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Fighting cultural differences

I don’t know if you knew this about me but I love communication 🙂 I love what one can do with it and what a difference good communication makes. Everything – whether it is good or bad – can receive a different reception depending on how it is communicated. I am not saying that I am always doing everything right, but I always try to do my best to be clear and polite. I analyze the different connotations different words and phrases might have and I try to give others the benefit of doubt though this is really the hardest part. It is very easy to misunderstand each other. But it is not so difficult to double check what someone meant exactly or is it!? That is especially important in written communication.

I heard recently that I can seem too straight forward or even perhaps rude according to the local standards. That accusation shocked me and was on a playback in my head for a whole weekend. Honestly speaking, I have still not moved on from it completely.  That person also tried to explain it with me coming from a different country, but I believe that there is more to it than that.

Most of us have heard about cultural differences in communication. I’ve joked for years that in Sweden when a person says that they don’t particularly like something very much, that means they hate it. But this is based on a true story. I have friends who always sound rude to the point of screaming when they are talking to someone in their own language. And I have lived in India where it seemed normal for a manager to literally scream at their employees.

I am not really sure where to place Estonia and Estonians in this politeness-rudeness framework, but we are probably a bit more direct than Swedes. Now I feel a bit torn apart because I’ve always felt that by Estonian standards I am too nice. I always struggle to say No or fight back. I hate conflicts and I want to get along with everyone. I’ve also been told by my old manager in Sweden to be more concrete. And now I have been told that I am too direct. I am too subjective to tell myself where the truth lies.

So there I am trying to balance concreteness with politeness, hopefully staying afloat.

What about you? Would you rather prefer honest concrete communication or do you want all of your messages heavily cushioned?

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It’s not just what you say but how

Recently I had an interesting experience – a bit like being back in school after a long time. We were traveling with a colleague to Denmark to give a training and had to take a train. Taking a train was a big mess itself with very poor communication, but that’s another story.

So we got on a train in a rush and jumped into a random car. A nice lady there, who understood that we were not locals, was kind enough to inform us that we had stumbled on first class which costs extra but the next car was regular. So we moved to the regular and were discussing there some work things until some older man came to Ssh! us. Apparently keeping our voices down wasn’t enough as we had now ended up in a silent car. Who knew they had such a thing even!? We of course apologised and didn’t dare to speak at all after that – for a trip of two hours.

After careful examination I finally found a little sign saying Silent car in Danish and even smaller English translation on the opposite end of the car from us. Without glasses I wouldn’t even have been able to read it.

What puzzles me most is, however, that the sign was placed in the middle of the door, leading to the next car. Isn’t that an international signal that the sign applies to whatever comes AFTER the door!? I still don’t get it. Wouldn’t it have been better to just place signs on walls or even better – behind every seat? If silence is really a requirement there then I would have expected a more clear communication.

How would you interpret such a sign?

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All about user experience

Since March is the month of good service and praising good customer service practitioners, it seems only appropriate to cover the topic here as well. Especially since I have some new stories to share.

Shall we start with bad service!?
I am lucky to live in a country where most things can be ordered online, payment is fast and can even be done by phone often. And, we can track the goods moving towards us with minute-level precision, not to mention that most things arrive the next day – sometimes even sooner. Last week, however, a big furniture store chain, reminded me that I am spoiled and things can be way worse.

We wanted to buy a new couch. Nothing complicated, just a bed/couch for our new guestroom. We chose a model online that came in many colours and it was a new model so we were quite sure that they will have it in stock and it is just up to us when we’d like to go and get it. Or in worst case, we would have to wait a couple of weeks. Which would have been fine as well.

And in reality? We rented a car to go get it from a shop only to discover that they didn’t have a single one in stock. Not even in the default colour. If we would have however placed an order, then we could have had it in 58-65 days, but not even that deadline was guaranteed.

We then looked through their long list of shops – one by one because that was the only option on their website – and we checked all colours that would have been acceptable to us only to discover that in the whole greater Stockholm area, there is exactly one couch in store – of course on the other side of the city. And it was not possible to order online a couch from a specific shop. Therefore we drove across town, hoping that no-one else gets there first.

