What clients REALLY want

They mostly want awesome. And also snacks. (Photo by rawpixel.com from Pexels)

When I talk to potential clients about what they want when they partner with a creative studio like ours, I’m surprised at how many of them fall into two distinct camps:

• The Hyper-Involved Client: These clients are looking for production partners who are ready to join their team like part of their own company. They want creative support, but they want to remain in a creative leadership role. They want to know that we’ll be able to work within their existing systems for management and internal communication. They want to walk beside their project every step of the way.
• The Barely Involved Client: They want to hire a team they can trust to walk away and create something beautiful and on-brand that is going to meet all the metrics their organization has set internally. They want it to be delivered on-time and on-budget, and they want it to make them and their organization look amazing. But they also want the responsibility for creative and execution to be on the vendor’s plate, because if they had the time (or the skills, or the head space) to make this wonderful thing, they would just have done it on their own.

Of course, when I’m actually working with clients, it turns out that what most of them really want falls somewhere in the middle of those extremes. That hyper-involved client, when they find out they are working with a competent and talented creative team they can trust, is happy to take a breather now and then. And that barely-involved client realizes that creative projects are fun and inspiring, and they decide they want to be a bit more involved than they realized at first.

So, how does one studio meet such a diverse and changing set of client desires?

• Strong communication. Setting up clear lines of communication with our clients is one of our primary goals. Having a single point of contact for project concerns is crucial, and consistently communicating throughout the project cycle, even when things are going swimmingly, is essential to creating an atmosphere that keeps clients feeling calm and in the loop, knowing that they’ve got all the information they need about the status of the project close at hand — whether they want a ton of information, or just a reassuring tidbit now and again.
• Great project management. There are tons of parts moving when you’re making a film, and our experienced team understands how to manage those parts and get great work done. And we tailor our project management approach to meet the needs of individual clients. We also understand that clients need management, too, so we make sure our clients understand when deliverables and feedback are required from them.
• High bar for quality. When you know the result of your project is going to be awesome, you can relax and enjoy the process of making it, no matter how involved you are on a day-to-day basis. At French Press we set the bar for quality of the work we do as high as we can. The success of French Press Films hinges on the success of the work we do for our clients, so they can be assured throughout the process that our focus is always going to be on making their branded creative great.

These three basic things are the foundation for creating an experience for our clients that meets them where they are. And, when they come back to us the next time, we’ll meet them again, even if they’re in a different place.