Chris Blair
Forum Replies Created
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As a facility owner and 25 year veteran of production, their offer sounds a little suspect to me, especially if they’re a “young company” as you mention.
We use freelancers and contract folks extensively, with a couple working for us probably on average about 20 hours per week. We just pay them their freelance rates, which if you break them down hourly or daily seem high…but when you figure in the cost of hiring a full-time employee and all the related tax costs, it’s WAY cheaper for us to use the freelancers on an as needed basis.
However, if you’re thinking of leaving your full-time job, I’d recommend you have several other solid prospects for freelancing. If you took this gig, and 6 months down the road, this “young company” imploded. You’d be screwed.
On the other hand, if they’re a solid company and their “retainer” offer is decent, it might be a “jumping” off point into freelancing so to speak. As Emre pointed out, his deal was excellent. But then again, he was working at the top of the business. So I’d proceed with caution and as others have noted, make sure their offer will cover your basic costs and provide at least enough income to survive. I’d also look hard at the company itself. Ask around town about them. Find out what kind of people they are. Ask if they pay on time (very important). Make sure you go into the position well-informed.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
I agree the question is pretty broad and vague. But I have to disagree that human relations insn’t important in marketing. It doesn’t do much good to create “emotion” about a product or service or sell the idea of a unique “customer experience” if the customers experience with the product or service doesn’t live up to the hype.
We tell our clients all the time, our advertising and marketing can persuade people to call, come-in, or go to your website, but by itself it cannot get them to buy.
Virtually every customer will eventually interact with a human being in the process of buying something. If that experience doesn’t match the expectations created by the marketing and advertising, they probably won’t buy, and if they Do happen to buy, they’re probably going to feel like the product doesn’t live up to the hype.
Even if you’re buying something online this holds true. B&H Photo is a great example. In my experience they have the most incredible online site on the planet. You order something, within 10 minutes there’s an email confirmation of your order. Within 24 hours your product usually ships. Often, a customer service person follows up to see if you were happy with your order.
But IF by chance you have a problem with an order (which is rare), you end up talking to a human. And the quality of their service is just as good at that stage as the online experience is. If it weren’t, my opinion about B&H certainly wouldn’t be so glowing. Other online sites pale in comparison. Some I’ve used don’t even post a phone number you can call for customer service. You have to email for it. Now that sucks…and I don’t use those guys anymore because of it. That’s human relations.
So within the broad terms of the original question, I think human relations are pretty darn important in successful marketing.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
I’m late to this thread, but I have to agree with Dave in that some of you were being a little harsh with your advice. He’s not selling a retail DVD. According to one of his posts, he said:
it’s a web application for a specific industry….I get sales to consulting companies… but the appeal is mostly limited to about 200,000 companies worldwide. At least a third of which are existing customers.
So his “margin” can’t be calculated simply by deducting the cost of replication/duplication, printing, packaging etc.
This isn’t a frozen pizza and the grocery store reference someone made was totally ridiculous. This is a software application that no doubt he’s spent considerable time developing. Just about everyone on this list is willing to pay $600 for Photoshop, $1000 for Final Cut, and $1500 and up for After Effects, Digital Fusion, 3DS Max, Lightwave etc.
Like those apps, his application is probably specialized. Plus, he noted that he updates it sometimes twice a month, which makes it unique to the other software listed. No doubt that’s why the companies that buy his application continue to do so.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
Sam,
Good to hear you had a better experience. I did point out in my post that:
people should definitely explore them as they have a legion of happy users
I’m curious what your budget was? Ours was 20k and under. Maybe they didn’t feel like we were worth spending time on with that kind of budget. I know we occasionally get calls from potential clients who just don’t have enough budget for the projects they want to pursue and we steer them to colleagues that might be able to do their project within their budgets.
But I know there have been some other people who’ve had similar experiences with EditShare. Perhaps they monitor these forums and have made improvements.
Another stumbling block in our dealings with them were that we primarily use VelocityQ editing systems, and they had no clients using their products with Velocity, VelocityQ or VelocityHD. I even suggested Boston area facilities that used Velocity as an option to test one of their systems, but they just weren’t interested.
Glad to hear it’s working in your setup though. I know they have a lot of Avid and Final Cut users that swear by them.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
Wow…that’s inexcusable in my book. Why would they sell you something that didn’t work with your setup?
When it comes to something as critical as your video/audio storage, making sure it actually works and that the company can provide support is critical.
It took less than 10 days to get our vStor from Apace after overnighting a check to their reseller. Then only a couple more days to schedule the installation & configuration with Apace’s tech guys. Within 14 days of ordering it, it was up and operating. We’ve only had one issue with it since. One edit suite was aborting on captures above about 10MB/sec. Within an hour or two of an email to Apace, they sent a detailed, step by step configuration change for the Jumbo frames settings in the vStor and our edit PCs (done through the PC’s web browser), that increased playback and record speeds by about 25% and solved the problem.
