Decide on what is the objective of the brochure

This decision will enable you to decide various aspects of the copy like the type and amount of information to be included as well as the tone of the copy. The objective will help you establish your budget which will assist you in deciding the number of colour printing, size, paper and the format of the well designing  brochure.

Establish how the brochure will be used

This will assist in visualising the format / layout of the brochure as well as the amount of the copy to be used.

Develop the headline and the copy

A good headline is very important for any advertising and promotional material including a brochure. The headline serves the following purposes:
(i) It gives direction to your copy. The copy has to be in line with the headline.

(ii) The headline attracts the attention of the reader and motivates him to read the complete brochure. It should be remembered that only a few of your prospective customers who come across your brochure are really eager to read it. It becomes the job of the headline to attract, amuse and/or shock the prospective customer into reading your brochure.

As mentioned earlier, the writing of the copy is a very important step in the designing of the brochure. The design of the brochure is based on the headline and the copy of the brochure. The layout of the brochure will depend on the volume of the copy. Selection of graphics and pictures which will reinforce your message will also depend on your headline and copy. As mentioned earlier, make sure that the copy is written from the customer’s point of view, not yours.

Development of the copy takes the longest time and rightly so. When you put anything in writing, it has to be not only factually correct but should also project the image of the company correctly. It is because of this reason that practically everybody gets involved in whetting the copy of the brochure.

Once the copy is completed, gear yourself to making it shorter and more descriptive. Mark Twain was supposed to have said, “I’d have written you a shorter letter but I didn’t have the time.”

Develop alternative designs of the cover page

I have seen that practically everybody prepares the design of the complete brochure with all the pages. This not only increases the cost but also increases the time involved in developing a brochure. What if you don’t like any of the two designs presented by your advertising agency? Designing the complete brochure and making color dummies involves a lot of time, effort and money for the advertising agency. That is why you will observe that the advertising agencies are hesitant to give you more design options. They make all their effort to convince you to accept one of the designs that they have submitted to you. This is because they have used quite a bit of their resources on developing the same. More design options will cost more money.

However, there is a way out of this dilemma. I have successfully adopted the method that I am going to suggest. Usually, the design of the cover of the brochure plays a critical role in deciding which brochure design to accept. Also, the design of the inside pages of the brochure depends on the cover design. As such, I suggest that first design options for the brochure cover should be made. Once the cover design is finalized, then the inside pages should be designed. The color and the concept of the inside pages will depend on the color and concept used on the cover. As such, first ask your advertising agency to prepare the cover design options. Out of the various cover design options, select one or two. Suggest modifications, if any, in the cover designs before finalizing the same.

Develop Inside pages

After the cover designs have been selected (maximum of 2), ask your advertising agency to develop the inside pages and to finally develop a dummy to see how the brochure will finally look. Each of the inside pages should re-inforce the concept of the cover. We have gone step by step to finalize all the elements of a brochure design: headline, copy, cover design and inside pages. Now out of the two complete dummies that you have received, you can select one. Of course, subject to some minor changes.

Review

Once you have zeroed in on the brochure design, it is now time to go through every aspect of the brochure with a fine tooth comb. You should review every aspect/element of the brochure as follows:

 Copy

• Review the story and make sure it is logical and in proper sequence.
• Are all the facts correct? It is better to avoid stating anything in writing that you are not sure of. If you have picked any information from any particular source, make sure that you have mentioned the same in the brochure.
• Spell check is very critical.
• Check the contact information, that is, address, telephone numbers, emails and website addresses. I have come across a number of times when the client does not check the contact information and it turns out that some or all of the telephone numbers are incorrect.
• If technical information has been given in the brochure, make sure that your technical department has reviewed the same.
• Make sure that the customer will be able to easily understand the information and relate it to the products in questions.
• You have not made any claims for which you can be hauled up in a court of law.

Visuals

• Make sure that the visuals used are not only appropriate but are also used at the right place or page in the brochure.
• Sometimes different products cannot be easily identified in a composite photograph used in the brochure. Sometime back we had developed a brochure for a client in which we had used a composite picture of the company’s various products. For each product, we had given technical information in the brochure. We realised that the customer may not be able to identify the different products in the composite photograph. As such, we had to name the products in the picture to help in easy identification.
• Check on the quality of the photograph(s). Be sure to assess the quality of the photograph if the same has been downloaded from the internet.
•  Make sure that the photographs represent the latest model of your product, that is, the picture is not of an earlier model. Also, the colour of the product as shown in the photograph should also be available in case the customer wants to purchase the same. Quite a few times, customers will ask you for the same colour that you have shown in the photograph. If you tell the customer that you are not selling the product in the colour shown in your catalogue, the customer will walk away dissatisfied.

