| LED Digest 1901: Special Issue - Client Conflicts Part II |
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================================================== The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" pair Networks: The LED's Web Host Hosting and Domain Reg. from a Trusted Leader pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest adam,led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com ............................................... November 26, 2004 Issue #1901 ............................................... .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ====== NEW ====================== <Moderator Comment> --== Special Issue: Design Conflicts ==-- ~ Robert Bedard ~ David W. Starr ~ Veronica Yuill ~ Todd Sumrall ~ Mark Whitman ~ Beth Earle ~ Steve Pronger ~ Malcolm Bailey ~ Mark Medlicott ======== NEW ==================================== <Moderator Comment> Greetings LEDer, There's apparently a lot to say on this topic! And I've still got a few handfuls of posts waiting in the queue. This is a pretty fabulous discussion we have going here. Thanks to all the contributors so far! Happy holidays, Adam --------------------- From: Robert Bedard One thing that I have not seen clearly articulated on this thread is, that as a web developer, your clients often come to you with a new type of business that you are unfamiliar with. Your first site for say, a Gazebo manufacturer, probably involves a lot of TIME to get up to speed on the specifics of the Gazebo business: learning the trade terminology (buzz words) that people will be using to search for this site; learning the basics of how this type of business operates, whom the primary customers are, whom the competition is, how they market their product, etc. In other words, your first client within a certain field of endeavor pays for your basic knowledge in that area, and is it "fair" for successive clients to leverage that knowledge that was subsidized by one of their competitiors? Of course not. I tell you, if I was that first client that paid for a lot of the developer's time to get up to speed on my business, and then I see the developer use that critical mass of information that I essentially paid for, to facilitate one of my competitors, that would be the last time I would do business with THAT developer. Robert Bedard ------- next post -------- From: Dave Starr Some excellent advice here the past few days. I'm a user of web sites rather than a developer, but I have often thought of this issue when seeing a commercial site with a "designed by _ web company" visible on the site. This is good advertising in one way, but might well be a deal killer to a potential client who's a competitor of your client. I am a web user rather than a designer, I sell technology that is useful across a very broad range of businesses, many in competition with each other. I would never offer exclusivity and as a core value of my business, client A will never know from me anything about client B or client C, etc. Web design and maintenance is not quite the same as selling a self-contained black box and proprietary software, but it isn't all that different, either. Many 'in the know' web designers advocate finding a market niche like realtors, car dealers, lawyers, etc. and focusing on being a specialist in that niche. Would be kind of difficult to expect a guy / gal to design a site for one car dealer only and make the rest of his / her life's income off that one site. Since on the original problem case, client A does already know about client B, if client A can't be reassured by outlining your professional care regarding privacy, then I'd advise dropping A, and when you get client C as a follow on to client B just don't make any disclosures of confidential client information. Best regards David W. Starr, Customer Solutions SatViz Incorporated www.SatViz.com ------- next post -------- From: Veronica Yuill Hi Adam A really interesting debate -- I thought Kathy Wilson Anderson's comments [issue 1898] summed it up perfectly. I'd just like to add that there seem to me to be two different issues involved here: first the simple question of whether it's a conflict of interest to work for two clients in the same business, and second a question of ethics. In the particular case we're discussing, I think the question of ethics prevails. If I were in the situation that Mark has described, I would immediately have a gut feeling that I didn't want to work with the second client -- and over the years I've found gut instincts are worth following ;-) This is not because of any conflict of interest, it's just that the second client sounds distinctly shady and would end up causing far more trouble than he was worth. Like Tom Aman I wonder why he felt the need to call the first client and try to stir up bad feeling between you. I know how difficult it is to turn down new business when you are just starting out -- but taking the high ground always wins through in the end. Turn down this opportunity, and another, better one will turn up. Regards Veronica Yuill Archetype Information Technology Ltd http://www.archetype-it.com/english/ ------- next post -------- From: Todd Sumrall > [My client's] opposition... saw [their website, which I developed] > and immediately contacted me about designing them a website. > Today my original client rang to say... that he felt I was in a > very bad "conflict of interest" position. - Mark