When we were researching systems last January, we couldn’t get anyone at 2 Degrees Frost to return emails or phone calls. So that was an indication to me that they didn’t have all their “ducks in a row.”
Hope you get it working though. But if it were me, I’d be demanding my money back and looking for another system.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
Bob,
These guys are a little different in that we have been paid almost $400,000 in the last 9 months on projects, with most of that being paid on-time. It’s only in the last 3-5 months that the payments have gotten slow. But it’s certainly no coincidence they’re struggling financially in this economy. It will all be resolved one way or the other very soon.
My hope is they pay it and we continue doing work…even though they are classic “grinders.” If they pay on-time, it’s constant work, they never budget or discuss fees, and they make SO many changes to spots, the billing can be phenomenal.
I did read the “grinders” article a while back and had to chuckle because it’s so true. Luckily, in 12 years most of our clients have been excellent. This is only the second one we’ve had like this and funny enough, they’re both VERY large, nationally known companies! Even the director of advertising was the same at these two companies, although he’s not the common link between their poor management. It’s the owner/CEO. They’re both classic egomaniacs that got lucky with a concept and still run the companies like they’re the local corner gas station. We have local retail clients that run their marketing and advertising in a more sophisticated and intelligent manner.
I’ll give you an example. We’ll spend a month shooting, editing, revising, then revising some more a series of spots for a promotion. They’ll pay a celebrity doctor to go on camera and endorse the product or service. Then, they’ll place the spot, and if after ONE day the call volume isn’t higher than the previous weekday or previous month or previous year, the owner will quite literally pull the entire campaign! No…stop laughing…I’m serious. The owner pulls all the strings and makes all the decisions.
Another example: they’ll introduce a new “revolutionary” product. In one case, it was actually a VERY good product developed by the USDA that they licensed. They did the same thing, spent a ton of money producing spots, ran them for 3 days, then dumped the campaign because call volume was down over the previous like periods. And keep in mind they spent a small fortune on packaging and inventory for this stuff.
With this particular promotion, when we asked about the product’s status (we produced spots that never aired) they told us they were discontinuing it. Then last week…they ordered up a NEW TV spot promoting this product again. We said, “I thought it was discontinued?” Their ad director said, “I thought it was too!”
So that should give you some idea of what we’re dealing with. If I wrote a book detailing the stuff that goes on, nobody would believe it. It would be like the silly workplace sitcoms on second tier cable TV networks. Except now I don’t think those sitcoms are so silly after all!
Anyway…I’ll update this thread in a week or two as things shake out.
Thanks for all the comments.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
Tim,
We’ve been on them since May to bring accounts up to date so this isn’t the first we’ve discussed this, either internally or with them.
Also..I should point out that up until about Feb. or March they paid on-time. So when bills starting getting to 60 days, (which started in April or early May), we began sending out notices and discussing it with their Dir. of Advertising and their production coordinator, who takes care of getting our bills to accounting.
Additionally, they’ve paid us approximately $400,000 for services since about Sept. last year, so this isn’t a case of a client that had us do a project and then stiffed us on it.
That said…I agree with you as well as everyone else. The “Fed-Ex” thing really made us realize we have to take immediate action. And we already have our accountant looking at various scenarios concerning write-offs. As for our attorney, we avoid getting them involved in things until it’s absolutely necessary. Heck, they charge us a 1/4 hour of billing if we call and say “hi” to them.
I just wanted to make sure what we were planning was appropriate, as well as get some ideas from others who have experienced this.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
Bruce,
I’ll update as we move through the process.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
Bob wrote:
Chris is correct (but Chris is always correct !).
Bob…I’m flattered! You know WAY more than I do about this stuff. I just try to share my personal experiences to try help people who are going through the confusion I went through last year!
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com -
You write:
So hard to get any field experience reports with these systems.
I think that answers your question. If you can’t get SNS to give you names of people using the product in the field so you can get “real-world” answers and feedback, then I wouldn’t even consider buying it.
When we bought a shared storage system, that was critical to us. Incredibly, almost none of the companies we researched would connect us with current users so we could ask them questions (including Studio Network Solutions).
Only Apace and Editshare were willing to do it, with Editshare never following through and providing the information. So you can guess who we bought from.
If you can’t talk to people out in the field using these systems and get an honest, real-world evaluation, I wouldn’t even consider their products.
Chris Blair
Magnetic Image, Inc.
Evansville, IN
http://www.videomi.com