Branded Media 5: Project Management
“In theory, there’s no difference between theory and practice. But in practice, there is.” – Yogi Berra
In theory, good people with clear objectives and adequate resources will accomplish amazing things. In practice, this only happens on time and budget with active management.
This article contains a variety of tactics you can use to find efficiencies, manage volume, and keep your content projects on target. Assuming everything will go as planned is like playing the lottery: it might work for someone else. Instead, create a workflow that expects bumps and turns.
This article is the fifth article in series on content marketing as a means to build brand identity and loyalty in today’s increasingly crowded online world. The first four articles were An Overview, Vision, Idea Generation, and Scope & Assignment.
Each project must be managed within the context of the entire cycle
Project Management Overview
There are many efficiencies available to you when you produce higher volumes of content. At the same time, the cost of slop in the system increases substantially. Also, you need to manage your teams so they stay within the context of your larger business goals.
My experience is that everyone needs to be managed in one form or another. Everyone has their strengths and weaknesses, and your job is to get the most out of them. Typically, this means giving them clear objectives, reasonable deadlines and adequate resources for tasks they’re qualified to complete.
For example, I love working with specialists. They’re usually expensive, so hiring them strains the budget. To get the best of both worlds, I align the project so they can drop in, work their magic, and leave. The premium they’re paid per hour is offset by how focused their efforts are. Not a penny wasted.
With all content, 99% complete is 0% effective. That last 1% is the act of publishing it to the world. If it’s not live, it’s not doing anything for you. Projects are easy to work on, but hard to finish. There’s always more that can be done, more editing, tweaking, refining. But we’re in business, and perfect is the enemy of the good.
The Canon over the Piece
Your goal should be to consistently publish content that is valuable to your customers. Each piece must be good enough to contribute to your canon of works. More than that and you’re wasting resources. Remember, you’re seeking ongoing engagement with your market through the canon as a whole. There’s a limit to what any single piece can do.
The rest of this article details tactics that maximize the volume of good content while keeping your publishing on schedule at the lowest cost per unit.
The key elements of the entire Production Cycle
Scheduling and Travel
Planning is your friend here. The further out you can plan, the more you can coordinate and multi-purpose trips, crews, and shoots. It’s easy to get impatient and fall into a “just-in-time” mentality, but I encourage you to fight this. The payoff for being disciplined in scheduling ahead of time is phenomenal.
Create a matrix of people, projects, and deadlines. Use different colors so you can see patterns and gaps at a glance. You’ll be amazed at how many ways there are to coordinate people and tasks once it’s laid out like this.
Also, look at all the needs of the project. You can often have graphics, animation, features, photographers, illustrators, and/or designers working in parallel. Getting them started early has cost benefits as they can work around more urgent projects without overtime fees.
Gear Assignment
It’s easy to balk at the cost of equipment, but there are many times where an extra 10% spent on equipment can save a lot more in later time savings. An example is renting an extra camera to be locked off wide (unmanned) during the shoot. This will give your editors something they can default to at any point, a quick solution they’ll appreciate over and over.
Creatives typically want more and better gear, and to some degree they’re right. Certain additions to a shoot make an irrefutable difference. Your job is to make sure the gear fits the scope of the project. Fight scope creep wherever possible, but sometimes a little extra spend can make a tremendous difference. For example, if you’re already doing a multiple camera shoot, get a tripod with wheels for one of the cameras (and make sure your operator knows how to use it). This provides gentle movement to one of your primary shots, which adds a level of production uncommon outside big budgets.
Gear Rental vs Owning
How much gear you should own? On the video side, because you’re publishing a consistent volume, you’ll want to own at least a basic setup for internal production (two cameras, two lav mics, editing system). This will be your go-to equipment for standard shoots. Plus, there will always be last minute projects, and you need to be able to move quickly. Unless your volume is substantial, rent all the rest of your equipment along with operators. You’ll always get the right blend of quality and type, and your total cost will be far below what it would take to own everything.
On the article side, most of the equipment requests would come around visual support for the article. Invest in a good system for graphic design and photo editing separate from your video editing. You’ll definitely want them running in parallel.
Still cameras are so good these days relative to the cost that you should own at least one. Even amateur photographers can get usable images in a pinch. In terms of artificial lighting, you have to really watch the value proposition. A great photographer can often work magic with natural light and reflectors. There are definitely times you want artificial lighting, but there are often much cheaper workarounds.
Video Production Logistics
How you run each day of shooting makes a huge difference in the overall efficacy of your production. Carefully walk that fine line between maximizing the outcome of the shoot and avoiding overtime and additional expenses. First, spend a little extra on a more experienced producer or production manager. You’ll save ten times the increment in avoiding extra costs.
Then, throughout the shoot, keep an eye on the clock. Have your priorities clearly established and be prepared to triage as needed. There are times when what you have is good enough and you need to move on. There are others where it’s not, and if you don’t keep going, that portion of the shoot will be wasted. There is no strict formula for this, but make sure you have a competent person paying close attention to both ends of this spectrum.
Have an intern take notes. They document the topics covered, any special takes, and comments made by the producer. These notes will help ensure you cover everything you planned, and save many hours of searching later.
Article Rough Drafts
You want to set up your writing workflow to minimize wasted effort. The more you can define the scope, themes, and desired lengths ahead of time, the more efficient the writing process will be. If you’re working with experimental material by design, have your writer(s) submit very early rough drafts or even outlines to you for review. Your feedback will save your writers a ton of time.
With all articles, you want to manage the editing and rewriting process. All your writers should submit drafts as a matter of course. Writers can be obsessive about elements that aren’t going to be noticed by your customers. You might find that an article they consider a rough draft is perfectly adequate for your customers with a little clean up. And because you have a lot of other articles to get published, you can set them loose on the next one.
Good writing is good thinking presented concisely (free of clutter). The first 90 pages of William Zinsser’s On Writing Well describe this well. Cut every unnecessary word and idea from every article.
Video Rough Cuts and Feedback
With video, editing is where all the magic happens. There are so many ways to slice and dice the same content. Give your editors very clear feedback about what each video should accomplish. Review rough cuts for the core story, and eliminate unnecessary elements. Also, sign-off on the content edits before they tweak cuts, audio and color. Re-editing content after refinement is a frustrating waste of time.
As with articles, you may find your editors worried about aspects your customers will never see. Once the video is good enough, be done and have them start the next one.
Article Graphics and Layout
Share the earliest reasonable draft of each article with your visual and design folks so they can get a jump on their elements. That said, make sure you’ve completed all the editing and proofing before giving the “final” to layout. Copyediting an article that has already been laid out is a waste of your designer’s time and should be avoided whenever possible.
Make sure your articles can be skimmed easily. A busy reader should be able to scan the headings, pictures, captions, pull quotes, and conclusion to get the core message. Your layout should also create easy navigation to find specific details.
Respect Your Team
In my experience, media professionals love their work. Good management keeps people busy, happy, and at their best. Poor management wastes time, and causes distraction and frustration. Keep your schedule by holding everyone accountable to each other. Finish each element and stage on time and people will work increasingly hard not to be the blip on a smooth process.
Conclusion
Professionals are happy to work with deadlines and milestones, but everyone needs clear expectations and timely feedback. Build matrices to manage individual deadlines within the full spectrum of ongoing projects and to find efficiencies. Provide adequate resources and set reasonable deliverables with frequent touch points. You’ll find yourself with a happy crew eager to do their best work for you.
This article is the fifth in a series. See the previous articles: Overview, Vision & Value-Add, Idea Generation and Scope & Assignment. The next installment covers the final phase of The Production Cycle in detail (Approval & Publishing).