We managed to buy it but not yet get it as it wouldn’t have fit in our rental car anyway.  Therefore we had to order home delivery and keep in mind that we could only do it in person in the shop.

The couch was needed in about a month, no later and preferably not before either. Unfortunately that was not an option either. We could choose one of the next three workdays and the conditions were that even though they will call us 30 minutes ahead, we needed to have two people home all day to carry it up from the front door. Me and my boyfriend both work 10 minutes from our home, but yet we were still told to both stay home. Thankfully he could. I didn’t. And of course the guys didn’t call 30 minutes ahead but rather 15. Which was enough for me to get home.

Now the couch lies still in plastic in our kitchen, waiting for us to move and we got it in time which was the most important part but I keep wondering, could they really not improve the whole service!? How many people know to order their couch 2-3 months before they actually need it? And is it really fair with today’s communication technology to make someone just take a day off work?

On the other hand I was seriously impressed with Batteriexperten’s service. I managed to drop my laptop on the ground and injure the charger. We found a new suitable one from the webshop mentioned above. I placed an order and the new one came to my mailbox in a couple of days. Unfortunately that too was broken or so I thought. Therefore I called their customer service and told them about my issue. I

only gave them my name – no order IDs etc – and already during our short call I received two emails, confirming registration of issue and offering a solution.

Without any annoying questions or suggesting that I might be doing something wrong myself, they kindly offered to return my money or ship a new one as fast as possible. In addition to that I was told to test the new one and in case it works, then just to trash the first one. And it worked.

I was so glad that I wasn’t made to feel like an idiot nor to figure out how to ship it back at my own expense.

Do you notice the difference? Guess whom I will be buying things from again. Do you have any good or bad service stories to share?

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Bad communication leading to ruined reputations

I know that one is supposed to stay calm and dignified even in situations where one might like to respond to someone – justifiably – with the exact opposite. Otherwise there is a risk of making things worse for yourself as everyone gets muddy in a mudfight, no matter who started. Do you agree?

Sometimes, however, I ignore that guideline because the urge to shake something loose and a chance to make it better seem too lucrative. Sometimes I feel I have to stand up for myself and others.

Therefore, today I won’t be silent. Instead I want to share with you an experience related to bad communication that completely ruined the reputation of a company in my eyes. Anyone else here who ever feels like not keeping bad things always to yourselves?

So… today I got an unexpected email. From a company where I had applied for a job. Over a year ago.

It took a few hours for me to compose myself and to organise my thoughts into concrete but polite answer but I definitely wanted to answer. You tell me if I succeeded.

Here’s my reply:

Hey Fredrik,

In a way I am glad you wrote to me as I can finally give you some feedback about your recruiting process. I tried to do it once already, after applying to a position with (should I publish the name?) but it had been made absolutely impossible to reach a real person. Perhaps that has changed now!? Either way, it doesn’t matter to me anymore.

I must say that at first I was very impressed with your way of online testing. I spent hours watching through the videos you asked me to and more, and even longer preparing answers for the open questions. I seemed to do quite well despite not being a native Swedish speaker and time pressure on execution as I got through to the third test. At least to me it seemed that I was doing well but from that point on everything went downhill and now I can tell you that unfortunately you ruined your reputation in my eyes so badly that you would be my very last choice of employer.

It is very disrespectful and absolutely not okay to treat someone the way your company treated me.

After all the tests and hours of work I put in, following a recruitment for an open position, I never received any feedback. When I tried to contact you again I received again the same automated email asking me to start the flow of same tests again. Do you have any idea how disappointing that felt?

I am not taking time to tell you all this right now for an apology or for you to make it up to me. It takes hard work to build a reputation and sometimes seconds to flush it down the toilet which is what happened in your case. I am already doing you a favour by not sharing my experience very publicly. Yet I am giving you a chance to learn from this and treat your future candidates better because you never know where your paths may cross again.