Colour

• Make sure that if your corporate colour has been used in the brochure, it has the proper CMYK combination.

Logo

• Make sure that the logo used in the brochure is as per your corporate identification programme in terms of the colour, size and proportion.

It would be appropriate to point out here that development of a brochure is not a smooth process. You may not like the copy when it is presented to you for the first time or you may not like the designs. Don’t get disappointed or fire the advertising agency. Coming up with the right concept, copy and design usually requires a number of iterations between the agency and the client. The key here is that both sides should talk to each other. You as the client should guide the agency in terms of what you like or dislike as well as what is correct and what is incorrect. You should give your suggestions and feedback to the agency so that they can make the necessary changes. You have to remember that you know your product, company and the industry better than the advertising agency. Also, the advertising agency should keep an open mind and listen to what the client is saying. As mentioned earlier, we have done some of the best work when the client has given us his suggestions.

As the average internet bandwidth rate per computer is raising, more and more webmasters allow themselves to develop complex websites laden with heavy graphic elements. In extreme cases you can find websites that take as much as a few minutes to load their content in your browser. Of course the user will never wait that long for a website to load, and will move on to the next website in his search results.

So why are webmasters still developing slow loading bloated websites? Primarily due to a lack of knowledge of simple graphic optimization techniques that will allow them to maintain an attractive website while keeping the page size smaller.

How many of you are aware of the fact that a box with rounded corners can be achieved using CSS code only, without the need for any graphic image. Well it is possible! Before those of you familiar with CSS say that it cannot be done for every type of browser and a relatively high level of programming is required, I say that dealing with the most common mistakes web designers make regarding optimization can have simple solutions.

Never limit the web designer by placing any restrictions that impact the final outcome. You might make the claim that what a web designer can do with graphic software is impossible to implement by code. I disagree. When the design is finished and you are ready to slice it into small images to be used in the html code, your creativity is been tested. Everything you do at this stage will affect the total page size. If your design contains rounded shapes that overlap each other or areas with color gradients, then you must slice it carefully so the outcome is a small file size.

Let’s look at what efficient slicing means:

Do not make large slices that contain lots of different colors. Use a small number of slices where each slice contains a limited number of colors.
Do not make a large slice that contains the same graphic structure. Slice a small portion of it and duplicate it in your code. This is a very common mistake that webmasters/programmers make when dealing with gradient color background.
Do not use JPEG file format all the time. In some cases a GIF format will be much smaller in size. A rule of thumb – a slice with high number of colors will be smaller in size using the JPEG format rather than the GIF format, and the opposite is also true. Check each option separately. Every 1KB that you reduce from the image file size will eventually add up to a significant reduction in page size.
If you have text on a solid color background, do not slice it at all. Use code to create the background instead. Remember that you can define both the font style and background color of the area using CSS.

Advanced Techniques

Graphically optimizing a website is more than just knowing how to do image optimizations. There are some advanced techniques that required a high level of programming. CSS2 has much more to offer then CSS does. Although not all browsers have adopted this standard yet you should be ready for when they do. JavaScript also gives you a set of options to create some cool effects without needing to overload the page with Flash. Using limited tools like JavaScript compared to an advanced application like Flash to create the desired effects can be difficult. However think about the outcome. For a onetime effort you can differentiate your website from others. You will have an attractive professional looking website that loads quickly.

Back to the Future

As PDAs, smart mobile phones and mini laptops are used with wireless internet connections for internet browsing, publishing fast loading web pages will enhance the browsing experience not only for those using wide bandwidth connections but also will make the browsing experience user friendly (or may I say, bandwidth friendly) to the wireless clients.

For those who insist that web design optimization is not necessary because everyone will have high bandwidth connections eventually, I agree up to a point. However, the software companies are creating applications that use more bandwidth because they know it is available for them to use. Get used to writing well optimized web pages because this cat and mouse game will never end, and it is better to learn the rules of the game then it is to be bitten.

Don’t get me wrong, there isn’t just one method for implementing this concept. More than that, since the introduction of technologies such as CGI, ASP, and PHP that allow web developers to generate dynamic web pages, a lot of companies have found creative ways to develop their website applications using this concept as their foundation.

