How to Quickly Fix a Marketing Meltdown

In the end things will be fine. Things will work out. The only thing that will suffer will probably be your expectations of perfection. Which, if you're a perfectionist, which sometimes we delve into that culture a little bit. Um, that's a little bit. Yes.

Welcome to the marketing team of one podcast, where we have conversations about the issues one person marketing teams face when trying to meet their goals with limited time and budgets. Now here's your hosts, Eric and Mike. Eric, what are we talking about today? Well, things have been pretty busy around here.

pretty busy around here. And there's always the risk of things flying off the handle when things so many moving parts with so many different projects. And so I thought it would be kind of interesting today to talk a little bit about a topic. We'll just call it damage control. And hopefully that's kind of an umbrella phrase that applies to a lot of different projects, web, email, digital stuff, as well as maybe print and other marketing type of things.

So do you, uh, I mean, I, I essentially think of it as like when you've got all these different things going on, things are really busy, I always use the word spinning plates, right? So what do we do if one of those plates breaks, like it, we can't keep it spinning? Is that, that kind of what we're thinking here?

Or is it when we see it wobbling? Like, like what, what type of damage are we talking about here? Yeah, it's really, that's a great question. Cause damage could mean a lot of different things. I mean, there's actual damage. I mean, there, there could be things like financial problem, you know, maybe something, you know, is going to cost you a lot of money.

That's obviously the worst case scenario. Uh, we could talk about things like missing deadlines, which. that's also could be a terrible thing. Um, mistakes or problems that happen along the way. Potentially those are other things that that could be damaging. Um, you kind of have to weigh it. You also have to kind of have go into these projects, especially when you've got a lot of them.

Um, I think it always helps to have a healthy dose of, um, hey, when things go wrong. Not if it's when yeah, because there's there's different levels of things going off the rails It's just a matter of you know, trying to be as proactive as possible and get ahead of those issues and problems Clarify what what those could be what those landmines could be working maybe with your vendors maybe with leadership And, uh, just trying to get ahead of things before maybe even outline right when the project starts, like, okay, these are potential risks to the project.

I think that's something that some project management people work on is identifying what those risks could be. Gosh, when you're really, you get your head down doing a bunch of stuff, though, thinking about what all the, some people don't have time to kind of think about those potential what ifs, you know, like what to do, even the best planners.

There's going to be some fallout, right? Like, yeah, so ideally you're starting off when you're doing your planning, you're kind of identifying some of these risks, but you're also understand that along the way that there could be problems that arise really late in the game. And you've kind of need to understand what to do about that and how to communicate that to leadership and your vendors, if you're working with vendors and things like that.

So when you've done all the planning and you've done all the communicating and things still fall off the rails. You need to kind of identify what is the risk, I think, and how big is the risk or the damage, maybe not risk, but the damage. And then think about strategically how you're going to fix this, maybe work with your vendors, maybe work with leadership for a plan B worst case scenario.

Um, sometimes you can't control some of those stuff. Like I know what trade shows sometimes. You got to really plan on coordination of the delivery of the things. So you could get through the whole project, get everything done, get everything quote on time, and then there's a snowstorm. And FedEx drops the ball and doesn't get it to the trade show in time.

Trade shows are really sensitive to when you can actually have materials delivered. There's a, you know, a few hour window in there when you can have your things there because there's People, there's unions that need to be involved in moving things in and out and stuff like that. So those are difficult things to try to mitigate and you need to hopefully be aware that that could, things out of your control can throw things into the, you know, fire pit.

What are some things that Where are some things you can do if things start to slide if you're this, you know, You're in the middle of your boss and a vendor and everything What are some things you can do as you start to see things kind of slide a little bit? Well, one of the things that I do is I triage the the moment and I look at what the what the issue is that's brought up immediately and look at okay, how bad is this and Think kind of outside of the realm of what?

What's going on to kind of get outside of it a little bit to see if there's other creative solutions to fixing this One of the first things that I do is I try to communicate obviously keep the channels of communication as open as possible But I don't Immediately, I wouldn't go right to leadership with these issues.

I don't think that there's you do yourself any justice by immediately drawing in your boss or leadership on these issues if it's something that you and the vendor or you yourself can figure out and fix. So you end up, you know, crying wolf a lot. It tends to diminish the effect of later conversations that you might need to have.