I, on the other, hand have quite recently started a new digital marketing job and am happy there because I respect my colleagues and they have treated me respectfully from day one of recruitment.

I ended the email with just my name as I couldn’t figure out a signature which would be sincere but polite. I don’t want to send them kind regards nor am I looking forward to their reply. I have no more faith left in them and I don’t believe in always turning the other cheek.

What would you have done in the same situation?

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Lost in communication

Communication is such a field where when you work with it, you see how hard it can be, but when you don’t, then you probably also don’t understand what’s the big deal. We all communicate with each other in different ways from the day we are born and mostly get by okay. But is okay good enough? Would life be easier if we did it better? I think there’s room for improvements.

It might sound harsh but I think there are so many bad communicators and each channel adds its own benefits and problems on top.

Speaking from my own perspective, I can sometimes express myself very fast without longer period of pondering over how I say something. And I sometimes end up regretting the rushing. Mostly however I analyze thoroughly what and how I say/write and why. Also how others might perceive it after though this is where you live and you learn and still can be surprised at how something could have been misunderstood.

I believe it is a question of respect to do your best to respond to reasonable requests as quickly as you can, evaluating its priority too of course. And I think it is important to try to answer all questions as accurately as possible while remaining polite and if possible, then also explaining the reasons behind my requests and actions. Yet, sometimes I feel like I am alone with my principles.

It happens way more often than I would like that I get an answer very late or after several reminders, if at all. Also, that there is an answer but it doesn’t correspond to my questions. Or perhaps it answers one of five and ignores the rest.

Sometimes it feels like me and my communication partner are talking about completely different things. They might tell me something else interesting or important but I am forced to ask again if I still need answers or I need to accept that I might never get them.

I’d like to think that people are mostly nice and such miscommunication happens due to bad circumstances. That the other party of the conversation happened to be in a big rush and just missed some questions. It could also be that they didn’t have the answers but for some reason didn’t want to tell that to me either. But it could also be that the other party just doesn’t care. That they only push their own agenda and ignore everything else, unless they see there concrete immediate benefit.

Clear communication is in theory such a simple thing – prioritize key messages, use good arguments and keep it concise. Why are there so many communication problems then!? And what happened to treat others like you want to be treated?

I myself feel like I have my better and worse writing days. Some days text just flows. Others, I try to avoid communicating important things or at least leave myself time to polish my draft material afterwards.

It would be nice to hear if you feel the same way but also if you don’t then what am I missing from the complete picture?

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Planning is everything

We have all heard that.
But how often do we really take the time and make an effort to think through what we want to achieve – what are our goals and how could we get there? And how often do we measure the results? Not as often as we’d care to admit, right?

I just graduated from an interesting digital marketing course and got some new insights as well as useful practical skills that I am eager to try out, but perhaps I will share some another time.

Today I want to show you that planning doesn’t have to be that complicated. You don’t even need special programs or skills. Often a pen and a piece of paper are enough to get you started and convey your ideas to specialists. As long as you make an effort to think things through and structure your ideas in a shareable format. Here is an example of ad planning from some years back. Not the prettiest thing for sure but completely functional.

JKK reklaami kavand 2013

It shows how the focus product is connected to other products/systems because connectivity is a key argument with it. It also suggests a way to illustrate it which shows how you can keep adding products to your system and other potential elements to create an ad. 

Keep in mind that this was done years ago in 2013. I have learned a lot since that and might do it a bit differently today but I felt nostalgic seeing this. Also, it would be interesting to know how do you start your planning for marketing materials?

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What to expect from a marketing specialist?

The correct answer to that one would be:
Depends on which specialist. Even within the same field the competences can differ a lot and yet it seems like often people who are specialists of something else or even of a different sub-specialty have very unrealistic expectations.

For example, I read a job ad today. An ad that I would usually not even open as it was titled Graphic Designer but since it was selected for me as a part of my job alerts, I decided to take a look why.