Over the past few years, the internet community has been trying to create a set of standards for creating web sites. A new technology called CSS or Cascading Style Sheets has been introduced. There is nothing actually new in the way CSS handles a web page’s presentation. CSS allows the developer to define a style for each html tag element. This is similar to the method developers (programmers) used in the old days when they attached a variable to each html tag defining its style. The major difference is that CSS style definitions can be interpreted by most of the existing browsers available while in the older method the dynamic web page engine performs the interpretation.

The internet standards organization W3C has encouraged the use of CSS by enhancing its ability to control the web page’s look and feel. New style options have been added to the CSS specifications that have not been added to the HTML description language. There’s no doubt that this was a smart move. It’s forced web developers to use CSS to achieve an attractive web page that also supports the principle of content separation. Unfortunately CSS did not find its way into the internet mainstream easily because of compatibility issues with most web browsers. These days CSS is widely supported by most of the major web browsers, while CSS2, an enhanced version of CSS still has serious compatibility issues.

Obviously, the separation of content from its presentation deals not only with the styling aspects, but also with browser compatibility issues. The styling aspects were the first to be handled by web developers and web designers. As the complexity of information technology (IT) systems become increasingly more difficult to maintain, the internet community is looking for a solution that will become a standard so that content can be easily be managed. One goal for this standard is to define a “language” that IT systems can “talk” with each other and exchange information. Large corporations have historically used many different software platforms in their networks to conduct business. Internet based applications can provide a single platform that can act as an intermediary between all of these different systems and allow communication between them.

XML (Extensible Markup Language) has been adopted as a standard to present the content itself. OFX (Open Financial Exchange) is a close relative of XML that has been widely used by financial institutions who have been using Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) systems to transmit orders and invoices over private networks, intranets and the internet for several years.

The need to present the content in a standard way that separates it from any design elements was so urgent that for the first time in software development history all the three major players (SUN, IBM, and Microsoft) actually agreed with each other and XML become a standard almost overnight and was adopted by many content providers and news agencies.

Yet the concept was not fully implemented. CSS handles the styling aspects while XML handles the document content. What about the webpage layout? New websites are been published each day by thousands. Every day millions of new web pages are being added to the internet’s global database. Webmasters have found that changing the page background color or the font color might not be enough to keep their website fresh and polished to compete with other new websites. However, changing the website layout can sometimes involve a lot of effort because it involves modifying the web page source code. XSL was introduced to solve that issue. Consider XSL a set of rules that can describe a web page layout. Combine it with XML (and optionally with CSS) you will get a valid html file.

XSL is very similar in its mechanics as any other dynamic web page generator. Beside the fact that XSL is platform independent, its biggest advantage is that it can be processed on the client side. The web server sends the client the content using XML format and the layout definition using XSL format. By doing that, the load on the web server’s CPU is reduced allowing it to perform other tasks more quickly. However, XSL was not adopted by all the major web browsers. So unlike XML, XSL has not found its way to the market easily.

Before you run back to your desk and start redesigning your website according to these magnificent standards, you should be aware that those technologies are really not needed most of the time. In fact, using them unnecessarily can cause performance problems. CSS usually will not cause your system to slow down. Just try to keep your CSS file as small as possible. Many web developers maintain large CSS files with lots of unused style definitions. Deciding to work with XML is a serious decision. If your website generates dynamic web pages supported by databases like MySQL, adding additional XML functionality will definitely reduce your website performance. Sometimes you won’t have a choice and will need to upgrade your hardware to maintain your website’s performance. There is no rule of thumb for this issue. The decision should be based on each system and its engineering demands. My advice to you is to think two steps ahead. Try to predict what kind of future services your website will be providing. Plan your website properly at stage one and save yourself lots of effort later.

Many of you are probably already asking why eCommerce website design is different from any other website design. They all need to be attractive, well organized and use the right colors that fits the website spirit and so on. Your instincts are good. However a close look at some successful eCommerce websites will reveal the conceptual differences that are typical in a successful eCommerce website.

An eCommerce website needs to follow certain selling principles:

Give the user a pleasant experience during his online shopping.
Make certain you provide sufficient information on who owns the website and why they should be trusted.
The website must be easy to use. If it isn’t, the visitor will go to your competitor.