Medlicott, LED 1893 Yes, there is a conflict of interest IF prior to developing your client's web site you had no knowledge of his industry or business practices. If you typically develop websites for that particular industry, then NO there would be no conflict of interest. However, this day and age, common courtesy and good business sense cannot be counted on when you hire / contract a company or person to create stuff for you that will give them intimate knowledge of your business, that would hurt your business if that knowledge was used to create similar stuff for a competitor. That is why businesses should ALWAYS make sure they get a non-disclosure and non-compete signed before hiring a company or person to do anything that requires giving them intimate knowledge about anything pertaining to your business and industry. I hired a corporate copy writer a while back to create materials for me that will help my company reach sales objectives. This person is an expert in writing sales and ad copy and creating a brand for companies. She had a nice portfolio to back up her claim. But she knew nothing about my business. I knew I was going to pay her a lot of money to learn about my business and my competition, so she could write and make stuff for me that would work. So I had her sign those two contracts. I'm glad I did now, because I did not realize how much she really needed to know to write effective copy for me. She could really hurt my business by helping a competitor, because she is now almost an expert in my industry. I now have her under a long term contract as well simply because I have to much invested in her education to let her go. If you hire out writers and/or web developers that require a paid education from you so they can do their job, you will need them again and again, if you do not want to pay to school someone else over and over in the future. So you might as well prevent them from being able to help a competitor get them on your side anyway. Todd Sumrall Credit Card and Check Processing http://www.totalprocessing.net ------- next post -------- From: Mark Whitman > With SEO, you can't do justice to two clients with the same > keywords. If you have an ongoing relationship with one company, > I think you're making the right decision not to take on new > business within the same industry. Very few businesses > have that problem, however. - Michael Coley, LED 1896 Michael's absolutely right. The critical distinction is whether or not a website developer is simply creating a website or creating a website and also marketing it, particularly in search engines. When SEO / SEM enter into the picture, conflict of interest is a valid concern however, does Google (or any SE) refuse ads from companies that compete with current advertisers for the same keywords? Not in this lifetime! Do they get accused of conflict of interest for it? IMHO even marketing is not *necessarily* a conflict of interest assuming the marketer just does the best job possible and shows no favoritism, but of course this is highly debatable. I've been an independent website developer (and re-developer) / programmer / SEO / SEM / marketer for 9 years now and have lots of experience in all aspects of working with e-commerce customers both directly and through advertising agencies. As far as I can tell, the ad agencies I work with don't limit themselves to just one customer in any given industry, they take any and every customer they can get. They then turn to me to develop (or redesign for increased sales conversion) and sometimes market the customer's website. Do the agencies or their customers feel there's any conflict of interest? Not that I'm aware of. > I could care less if my web host does business with companies > similar to mine. I could care less if my graphic designer does > business with companies similar to mine. I could care less if my > competitors order business cards from the same company I do. Exactly, it's totally irrelevant and it's the same situation with website developers. I work with various graphic artists and have never known one to refuse to accept a customer because they have done work for some other customer in the same industry. And why should they, there's no conflict of interest at all. They just do the best job possible for all customers, the same is true of website developers. That's all customers are entitled to expect, that they're getting high quality output from the developer. If it were my customer whining to me about accepting a competing customer, that's what I'd point out. I'd also point out that ad agencies don't refuse competing customers and either do graphic designers (at least not the one's I'm familiar with). Mark Whitman ------- next post -------- From: Beth Ann Earle To "take the higher road" doesn't necessarily mean avoiding clients who compete against each other. The Internet marketing company I work for specializes in the plastics and rubber industry. As a result, I've written web sites for at least a dozen companies that are either actual or theoretical competitors. Because they come to us specifically for our plastics and rubber specialization, none of our customers are particularly surprised or threatened by this. Most of them feel better that we have experience in their particular process or material. Our integrity is well-known in the industry, which doesn't hurt, either. Thanks for all the great info, Beth Earle ------- next post -------- From: