The 3 Things You Need to Know About Time Management and Story-Branding

Sep 30

(Listen To Our Podcast On This Topic Here)

I've been a designer for over 20 years. And in my early days I worked at a sign company, doing design and print work. We had a client who had this beautiful show truck. He would take it to shows and let people gander at this amazing bright green thing that it was. Well, he wanted a trailer to match. And so what we did was created graphics to match the truck. He wanted this done in a week. He wanted a show quality trailer in a week and a half!

So, we said, “that's impossible.” We told him, “you'd be better off waiting until another show.” Oh and he was also having the truck painted. And putting stickers on a newly painted truck is not a good idea. It's going to look terrible because we don't have the time to actually do it the right way. And then he was going to clear-coat over them. And what happens when you put decals over paint is it outgases, you get all those little bubbles in the decal graphics. Guess what happened? That all happened! And it was a terrible experience for the client and for us. And he would've been better off just doing the blank trailer at the show and waiting until the next show. In the end, we had to rip off all the graphics and redo it.

The Three Principles

Last fall, I did a podcast on the principles of time. Now time kind of plays into the quality of work that we talked about in our last blog and podcast. If you missed it, you might want to go check it out HERE. But how does time affect story marketing and branding? I'm glad you asked...

Customers want three things...fast, cheap, and quality. They want a good quality product or service...they want it done right...and they want it done inexpensively. The problem is you can't have all three. You can only choose two of those three things.

That's hard in our society today because we are so driven to want something and we want it right now. We have the McDonald's mentality - a drive-thru experience that gets us fast results.

Here Are the 3 Things About Time Management That Will Help You in Story-Branding.

1) Time is Important

If you don’t have enough time, can't you just rush it? Well, in order to be creative, you need the time to process and think about the project. You can't rush it. If you rush something, things fall apart and you give a terrible product and service. As creatives, you have to be...well... creative. And the creative process takes time.

When I have a project to do, even if I am at home not working on it, I'm still thinking about it. I'm thinking through how I am going to translate what the company wants into a design. How is that going to affect their brand? And if you don't have enough time, then it feels rushed. It's going to look rushed and it's going to be a poor quality product.

Rushing may even affect your quality standards and even your relationship with the client. We usually try to tell people, “if you're going to rush this your outcome is not going to be as good as if we can take our time with it.”

2) Time Affects Employee and Customer Satisfaction

So how do you deal with a client who wants something fast? Counter them with, “can we do this in two weeks instead of your one week?” Normally the client really doesn't need it that quick. Now if they're just not patient and really stubborn just say, “well, I'm sorry, I'm not the right designer for you.” And I can usually give them some other people that might help them out.

3) Time Affects Quality

If you are rushing things through your, your quality of product or service is always jeopardized. It's all connected. People will perceive you as a company that does poor quality. They're going to go to the next person. And the things others see, like your branding, social media, anything that's printed that you do, that's going to reflect on how they perceive your company.

Potential customers will also see reviews. Customers won’t tell others in reviews about how they pressured you to rush your work and were difficult to work with. They will only criticize you on your work. And others will be able to see that. So make sure what others say about your organization is good by sticking to your own quality standards and keeping to your own time management standards on projects. Don’t rush something because a customer is impatient. Stay your course.

And that is story branding. It's what others say about your organization. Not what you say it is.