Those principles are not new. We all know those basics from our day to day experiences in the mall, shopping center and every other market place that is waiting for us to open up our wallets. The big challenge for a web designer is how to translate those conventional marketing techniques to the virtual world of the internet. I’m sure you’ve all noticed that in most supermarkets the bread stand is placed at the far end of the building, yet you can smell the fresh bread at the entrance (sometimes they even use a special air duct to carry the smells). That has been done deliberately. Marketers use our sense of smell to draw us through the store where we are exposed to all sorts of tempting goodies as we go to get our loaf of bread.

How do you draw an imaginarily path in a web page? A path designed to lead the visitor to do what you want him to do…make an online purchase. Unlike the supermarket our website has no smell. In a website the distance from one point to the other is pretty much the same, so the exit is always right there. In a website you can try to order the “shelf” in the way you think will best expose the visitor to many of your products, but there is always a chance that he will find a short cut to another page that can also be the way off your site.

As can be see, although putting your products on the web is much easier then renting space and opening a supermarket. However, selling your products on the web can be difficult.

A good eCommerce website design will lead the visitor to the right page in one click or two at the most. Sometime web designers will use techniques that would never be considered for non-eCommerce websites. Everyone has seen at least one sales letter website. On these web pages the only link is to the order form. Sales letters are not the most typical eCommerce website because they usually sell only one product. That allows the web designer the ability to exaggerate the one click principle and make it an advantage. All the facts about the product have been presented to the user is a smart way while every few lines he has the option to click on the order form. If he is not yet convinced he will have the option to continue to read more facts and testimonials about the products. Believe it or not, those sales letter websites are actually selling.

“What about online shops?” Online shops have to deal with more then one product. Of course, the greater number of products increases the complexity of the website. Sophisticated eCommerce websites use a variety of personalization technologies in an effort to determine the best selection of products to offer to the visitor. Personalization technologies are a major part of advanced eCommerce websites. However this topic is beyond the scope of this article. The cleverness of an eCommerce website’s personalization technology has a major influence on its design. The first to use such technology was Amazon.com who decided to push their client’s books to a visitor based on that visitor’s past orders combined with the statistics they had collected on all visitors used to predict what someone looking at a specific book might also be interested in reading. Today the goal is to try to predict what to offer the user on his first visit as well.

An eCommerce web design is also about the layout. One important aspect is where the user’s eyes look first when accessing a web page. Lots of research has been done on this topic. Most research showed that the middle left side area will attract the most attention followed by the center of the page. By using these techniques web designers try to draw the “walking path” for the visitor’s eye, much like what was done at the supermarket. An experienced eCommerce web designer will know how to create designs to meets those demands.

If you are about to open an eCommerce website or you are already own one, make sure you understand the web design principles for online selling. Consider consulting with an experienced website designer preferably someone who has experience with eCommerce websites.

Teasing your curiosity

“Do Not Click Here”. How many of you have seen this slogan in a banner? What did you do when you first saw it? If you are like most people, when you first saw it, you clicked on it. What makes this simple sentence so powerful that it compels the visitor to click on it? The answer is curiosity !!!

Copywriters and web designers are always looking for ways to arouse the website visitor’s curiosity. As banner designers their goal is to attract the visitor to the banner, usually completely ignoring the other elements on the web page that are more important to the website owner. However, because the “Do Not Click Here” slogan tells us nothing about what is on the next page, it arouses the visitor’s curiosity and makes it almost impossible not to click on this banner to see what’s behind it.

Simple integrated design

When Larry Page and Sergey Brin first introduced their product, “Google”, to potential investors, they mentioned Adwords as a backup option in case they didn’t make any money. We all know how lucky they were that they eventually needed to use that backup plan. What made these “boring” ads such a great success?

Unlike other ads, Adwords neither arouse the visitor’s curiosity nor disturb the main flow of the web page. In fact, the opposite is true. Adwords are meant to look like part of the search results giving the user the feeling that those ads are there because he asked for them. No one has any doubt that this simple design helps Google to promote both their search engine and the Adwords advertising program.

Take part in the action

Banner designers wisely used interactive technologies like Flash to develop type of banners that invite the user to take part in the action. Drawing the user into the action can be accomplished in many creative ways. Some web designers use popular old games elements as part of the scene. You all know the famous game pacman. One of the banners that I like the most is the one where the user is allowed to let pacman “eat” few dollar signs. At the successful completion of this mission, a nice slogan is revealed asking him to open a saving account that will earn money with a fixed interest rate. The idea behind those interactive banners is simple: Let the user take part in the action and then at the right moment when his mind is less resistant, show him the sales message. Those interactive banners proved to be very efficient. Their biggest disadvantage is that most webmasters will not allow that kind of banner because it distracts too much from the web page content.