Steve Pronger > He's just designing web sites. Both can get a superb web site. > What he's doing for one doesn't have a direct impact on what he's > doing for the other. - Michael Coley, LED 1896 This has been a very interesting thread, with compelling arguments from both sides. However, Michael's comments raise another issue for me. If a client approaches you to design a website, what does he really need? Many would say "well, a website!". No. If you boil it right down, what they want is for you to help their business make money. A website is a means to an end. It may well be a "superb website", but does it get traffic, make sales, and have a measurable contribution to the bottom line of that business? If a web designer adopts the right mindset when taking on a project his work WILL have a direct impact on his client's competitor, because that's what his client hired him for. Steve Pronger http://www.stevepronger.com ------- next post -------- From: Malcolm Bailey Conflicts of interest have been an ongoing issue, but never a problem for my company. We have clients that are usually the largest in their sector (Video games, Travel, Movies, IT, FMCG). Because we have dedicated teams working with the different vertical market sectors there is bound to be a cross over in our client's interests and we have dealt with this in several ways. Example 1. We used to work for one of the top luxury cruise companies in the world, this account was worth over $1m annually. Following a new lead we ended up in discussions with one of their competitors, but crucially, at all times we were totally transparent to both parties and told them what was going on. (Honesty and openness is always the best policy.) It turned out that the new company would generate far more revenue for us in the long term, which we explained to our original client who agreed there would be a conflict of interests and understood the situation from a business perspective, so would be happy to source a new supplier. (We continued to work for them on an ad-hoc basis and to get them out of a few difficulties.) But the relationship ended positively and amicably. Example 2. For a couple of years we have worked for THE largest publisher in the home video game market. When we started working for them we already had a couple of much smaller publishers on our books. Our new client decided that there was a conflict of interest and that we should be exclusive for them in the PC / Xbox / PS2 market, as such they paid us a monthly retainer to keep that exclusivity. (Note that this wasn't as much as we would have made from having multiple clients but was a fair amount agreed by both parties.) After an exclusivity period of nearly a year, the client decided that we need no longer work exclusively on their behalf as a level of trust had been built. We have since taken on half a dozen more of the big players in the industry who all know we work for each other. There is no conflict of interest as we give 100% to all of these clients, no preference. At all times we are considerate and careful not to reveal any trade secrets about forthcoming games releases or marketing strategies. (The funny thing is that nearly all briefs from all these clients say that one of their objectives is Christmas No.1 - even when we are briefed on 5 titles from the same publisher ;-) Example 3. In the IT sector we have worked for years for IBM, Cisco and various other big players - all dealing with various forms of marketing. And whilst traditionally they are competitors it has never been an issue as they are such large corporations with a large diversity in their divisions who have a variety of agencies to draw on and internal resources that we have yet to come across a potential conflict. Now it may be that because we're a large agency playing on the global stage that we can easily work for competing clients and have the resources and client base to be able to turn work away if we feel their is a conflict of interests. But you must always do the right thing for you as a business and not be afraid to say no either to taking on a new client or the demands of existing clients. Thanks for reading, Malcolm Bailey ------- next post -------- From: Mark Medlicott [Mike started this thread in issue 1893] Well first let me thank all the contributors for some good suggestions. I do have signed contracts with my customers, but will now be adding a "non disclosure" clause. I have a creative brief which my clients start with and then a follow up, more intensive questionaire which usually helps answer, what I call minor, but to the customer seem to be major questions like colours, etc. In this case, I think that when it comes down to search engine positioning, inbound links, etc that arguments may arise. (It may be interesting to see how google reacts if I obtain the exact same links?) I am also applying the deposit scenario with the second client, even if it is to call his bluff, and make sure he is interested in a website and not just playing the opportunist. More to ponder and as Jean-Pierre "PETE" LeClair says "Separation of church and lattice is a lot easier....." Regards Mark Medlicott www.medlicottdesign.orcon.net.nz ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by pair Networks: pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains Copyright 1995-2004 Adam Audette. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Happy Holidays LEDer! My best to you. |
