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Out of context: Reply #65724
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- fourth0
my crazy client redesign story:
I'm on this pretty cool website redesign. My concepts were good, and the direction they picked is really cool. The only red flag is the Operations Manager is supposed to create ALL the content for the whole site. I thought kk weird, maybe she's a good writer.
It's been 3-4 weeks and we've had 3 "content meetings" where I say "I need this content, so I can create the imagery. make sure it fits in here" and she says "ok sounds great, I blocked off the next week to write it all."
The project deadline is today and I've received nothing. She's given me excuse after excuse. The past three days it's "my house flooded", "I've had to sleep at my friends house", "my charger is in my house and the property manager won't let me in so I have to buy a new one."
Finally yesterday she sent me something for one section of the site. Imagine a header, 3-4 sentences of text and an image off to the side (standard what every site looks like). Well the text she sent is 4 fucking paragraphs long for this one section.
And now I have to go present this shit today with Lorem Ipmsum and placeholder images to her and 3-4 others from the company and it's going to be so awkward. How the fuck do I handle this?
- You present it with Lorem Ipsum and if asked about why, tell them you haven't received copy. You don't owe her anything.detritus
- Just use the excuses you got as placeholder texts, it will work 100%.sted
- hahah, brilliantdetritus
- no stress - client missed their own deadline - put your feet up.fadein11
- relax until it all arrives in one batch, perfectly composed and they say we need it by tomorrow :)fadein11
- lol sted, just made my dayfourth
- what detritus saidmonospaced
- you could also be the fuckin' hero and write a little bullshit marketing diarrhea yourself, and show this woman that her job is so easy the web guy can do itmonospaced
- of course, charge for it, but then they just have to revise itmonospaced
- A similar thing happened to me on a freelance job two years ago. Contact wasn't including changes from her boss, so I'd send revisions and get asked where alli_monk
- her changes were. Eventually the contact fessed up she hadn't passed any of them along to me "so they can all be done at the end". After that she wasn'ti_monk
- the contact anymore.i_monk
- If you don't give guidance or control the content, this is what happens. Clients don't have the expertise, time or resources.monoboy
- You'll end up re-hashing a pile of shite at huge cost (time) to you and the end product will be total bobbins. Been there. Never again.monoboy
- huge time = more $monospaced
- Only if you make that clear from the outset. Otherwise, it's bohica time.monoboy