Back to Black and White

Website designers are always seeking to be different with their design ideas. One banner fashion trend that can be found lately is Black and White banners. Although research shows that blue and yellow are the most efficient color to use in a banner, Black and White banners have been seen a lot lately. It’s probably something that will eventually vanish, but the idea behind it is to be different and to make the user wonder what’s up and hopefully click on the banner to find out.

Get Out of the box

Have you heard about the milliondollarhomepage.com? If not, check out this website before continuing to read this article. This website has proven that creative thinking not only can bring you money but also create a whole new trend. Right after the milliondollarhomepage.com got the internet community’s attention, many designers used this idea to deign a banner on which they sell a 10×10 pixel area. Like the original concept, this banner design had its impact. Advertisers are investing money on these ad spaces while at the same time visitors are curious enough time after time looking at those unorganized pixel banners to click on them.

What about the next trends

What the next trends of banner design will be is something that probably no one can accurately predict. It’s up to some web designer to come up with a new concept that proves to be efficient. There is no doubt that in the future we will see new ways of designing banners, especially when more and more advertising budgets are being spent on the internet instead of commercial TV and other types of advertising media. I guess we will just need to be patient.

Many United Arab Emirates base sites offer you, the webmaster, a place to post your projects to be bid on by freelancers. All of these sites let you contact offshore workers that live in countries where wages are only a fraction of what they are in the more industrialized nations. This allows you to keep your project budget low and save money by keeping your full-time staff small.

So, how can you find this “diamond in the rough”? You know, that reliable individual who delivers quality work on time and within agreed upon budget? There is no simple answer. The best you can do is using the tools provided by the freelance website to try and minimize your risk.

Unfortunately, most of the existing freelance websites use a very poor rating system that only allows a webmaster to rate a freelancer on a scale from 1-10. This system doesn’t take any of the more important variables into account, such as the complexity of the project.

The complexity of a project is important. A freelancer doing many simple and inexpensive jobs may have an excellent rating and do very good work for that kind of project. But, there is no guarantee they can handle a more complex project. Since the more complex projects cost more to get done, at least one freelance website has developed a rating system that takes complexity into consideration by using the dollar amount of the project as part of the rating formula to provide the webmaster with additional information. Thereby, hoping to make the webmaster’s decision a little easier.

Here are a couple of additional suggestions for hiring a freelancer in dubai, UAE:

Do Not Post a Budget !!!

“Why not?” you ask. If you post a budget, most freelancers will bid based on the budget amount. Unfortunately, a reasonable cost in one part of the world is insanely high or ridiculously low in another part of the world.

For example, you want someone to create a logo for you. Any decent graphic artist should be able to do that. So, it probably is safe to go with the lowest bidder. But, suppose you need a sales letter written for an Australian audience, do you really think someone is Eastern Europe or China will be able to do as good a job as a native Australian? Probably not, but, the cost of living is a lot higher in Australia and that individual would need to charge more for the same amount of work.

Do Not Hire Outside of Your Expertise.

But, you say, “If I was an expert, I wouldn’t need to hire someone else!” While that may be true, you do need to be sufficiently familiar with the area of work to be able to accurately describe the project, to know what and isn’t technically possible and know whether the bids you receive are reasonable for the amount of work involved.

If Necessary, get advice from someone who does know the area of work. Most sites provide a message board for you to negotiate with the bidders anonymously before you select one of them for the project. Pay careful attention the freelancer’s reaction to the project. The ideal candidate is one who loves his work. Ask them to describe similar projects they have done in the past or to provide samples of their work if feasible. Graphic artists, web designers and writers will be able to provide samples. Programmers and some others may not be able to provide samples but they may be able to provide references if they haven’t already been rated by other webmasters.

Following the steps above and keeping the lines of communication open will dramatically increase your chances of having a successful experience with your chosen freelancer. It can save you both time and money as well as help you manage your business in the most effective manner. After all, you face all of the same challenges in dealing with freelancers as you face in dealing with any employee, plus the additional challenges created by being in different geographic locations.

Good luck.

So how do I select an agency?

Most creative industries will require similar steps to those shown here but the focus is really on the web development industry. In general, bear in mind a few factors.
Firstly, your selection at this point will probably have a lasting effect for the coming 4-5 years at least – most likely even well beyond the period of time you are dealing directly with an agency.