It took me less than a minute to decide that I should close it but what really surprised me is that any decent graphic designer, who knows their value and strengths-weaknesses, would have as well. Here’s why:

Responsibilities:

  • Graphic design and production of original digital and print material
  • Translating, proofreading and quality reassurance of sales material and text

I didn’t have to read further though the list of responsibilities was way longer. Why? Because they didn’t bother to put any thought into the title of the role they chose. People have different competencies and strengths as well as weaknesses and that should be okay. No-one is good at everything and you can either know a little about many things or a lot about a few. If someone claims differently, they are lying. Probably also to themselves.

It is very difficult to understand what someone else’s specialty entails, how broad their competences are and how deep they go. I once hired a replacement for myself and ended up choosing someone who studied exactly the same programme as me, thinking that this way I know exactly what they should know as well. Only a few days later it became clear that we were still very different and so were our skills and interests.

I am sure you all know someone who can draw very well. Does that mean that they write very well too? No! Maybe they do, but those are completely separate competences and in that case, it is just a coincidence. The guy or a girl who draws very well might decide to pursue a career in graphic design when he/she grows up. Or not. But let’s assume he/she does. She might go to a school to study more about art, practice its different forms and learn to use the most common design programmes. If he/she is lucky, he/she will have the opportunity to keep practicing both, their skills and programme use, but since everything costs money and takes time, they might not and will forget some things.

Let’s say that this young designer is really talented, studied hard, took on some design internships and even worked a few years in the area. He/she can now produce impressive graphics, maybe edit photos, follow some recommended ways of working and perhaps even dare to try out some bold new looks for different types of graphics. Specialists, you can improve my claims about you probably. But why on Earth should anyone assume that he/she has any text skills!? Yes, most people can read. And write. But professional writing is a whole other game and divided between various specialists. Your graphic designer should only be able to catch the obvious mistakes.

The job ad I paraphrased before asked graphics experts to waste their time and might have never even been seen by others with more relevant profiles.

I can understand better when someone is looking for a marketing coordinator, specialist, manager or content producer that various skill requirements might be hidden under the title. Yet, no-one is a specialist of everything, still applies so every recruiter should think through whether they want the best of their field or someone who just gets by.

This job ad aspired to find someone capable of doing translations (one specialist, but you should really have two for each language pair as ideally one should translate only into their native language), editing (at least two as some specialise on editing content, others on language – a person who can assemble a catchy text might still be bad at grammar and spelling and someone with great grammar might write boring text), and copywriting (someone who can easily understand various topics and turn them into great text suited for its purpose and target audience). You could add here digital specialists who analyse SEO requirements etc.

It is still easier to find people who can take care of all writing-related assignments quite well. A specialist could probably improve their work but the work might be good enough for its goal.

I can tell you that I am quite comfortable working with texts. I love writing myself, I’ve done a lot of it and I’ve spent years editing and managing edits of others’ texts. I am no stranger to  SEO principles or English-Estonian-English translation either and I have worked quite a lot on visual marketing materials.

I have had to learn to use Adobe InDesign because I didn’t have the budget to outsource all design and layout work. Actually, I had no budget at first. Just demands to do things. So I did. As well as I could. And I learned on the way. But knowing the basics of a programme or some design principles is not enough for me to say that I am good at graphic design, photography or layouting. I might be able to veto bad images, pick some quite good ones, mark some editing needs and fight for what goes where but in the hands of someone who does design full time, the results would most likely be better.

Therefore the trend of demanding so many different skills from one person deeply worries me. I get it that today’s marketing specialists should be flexible and capable of handling many different assignments as well as learning fast but is it worth saving the money at first by hiring someone who manages to convince you that they excel at everything and then fails? Or would it just mean that you’d soon need to start another recruitment process or just have to outsource parts of planned work?

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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When your customer turns into an anti-brand-evangelist

If I’ve mostly shared here the lessons I’ve learned, then today I’d like to bring up a topic that I don’t know how to solve yet – an angry screaming customer.

