let me know WHAT you automate. Sent using BlackBerry® from Orange

The long-running BBC radio 4 programme was just playing.

One round is new definitions from the “Uxbridge” English Dictionary.

Ones I enjoyed with a sporting theme from today’s show

Gondolier, something you can catch from a boatman.

Picaninny, the process for selecting an England coach. Sent using BlackBerry® from Orange

At one of my former companies we had an ongoing competition to find businesses named after people who shared names with our colleagues.

I just found out what Gabrielle Shaw of Gabrielle Shaw Communications does in her spare time…. she writes bodice rippers….

I had a meeting today with a charity that shares offices with SATRA who test products for health and safety.  On the wall of the meeting room was a big montage of products being tested by mechanical devices to simulate people sitting in chairs, lying on beds, setting fire to furniture…. and this little image….


It’s rather sadder than seeing animal experiments in laboratories…  And how many times did the mechanical arm pull little teddy before his arm fell off?  sniff.

A prosaic start to the new site. But timesheets have been bugging me for a while now.

This is a subject that many creative firms try to avoid because, frankly, timesheets are boring.

But, timesheets are not unproductive.

The main purpose they fulfil is a record of working hours for different activities.

This record is a discipline that few people enjoy.

Here are some hints and tips to make it easiser for yu and your staff to complete timesheets:

• Do it daily - make it the last thing you do before going home and leaving the office
• Make it easy to record minutes by decimalising them so each 6 minutes = 0.1 of an hour. And so 0.4 hours is 4 x 6 minutes = 24 minutes.
• Set up the timesheet so the layout is easy to read and uses tick boxes where possible. Use a spreadsheet so it automatically adds up columns and points out shortfalls in red.

If you are still aving difficulties getting everyone to fill in timesheets

• Don’t pay expenses claims / salaries until timesheets are submitted
• Appoint a “Time Sheet Bulldog”. A person who is tasked with collecting them weekly
• Lead by example. Senior team have to do it first
• Be very clear with new hires that this is expected as normal behaviour

So having talked about how to get timesheets, what can you learn from timesheets?

1. Job Profitability
2. Individual Profitability
3. Time spent on non fee earning work

These are the main things timesheets are used for. If you don’t do these analyses as a matter of course, I recommend taking some jobs that you have done recently and running the numbers. Use one job for your largest client and one for a smaller one. What time did you speand? What did the client pay - less expenses? What was your profit? In £ and as % of the fee? Are those profit figures normal or abnormal? If they are low, what will or can yo do….. if they are high what can you do?

Advanced Timesheets - other things to do

• Set up spreadsheet so once completed and submitted they cannot be altered except by an administrator.

Just setting up my mobile posting. Irritatingly BlackBerry phones don’t synch with the SixApart software and so you can’t use the mobile settings. I am emailing this post as a test.

Insult  Incompetence added.

From the previous post… just got an email from Brand Republic using one of the contact addresses from its website

The following recipient(s) could not be reached:

      ’brand.republic@haymarket.com.’ on 24/10/2007 09:43
            501 <brand.republic@haymarket.com.>: domain missing or malformed

What to do next.
I am not going to campaign this - it makes me weary.  Haymarket is lousy at marketing itself. 

Proof.

For yourselves - just check the contact addresses work on your website.