Secondly, no partnership should ever be seen as a cost – it is an investment, and should be approached as one. Ultimately all management, strategic decisions and budgets will (and should) remain with you.

Thirdly, through all the meetings, sales literature and promises of great things, the most relevant factor is the portfolio and the clients who have paid for them. Take some time to look through the work and talk to the clients directly – what is the agency like to work with? What was the brief? How close to budget and timescale did the project work out? What is the relationship like on an ongoing basis?

“… no partnership should ever be seen as a cost – it is an invesment…”

Selecting a shortlist

You will need to draw up a list of potential “suitors” first so that you have a reasonable spread of names and contacts to start the process of selection. There are a number of factors that you may want to take into consideration at this point depending on you, your company, your market and your geography.

Market Focus

Do you feel that you will need specialised assistance and in-depth market understanding from your agency? This is more common in highly technical or litigious industries such as pharmaceutical and or tobacco. If so, you can avoid costly mistakes but are likely to pay a premium and have your shortlist as a very-shortlist.

Geographic location

Are you likely to require many regular meetings over the course of a year? If so, being able to “pop next door” is often a lot less costly than trekking across the country but you may not get the range of services you had hoped for in one place.

Capabilities

You will want to write down the key capabilities that you are looking for so that they can be matched against suppliers services. It is generally best to stay relatively flexible on your secondary requirements, as these can often be arranged with an agency through outsourcing.

Size of agancy

Do you prefer the larger, higher resourced agency in Dubai or a smaller, more flexible agency in Dubai? The general rule would be to find a creative development company othat reflects the size of tasks and projects you have in mind. If you have 5000 employees but your actual marketing and technical requirements are reasonably low, you are only likely to need an agency of 5-10 employees. If you have 100 employees, but you are very heavily driven by outsourced projects, you may be more suited to an agency of 50+ employees.

Finding Agencies

At this point it’s time to look for those names. You may find the UAE Yellow Pages, industry magazines, the Internet or your own personal contacts to be useful sources. Have a look at websites, ask for some literature and, if you wish, give them a call to find out rates, capabilities and any additional information you may find useful.
The key here is that though you may have an initial list of 12-30 names, you really need to narrow this down to 4-5 companies so that you are not deluged with responses to your brief. Again, this may be higher if your requirement is very large and smaller if the proposed project is very small.

Questions to Ask

1. Does their image make me feel comfortable?
2. Do they have the skills I need? Resources?
3. Can they display case studies of similar successful projects?
4. Did they attain the level of professionalism on the telephone, web and print that I would expect?
5. Are the initial costs acceptable?
6. Are there any value added services that may prove useful?
7. Would I take them home to meet Mother?

(OK, you’re still paying attention)

Proposing the brief

It is now time to match your shortlist with your brief and meet with the chosen few. An important note to make here is that there are two ways that an agency can respond to a brief. The first is to read through the brief, do some background research, think through some ideas and propose the best of them with an associated cost. The second is to create some designs and present them to you with an associated cost.

Costs tend to be done in one of two ways. Fixed cost (or project costing) gives you a single fee that you will pay providing that your requirements stay relatively close to the original brief. Estimated costing gives a target figure to the client but also transfers the liability for changes to the client on a per hour basis.

Our opinion (and this is a very emotive issue in the industry) is that proposals are best done with clearly thought out ideas that do not include “free” visuals. When we are commissioned by a new client, it is a granted that we will produce visuals – hand in hand with the client – which are high quality and suit the purpose to which they are intended.

The downside of “free pitching” is that the ultimate cost of this is often higher to the client i.e. if 3 agencies pitch for 3 jobs the odds are that each will get one job but 9 sets of visuals have been done – and there is only ever one person who foots that bill – the client.

Likewise, we project cost all proposals as we are confident in our budgeting and we know that all projects need some flexibility of resource within the budget. Estimates often look lower initially but they are rarely lower than fixed costs by the end of the project. However, there are many factors which influence the reasons for how you would like proposals responded to and as long as you state your preference, you should get some good proposals.

“The downside of “free pitching” is that the ultimate cost of this is often higher to the client.”

Decision time

There is little we can add at this point. The agencies that quoted for you will undoubtedly be professional, competitive, capable and very often it is down to that all important “feel good” factor you may have had with one of the agencies – a match made in heaven?

Make sure that you are managed well as a client, that you get what you require, represent good value and that you keep setting those targets at a high but achievable level!

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