As long as customers used to scream offline directly at company reps and complained to a few friends of colleagues, it was still unpleasant and sometimes felt unfair but nothing compared to a customer screaming on social media in front of thousands of other (potential) customers.

All marketers – I’d like to hope – know that participating in social media has it’s risks. Actually the risks are there even when a company doesn’t have official presence so it makes sense to leave yourself a possibility to defend yourself and solve some problems – therefor be present.

This year I have been responsible for managing a Facebook page for the UK and Irish organisation. I’ve read my fair share of relevant articles and recommendations for using social media for a company’s advantage but there seems to be no concrete course of action how to always succeed.

Among planning and posting strategically and regularly about our area, we gained quite a lot of positive engagement but also one super not fan. There were, of course, also some other upset customers but answering politely, apologizing for their discomfort and offering to send an expert changed to mood of most of them 180 degrees.

In all honesty, that one guy’s issues had nothing to do with our social media behavior. It just seemed that he had decided to scare away as many other potential customers of ours as possible. And, he was attacking our flagship product.

Every once in a while I’d see the same name leaving furious comments about how product X was awful, he hates it and doesn’t recommend it to anyone. He’d leave those comments under any post even remotely related to the product he was disappointed in.

I had a delicate situation in hand and had to think carefully how to make it better and at any cost not worse. That meant that I couldn’t risk pissing him off even more. At the same time I got pressured by scared sales colleagues, who had also seen his comments, to just erase those. That, however, was not recommended in all those articles I had read.

It would have taken just a couple of clicks to erase a comment and pretend that it was never there but I had no guarantee that he wouldn’t write just a new, even angrier one and gain more negative attention.

I also had to factor in that the rest of our followers might have already noticed the conflict and were also interested to see how it will be resolved. They might have noticed the censorship and if before they might have thought that Mr X is a bit crazy, then erasing all traces of him might have looked like we had something to hide.

I decided to keep his comments and answer publicly. I always tried to answer to him fast and politely, apologize for causing his negative feelings – but not admitting guilt until proven guilty – and suggested continuing solving his issues via private messages while lifting the issues in attention of the colleagues responsible.

In his case, my colleagues agreed that we must do something and agreed to send an expert to visit him but they also said that a big part of the problem is the customer himself. The product that he was complaining about is technically quite complex and requires some skills and knowledge for successful use. He didn’t seem to have enough. Another question is whether it should have been sold to him at all and whether the risks were obvious from the start. But he had managed to purchase it, couldn’t get it to work as well as he expected and I couldn’t tell him that he’s just too stupid to handle it. How unprofessional would that have looked? I bet that he would have just become angrier and screamed louder then.

So we kept playing the same game every other month or so. He lashed out under a random Facebook post. I tried to remain as polite and professional as possible and let him know that we hear and care and will try to help. He might have replied once more but never completely calmed down.

At least I managed to avoid increasing the engagement on those discussions – no-one else joined and therefor the posts with his negative comments became history quite fast instead of lingering around on the walls of our customers and their friends.

Perhaps someone else became a bit more skeptical but I hope that all other positive engagement and my professional replies rather improved our image as an open and helpful company.

Have you ever been in a situation like this and how did you solve it?

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What to pay attention to in a (marketing) text?

Since I am in a writing mood after a while, I wanted to get some more thoughts out in text format. I’ve been thinking a lot about how to say something. People take things differently. Misunderstandings happen. Especially in written format. Cultural differences play a role and the harsher the message, the harder it might be to convey an important message without hurting anyone’s feelings. After all, most people don’t like to be criticized and creative people can be extra sensitive. I am still trying to improve myself regarding both – giving and receiving criticism.

Today I want  to focus still on marketing feedback. It is very important and often useful, unless the feedback is utterly positive and even when the criticism is constructive, it can be hard to take.  Creative arts are also not as black and white as maths, for example. Often things come down to a gut feeling, context and personal preferences and experiences.  Think how differently an innocent child and a grownup might react when someone tells them that they resemble a cow. Therefor, sometimes I really struggle with how to explain in short what I think is wrong.

