Your Site VS Your Book.

Your substitute teacher today is Mr. Carroll.

Your substitute teacher today is Mr. Carroll.

Good morning, scribblers. Your substitute teacher this morning is Mr. Carroll again. You remember Mr. Carroll, a CD at Austin’s GSD&M. He’s here to teach us how to get jobs so please give him your full attention.

YOUR SITE VS YOUR BOOK

Yes, there is a difference between the two.

1.) Your site is the thing I look at on my mobile phone when I’m in a meeting, pretending to listen to account people. Your site gives me a sense of who you are as a human being, your creative sensibilities and, of course, your best work.

2.) Your book, on the other hand, is the thing you talk through when we meet in person. Unlike your site, in your book you can show, say, the detailed version of your integrated-digital-social-mobile-experiential-AR-and location-aware campaign for pet food.

I’m not suggesting you have different work on your site and your book; only that you package and display the work differently to best capture the attention of the most ADD people on the planet: CD’s like me. (True story: I checked my email five times before finishing writing that last sentence.)

Let’s start with the site and some tactical considerations.

3.) Make sure your site is responsive. (If you don’t know what responsive is, find out.) Make sure your site works beautifully on mobile. It may be frustrating to hear, but nearly everything I do is on my mobile – including looking at your work. And I’m not alone. My phone is the one thing I always have on me. So if you email me a link to your site, there’s a good chance I’m checking it out on my iPhone. Same thing if our recruiter has a site she wants me to see; I’ll get it via mobile. Now … if I really like your site, I might go to my laptop and check it out in more detail, but I can tell from the mobile site alone if you’re the type of person I wanna call in for an interview. (Also, having a site that’s built for mobile says you get it.)

4.) I always go to the “About Me” section before I check out the work and I’m not alone. Most creative directors do this and nearly all recruiters do. Why? It gives me quick look at who you are, your skill level, and your work experience. It gives me a frame of reference for how to judge your work. This section is almost as important as your work so don’t blow it off or half-ass it. This section (and really your entire site) is your opportunity to make me like you; really like you. If you purport to be a writer and you can’t entertain me or make me like you with words, well, that’s a problem. Give me an insight about you, how you think and how you look at the world. We don’t hire books; we hire the people behind the books. You are the one I have to travel with. You are the one I have to put in front of a client. You are the one I’ll be spending weekends and late nights with. It helps if you’re a likable, interesting person.

One of the best “About Me’s” I’ve seen was for a junior art director who titled his bio section, Ten Things About Me That Might Be the Truth or a Lie. When you rolled over each one of the ten things, it would tell you, true or false. Each of the statements was hilarious and it became a game to determine what was true about this person and the more you learned, the more you wanted to learn. (Dude now works at Wieden.)

5.) Treat your site like a campaign in your book. Every aspect of your site is an opportunity to show off and to impress me — from the design, to how you talk about your work. If it’s a standard Cargo Collective template, part of me calls you out for being lazy. With all the resources out there, you couldn’t customize a site to best reflect you and best showcase your work? You’re trying to land a job that requires you to help brands stand out, breakthrough and connect with their audience. Show me you can do that for yourself.

4) The first campaign in your book needs to floor me. You can’t stumble out of the gate because you’ll never get anyone to check out the second campaign. Put your simplest, most compelling idea first. Simplicity and power is key.

Too often, here’s what I see: the first piece of work on the site is an integrated campaign executed in five different media with a paragraph explanation for each execution. Half-way through, I still can’t figure out the idea and so in an attempt to show me how big their idea is, I’ve lost the idea.

You should be able to explain the problem in a sentence, the strategy in a sentence and the idea in a sentence. Follow that with an image or two (or one-minute video) taking me through the idea. If the sentence describing your idea doesn’t sound interesting, chances are, it isn’t. That’s a problem.

Next, put your second strongest campaign. I know convention is best campaign first, second best campaign last. “Start strong, finish strong,” and all that. I disagree. This is a boxing match. Try to knock me out with each punch; don’t save your best for last. If I love your first three campaigns, you are moving on to an interview.

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I hate it when I have to learn things from people way younger than me. But Ryan’s right about how the “start strong, end strong” thing is bullshit. I used to think so, and so I’m making that correction in the next edition of Whipple. Fact is, I’ll be including a lot of Ryan’s material. Dude’s smart.

 

 

 

 

 

 

2 Comments

  1. Does anyone still look at a book? Other than at a cattle call?
    I’ve always said your portfolio is just a campaign selling you- treat it like one.
    And never include anything that isn’t bona fide awesome, there ain’t nothing worth showing if it isn’t the best you can ever do- and the kind of work you aspire to.
    Never, ever, use coroflot, cargo collective, deviant art or any other template site, nor weebly, wix, square-
    You are better than that.
    And never use FLASH- unless you want to get an instant fail- but, in 2015 if you still don’t know why, you shouldn’t even be in this biz…

    Reply
  2. Ryan makes great points, except the templated site issue. If you look out there, a vast majority of extremely talented, successful, high-up creatives with sick portfolios use templated sites, mostly Cargo. Look at any creative from Weiden or Barton F Graf or Goodby. Chances are they use one. Ryan’s own partner uses Carbonmade and it doesn’t matter because the work is so great. I actually think templates are good because it puts everyone on a level playing field and you can just look at the work for the work and not be distracted by someone who made a fancy site but their thoughts just aren’t up to par. I can really be smoke and mirrors sometimes.

    Reply

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Luke Sullivan

Author, speaker, and ad veteran available to recharge, reinvigorate, and refocus marketing, advertising, and branding firms.

I give a hugely energetic series of presentations on innovation, creativity, branding, and marketing. I spent 32 years in the trenches of advertising (at agencies like Martin, GSD&M, and Fallon) and I’ve put everything I learned into my book, Hey Whipple, Squeeze This. But for me nothing beats taking the message out and speaking to living breathing audiences at clients, agencies, and conferences. You can book me on the button below.

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