When working closely with clients and partners, it's important to build trust, and to learn to distinguish between problems and suggested solutions, says Henry Morland of John Henry Productions.

Specifying the project:

More often than not, when a customer comes to John Henry with a project, our first job is to strip back what they are asking for to bare objectives, and then make suggestions as to what can be done digitally to best achieve these.

For instance, we were approached some time ago by Ketchum (one of our strategic partners), who had been conducting their annual trends research for Vidal Sassoon. On this particular occasion, they had shot a piece of video to illustrate their research, and came to us to see if we could put the report, including the video, on CD-ROM.

We discussed the target audiences (internal marketing people and the press), and the resources available (photos illustrating the identified trends) and suggested that in addition to the video they include a small library of usable images to illustrate the points they were making.

We duly created the CD, and the next time the research came around, the video had been dropped and our image library had become the centrepiece of the research document.

Differentiating between problems and solutions

Issues like the one above often come up in the course of a build project. From a project management point of view, it is important to be very careful to distinguish between problems and solutions. In terms of identifying problems, the client is indeed always right, but what very often happens is that what they report to the project manager is their suggested solution. The project manager's role is to work back from this suggested solution to the underlying problem, then bring John Henry's technical expertise in to find an appropriate solution.

Only today, Como Hotels and Resorts came to us suggesting that they email a pdf to a selection of their customer base. The project manager identified that the actual problem was that a number of people on their list could not view html emails. Having identified this, it then becomes easy to suggest a more appropriate solution, namely that we should send out text emails containing a link to a page on the website. This avoids any issues with attachments and acrobat plug-in’s and has the additional benefit that the page can be content managed through the existing system.

Clear areas of responsibility and lines of communication

In order to be in a position to make suggestions, there must be trust in the relationship. We often work in partnership with advertising, PR or contract publishing agencies, yet wherever possible, we deal directly with the end client on a day-to-day basis. As trust builds, and our partners realise that John Henry's management make them look good, this becomes increasingly easy to do.

From a project management perspective this is vastly preferable to being kept behind a Chinese wall. If  we are to be in a position to make sensible suggestions and clear distinctions between problems and solutions, then we must get the information from the ‘horse's mouth’. It is our responsibility to come up with appropriate solutions in response to problems and opportunities identified by our clients. To get the maximum value out of us, our clients and partners need to let us do what we do best: create appropriate digital solutions to real commercial challenges.

Profile

Henry Morland, Managing Director John Henry Productions Ltd (http://www.johnhenry.net)

After obtaining a degree in philosophy, politics and economics from Oxford University, Henry headed to the far east to work for Jardine Matheson, and wound up in charge of marketing over 100 fast food joints in the state of Hawaii. He returned to England to study at the Byam Shaw School of Art, before taking on a number of jobs ranging from financial research to building film sets.

John Henry is a new media consultancy that encompasses design and the development of new applications for multimedia and internet technologies. The company works both independently with clients, and through strategic partnerships with top quality communications agencies. Henry Morland is responsible for quality of creative output, briefing designers, online brand consultancy, creative constraints of different media, expanding creative options and development of new concepts. Their client lists includes Tesco, Evening Standard, Norwich Union, NatWest, BT Conferencing, Carlton Television, BBC Online, British Horseracing Board.

© 2001 John Henry Productions Ltd

8 Lonsdale Road, London NW6 6RD. Tel: 020 7372 7708 Web: www.johnhenry.net