A bit of housekeeping with the Aquent folks. A while back I commented on a video they produced describing Lana Rigsby’s work for Dell computer. Looks like I misinterpreted Ms. Rigsby’s comment and I wanted to give the Aquent folks a chance to explain. Here’s the email from Matthew T. Grant, PhD, Director of Talent Marketing for Aquent which is self-explanatory (if Lana want’s to comment I’ll be happy to print it):
I work in the marketing department at Aquent and, through a Google search (for “Aquents blog”) came across your post (from December 2004) entitled “Aquent’s Spoof on Creative Genius” in the “Maneuver Marketing Communique” part of your site. Referring to Lana Rigsby’s cryptic comment that Dell told her that, “the time to develop and rollout a new product was a small percentage of the time it takes to develop and roll out the communications around that product,” you said that you sent an email to Dell to find out what was up with this. Did you ever hear back from them?
I don’t know if this helps, but it was my understanding that what she meant, or, perhaps, what Dell meant, was that the life-cycle of new technical products was actually shorter than the time it takes to develop the communications around them. In other words, the life-cycle of a product, once its been developed, may actually represent a fraction of the time it takes to create the technical manuals, packaging, advertising, etc. associated with it.
This seems more believable to me and actually gets to Ms. Rigsby’s point. If the life-cycle of a product is six weeks, and creating the communications takes three months, you better have the latter process (especially the approval part of it) sewn up. If you don’t, you’ll quickly eat up that life-cycle time with missed deadlines etc.
I realize it’s been a while since you posted your thoughts on this, but I hope you don’t mind me sending these clarifying comments even at this late date.
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