You May Be Right… They May Be Crazy…

(Ya gotta sing it like Billy Joel)

So… this time you actually DO know what’s perfect for the client and their market. You have that great product or collection, it hits all the right notes, has their name written all over it. You did everything right but the deal still fizzled due to circumstances WAY out of your control. It happens, more often than you think, and there is little or nothing to be done about it.

Here are a few snafus that have tripped us up recently:

In a big company division rivalries are killing some of our products as they fight over which categories belong to which division;

We design a line for a key retail account, we like it, the art director likes it, management thinks it’s too smart for the market and suggests that we need to dumb it down;

We have a unique category-killer concept, great feedback, the VP of Product Dev is championing it in the company but then the top management leaves and everything goes on extended hold;

An experienced art director is hired at one of our better clients and comes in with her own set of favorite artists, and now submission requests (and our submissions) disappear into a black hole;

We are doing some work with an old client, get some items into a big catalog supplier for testing and he suddenly closes the company down.

Happily we have a lot more going on at any given time, but this is where the danger lies for the “one idea” person – even when your concept may work on its own merits a roadblock can boomerang out of nowhere and then – poof ! the deal's gone. Now what do you do? Hitch up your dungarees and trot out the next idea, the next client, the next…

Don't have the next one? Might want to work on that before you need it!