andydidyk.com

I just read a story published in the Sydney Morning Herald that I was pretty shocked didn’t make headline news on Brandweek or Adage. Evidently, someone at Virgin Mobile Australia ripped an American teenage girl’s candid photo off of a Flickr account and placed it on billboards and print ads all over Australia. Now, anyone with half a brain knows that’s an enormous violation of common decency and the law, because no model release was obtained. What I was surprised to learn is that had the image not had a human subject and the photographer was credited on the ad, it would have been perfectly legal. The Sydney Morning Herald explains (I made a few spelling corrections for them, otherwise this is verbatim):

“People who post photos on Flickr are asked how they want to license their attribution. The youth counselor [the photographer] chose a sharing license from Creative Commons that allows others to reuse work such as photos without violating copyright laws, if they credit the photographer and say where the photo was taken. His Flickr page appears at the bottom of the ad.”

This is stirs up the Jekel and Hyde within me. As a photographer, I would be hard pressed to just offer up my images for public and/or commercial use without being compensated, and I highly doubt that most people (especially young people) who check that box know what the heck they are really doing. But, as a marketer, I had no idea such a rich and completely free resource existed!

I feel pretty bad for people who are routinely taken advantage of by technology. Spyware, adware, copyrighting snafus, planned obsolescence, identity theft, involuntary data mining tactics, etc. In some ways, I don’ t think anyone should be surprised by it, as our lives have been rapidly, completely, and irrevocably changed by the dawning of the Information Age. We simply haven’t had enough experience with all of the emerging technologies to be able to properly legislate proper protections, nor have we had enough experience living in this new era to know how to properly cope and adjust to the new ways that people are trying to exploit the average Joe.

While I’m not normally an advocate of lawsuits and I admittedly don’t know the entire story, I do hope that Alison’s family wins this lawsuit big-time, because I can’t imagine such a stupid and irresponsible act on the behalf of Virgin going unpunished. Thus far, Virgin is doing a terrible job of handling the story, with the US division crying “it’s not our problem!” and the Australian division refusing to comment. This looks to be a story for the PR textbooks, to be sure.

As I mentioned in my last post, I was recently in NYC for a pitch to a large financial institution. The pitch was a culmination of over six weeks of work, and I believe that our team did an outstanding job of research, presentation building, and other preparation. When we arrived in New York on Monday night (we were to present Tuesday morning) and sat down to dinner, Ethan, our Creative Director, raised his glass to mine and stated simply, “pitching is a privilege”. As our glasses clinked in a toast, a connection snapped in my head: I had never thought of it that way before.

I had been buried so deeply in preparing for the pitch, along with other projects, that I hadn’t paused to think about what a privilege it is to be invited into a client’s house to tell them what they need to do to be more successful, and why they need to pay you to do it. I’ve heard from more than one expert in our field that smaller agencies are often too timid when it comes to their positioning, and that assertiveness can go a long way towards meaningful profitability and charging what you’re worth, but I think it also pays, no matter how big your are, to approach a client’s space with some degree of humility.

Sure, as a visual communicator, you’re the expert and you need to be positioned that way (why else would someone listen to you?). But being the expert (similar to having wisdom) is as much about knowing what you know as it is knowing what you don’t know. I believe that clients respect that. So for those of you out there traveling and pitching your ideas, be encouraged. It’s not something that a lot of people get to do, and it’s a great opportunity. Thanks Ethan.

After a semi-long absence, I’ve decided to go a little Seth Godin on you and post a picture from my camera phone.

Sure, as a photographer this image makes me cringe, but my trusty Treo was all I had on hand. While on a client pitch in NYC earlier this week, I spent a few minutes in a lobby with a DHL drop-off box. I was inspired by the simplicity of the answer for a very important question that anyone about to drop a package in the box may have, “Have they picked up packages here yet, or not?”.

The large, block letters in all caps that indicate if a package has been picked up or not are not sexy, or even all that interesting, but they are 100% functional. I think that can be a hallmark of great design. DHL could have gone with a really slick system of lighted buttons, color-coded tabs, or whatever, but instead they chose the direct route. If I can walk up to the drop-off and see immediately that the packages for the day are “NOT PICKED UP”, I can drop my package with confidence and not have a second thought, which I would bet is exactly what the drop-off box designers were going for. Bravo DHL.