Spelling game

It is pretty easy to point out a spelling mistake but even that is sometimes arguable. If it hasn’t been agreed upon first which spelling should be used, then several options can be correct. Think about the differences of American and British English. Now add to the pile Australian and Indian. They all have differences despite speaking pretty much the same language. Should one use S or Z; add the letter U or not. Is one taking an exam or giving an exam? Riding a lift or an elevator? A lot of international companies have made a decision which language version to use in their official communication and still errors of not knowing better happen all the time if we are not dealing with native speakers and actually also if we are. Yet a concrete decision makes the lives or marketing and communication people a lot easier and there is no excuse for them to not follow it. And nowadays automatic spell checkers do most of the job for us.

Logic errors

Logic errors are so common even if you might not think so and notice them. They happen even to experienced copywriters and not only in technically complicated texts due to lack of knowledge. They happen everywhere and can make you look stupid in front of a more critical reader or listener.

Sometimes it is a question of using a word wrongly. For example, when marketing for agricultural industry, a copywriter needs to know where to use the word “fertilization” and where “insemination” and the difference between “killing” and “culling”. People and animals might be fertile, but fertilizers are used on fields of crops and animals are inseminated. But if you didn’t know that, it is still ok. As a production manager, I will catch it while doing quality check.

Sometimes it is just a simple question of singular and plural like here:

“unit has an ergonomic bristles”

Other times it can be easily missed when scanning a text:

“it can be installed in areas without electricity connection or lack of space.”

The original sentence was longer and carried even more facts, making it harder to spot the mistake, but did you? But if you deduct now the part of the sentence that isn’t really important, it turns into “it can be installed in areas without lack of space.” That can be true, but how often does a marketing text intend to brag about something taking lots of space? Correct me now if I am wrong as I am not a native speaker but I can currently see a few ways to fix this sentence with minor changes.

Option 1:
It can be installed in areas without electricity or with lack of space.

Option 2:
It can be installed in areas without electricity that also might lack space.

Option 3:
It can be installed in areas without electricity or lacking space. (Not 100% sure about this one)

Option 4:
It can be installed in areas without much space or electricity. (My favourite as it seems the clearest)

Question of style

Sometimes there might not be anything wrong – technically – and yet it strikes a nerve. For example, I’ve reacted recently badly to a copywriter starting a catalogue unit text for a brand new product by calling it “entry-line”. Yes, compared to some other products, it is a simple and more affordable solution, but entry-line sounds to me like basic in a bad way. No-one likes to feel cheap or underdeveloped and these are the connotations I have with that phrase. Those might not apply to everyone, but I believe I am not the only one who feels this way. Therefor I prefer to warn copywriters about my perspective so that they can phrase it better. Simple can be good as long as you don’t call a person simple. Also affordable might work because everyone likes a good deal.

Another example of bad style that a product specialist recommended and copywriter used without changing anything:
“We would like to think that with the XXX tomorrow’s farming is already here today.”

Firstly, I’d question the word order but as a non-native English speaker I am never 100% certain about that myself and would like to trust a copywriter who has reviewed it. How does it sound to you otherwise? It hints that our product is very innovative – which is great. The construction that with XXX the future is here sounds a bit fishy to me as well. I don’t have the perfect phrasing ready yet, but perhaps it could say instead: “Product XXX gives you a taste of (what) the future (will be like)”. But I don’t think that taste is the best word here even though we are talking about a food industry product.

The worst thing about that sentence is using the words “would”  and “like” as it is done now. There’s nothing wrong with the words themselves but they lack confidence. It sounds a bit like “ideally we could claim that product XXX is very innovative, but we don’t believe that ourselves really either”.  And if you don’t seem to believe in your product, why should others?

I know that bragging might backfire in some cultures and this was written in Sweden by a Swede, but how much stronger would the claim be if phrased like: “We think that with XXX tomorrow’s farming is here already today”? Do you see the difference?

Sometimes it feels like there is too much of something. Other times something seems to be missing like here:

“How often do you inspect and service your XXX? It should be at least annually.”

As this example comes from a social media post, I understand that character number might have been limited but this seems like lazy spoken language and yet uses complicated words like annually.

I’d say rather: “It should be done at least annually” but to my ear it sounds even better to say: “It should be done at least once per year.” Do you agree?

I am also adding a few PDF files where you can see work done on symbol logic as well as text. You will see a lot of comments on very simple illustrations because when we received those first drafts, it felt like the illustrators had picked out some random interesting keywords and claims from the accompanying text instead of really thinking through the logic how those things work. For example, what are the features and what the benefits of something. What is the illustration focusing on? A robot or a service? What kind of different things must one symbol cover? What kind of language is used?

I’ve tried to give now very different examples from the actual marketing materials I have worked on and since this is my blog, I allow myself to use more direct speech than I might when I would actually be giving feedback to the creators of those texts. Believe me, I choose and chose kinder words in reality, but I expect all my partners to be grown up professionals and if they keep providing me with poor quality texts, then eventually I will become more concrete and harsh in my feedback. Especially when I am in a rush to finalize something.

I hope you found something useful if you read through all of this. If not more than at least another perspective.

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Feedback welcome

Today I want to talk about something very important in marketing but also elsewhere. Feedback. It would be nearly impossible to produce a great piece of marketing content in one go. No, not when several people are involved and probably not when only one people is working on it either. Even when that person himself might think so. The more people, the more opinions and usually the better result, but it takes work. Today I want to talk about my learnings on this topic.

Feedback methods

Feedback can be given orally or in a written format. Or it can be mixed. People can scribble their opinions on a printout like was normal to us all at school when our papers got graded. But today there are also all kinds of technological ways to gather feedback. It can be a very generic “Good job” comment or a very specific instruction with what is wrong, why and how to fix it but today I won’t go deeper into that. It can be done in one-on-one meetings or in groups. The more feedback givers there are, the more complicated it usually gets as all feedback has to be compiled, confusing feedback talked through and improved and contradicting feedback resolved.

Best programmes for feedback giving

The best part here is that almost everyone has those. No need to download some special or expensive software. Usually all that is needed is MS Word or similar and Adobe Reader or Acrobat Pro but I’d be careful with the last one as in the wrong hands it can make things more complicated.

MS Word has this amazing little feature called Track changes. If you haven’t started using it yet, I really recommend that you give it a try.  As soon as you switch it on, it starts marking all changes you make in a document from deleting a typo to adding a specification to moving big blocks of text around. It also records who made what change and when and uses different colour coding for each person.

MS Word has also a Commenting feature which nicely compliments the changes you make in text. Sometimes you might want to ask someone to clarify something or add something or question some written element but don’t want to just bluntly change it. Use comments and send it back!

I really use Track changes for everything from work texts to helping edit a friend’s motivation letter. Even if someone hasn’t asked to see exactly what kind of edits you have done, it is nice to make it clear from the start. And it only takes one click from the person getting feedback to apply or decline all changes.

The other great program for feedback giving is Adobe Reader – a simple free peace of software we all use for opening PDF-files. But did you know that it allows you to make quite specific comments on any file that has recognizable text? We use it all the time in brochures etc that also have images and need to be layouted nicely.

I guess a lot of people have used the “sticky notes” there to just pin a comment here or there. You’d make the life of others much easier if you marked specific sections of text that you have a problem with and attached a comment to those.

The programme also allows to show where exactly something should be added and mark what should be deleted or replaced with something else. I use all those features constantly.

The marks of changes made can be quite small and difficult to see, but the programme also lists all changes on the right edge. Ad agencies love it because they can go through all requests one by one and easily mark the things they have done, fixed. This way the danger of missing something is minimized, but it still happens sometimes so be ready to find some mistakes repeating through several versions. Unless you’ve found the perfect partner.

I also mentioned Acrobat Pro. I haven’t worked that much with it but it allows you to make some serious changes already in the PDF itself. That, however, can be very confusing because usually the actual changes are done in a programme like Adobe InDesign and if you hide your changes within a preview PDF, they will often remain unnoticed and therefore even if you like how your PDF looks, your (final) editable files will remain unchanged.

I recommend that Acrobat access is given to only crucial decision makers who have the full overview of things and sometimes might have to do a quick fix directly in a PDF.

Mediums for feedback asking

A very common way to ask for feedback on some document is by sending an email with an attachment. That can work fine if only one person’s feedback is needed, but as soon as more people are involved, things get complicated. No project manager wants to get back several parallel versions of the same file and unless all parties are very careful about informing others about their actions, this can easily happen. Even if one person writes to all parties that he or she is currently working on the file, the others might not get the message in time and start working on a version of their own. As a result, a lot of frustration is created and plenty of time wasted. There are some project management tools that might help with it as they will warn others if someone is in the process of editing.

I’ve also gotten to try an online system called Bynder Workflow that is meant to be used for production management and since their main product is an asset bank for images and videos, it is also oriented at those and not text.

It is great because it allows for everyone to work in the same live web environment where a project manager can decide on the process steps and ask for participation from different members when needed. It’s not a perfect tool but if giving feedback on videos is usually a pain in the …, because you’d have to start and stop the video constantly to manually mark time slots where some changes are needed, then here you just add a comment with a simple click on the screen to the exact geographical and time location relevant.  Of course it is just as easy for images, but it’s a different story with text because the programme doesn’t recognize it and doesn’t allow the precision levels of Adobe. That is why I prefer the latter.

Since I started talking a bit about project management environments that I have used already, I’d like to mention that after a bit of testing we managed to make MS Sharepoint Project office work quite well with Adobe and MS Word files even up to version handling and final approvals.

Getting back to the mediums of feedback, you can always give feedback on paper but it will be annoying for the project manager who still needs to transform it into a digital format and gather all info in one place before requesting changes from an agency or whomever in charge of execution.

Sometimes when feedback giving in a digital format starts to get too confusing or waiting for all parties to take the time and do it, takes longer than you have, it might be a good idea to have a meeting – whether it is a spontaneous Skype call to go over the file or a face to face for a group, depends on the situation and possibilities. Sometimes I’ve sat in a room with up to 5 people and just read through the whole text or reviewed the logic or images to get everyone immediately on the same page about what to improve and how. That means that I’ve pretty much had to protocol every tiny change but that also means that there is one file that everyone is happy with or at least not screaming about publicly. Sometimes that is already a victory.

Version handling and feedback

As I said in the beginning, good results take time and often the input of several people – if not more. Most likely with whatever marketing deliverable there will be at least 3-5 versions. With a bigger project there can sometimes be 25, but since that is time consuming and expensive, no-one wants that. Agencies would prefer to have everything done in 3 drafts, but try to avoid signing off on paying extra for more. We should all take responsibility for our own mistakes and we all miss something sometimes or get a better idea later but that happens also on agency’s side. If you are working in a company ordering creative work from agencies, then most useful for you is a fixed price for a project.

Anyway, if you end up in the world of versions, it is very important that everyone is aware of which version is most recent and what they should be working on. The worst case scenario is when an overly confident feedback provider cc-s his comments straight to the producer before everything is aligned with other stakeholders. In this case, the production agency might take that as the official list of changes to make, do what was asked and return a new version while others might be still working on the errors of the previous file. Imagine that mess.

Suddenly you have two working files and maybe the changes that were already made are not at all what majority wanted. Now the agency can charge for extra work and the feedback givers might have to move all their comments to a new file. Trust me, that is more annoying as you might think as you can’t just drag and drop things from Adobe Reader. Nope, you’d have to mark the text in each comment one by one and create a new comment in the new document and then paste the text in. Not to mention all the detailed marks about copy changes.

At the same time, sometimes you need to return to an older version and if you have re-saved things on the same Word file, I don’t even know if you can get back. Using an online project management environment might come in handy there.

But I’ve already blabbered enough today. I hope that someone else besides me finds it interesting and useful too.

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