So I would say hold back on communicating some of this stuff to leadership and really try to triage it and fix it yourself. Um, There's probably a fine line there though, right? You don't want to like get too buried and then too, too far gone. Yeah, right. Like then, then you'd be. Almost worse. Like, why didn't you come to me sooner with this?

You know? Yeah. So there's a, there's a art to that, right? Yeah. Knowing that, and it's, it's, I guess if you're working with a vendor trying to really work with 'em to understand the. ramifications of what's going on. If they can't meet a deadline or there's a problem in delivery of maybe they have a piece of equipment that broke down or something like that, um, try to help problem solve around it and think outside the box a little bit on some of these solutions to like you could, if it's with a vendor, maybe bring in another vendor.

If there's enough time. Um, I think too, if you look at the problem and then you try to break it down into its smaller parts and see where you can fit in to try to solve some of these things and maybe get things unstuck, maybe it's materials that somebody can't get, maybe you need to go out and get, um, you know, breaking the problem down into manageable chunks is a big part of trying to solve this, working with whoever is involved in it to try to it.

Help them help you figure things out as quickly as possible. I'm thinking more in the delivery deadline realm of things. Um, that's what the context is for a lot of what I'm mentioning now. But there's other issues too that sometimes come up with technical things. Maybe there's errors that everything's done, everything's delivered, and then that word on the cover is spelled wrong, or that's not the photo, or that photo's wrong, or something that didn't get caught.

until it's way too late. And then you need to kind of think about, Oh, gosh, how do we, how do we fix this? You know, and there's, I think it's important to be, um, very, when a project is nearing completion, it's really important to start over communicating and being very vigilant as to quality control issues and making sure that everybody checks off on things so that, you know, there's a clear overview.

Thank you. Line of communication, documented, ideally it's email, stuff like that. Getting approvals from leadership and people that, um, you know, are paying the bills. It's important that they see and check off on things themselves. Understand that that might take time and you need to maybe build that into schedules as well, but I think it's really important that those people are involved in the Approval process when things are getting near the end because that's tends to be where things obviously Damage can enter that helps prevent future damage control, right?

Like like So you're not surprised afterwards, but like technically there's a few things you could do that don't make you look as professional as When you entered the project or whatever that was There there are some first thing, you know, I I'm walking through it I'm walking through scenarios that I've experienced in my career.

And the first thing that I do is I panic and freak out. And it's very important to just stay calm. I think that's a big part of this equation is you're gonna function a lot better knowing and understanding that things will work out. You can be confident that they may not meet the ultimate standards that you set out at the beginning, but there is a solution for things at the very end.

Now let's just say a scenario would be like a cover of a book or a brochure that you're handing out at a show or at this event, and it comes back and it's wrong, or there's a page. missing or something like that. There's always things that you can work with the printer. They've experienced these issues before and they may do things and they're not.

Super professional looking, but they do fit the bill where they could either print out a sticker. I've seen those situations where we've printed out stickers and put them over maybe a piece of data or a piece of information on a cover or inside of a book. And we've just sat there and put stickers on 200 brochures.

Um, that's obviously not the ideal solution, but it It definitely mitigates the damage that could occur if there's some wrong content in there. We've glued in pages, you know, we've had them do that, um, you know, when it's printing issues or production issues, work with that vendor and understand that they've probably experienced something like that and they can probably fix it.

Yes, it won't meet the standards that, We're originally part of the project expectations, but it will fit and it should fit the prop problem You mentioned the state of calm when things are burning around you Is that are is how do you get there? Is that drug drug induced? Is it? Meditation like that would help.

Yeah. Yeah, so you're talking self care tips. You're looking to me for self care tips And yeah, yeah, I mean like skills. Yeah, like what? Well, you know, I've made a lot of mistakes so I've You know, I'm pretty good at it now. Um, so that, that helps. I've got a healthy perspective on things. You've done a healthy amount of like, um, following in my wake of damage that I've created too, right?

Picking up the pieces. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And cleaning things up and everything like that. Yeah, it's a great experience. You've got a lot of reps. bad things happen, it would be really easy to like spiral out and get really stressed and like blame yourself. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Turn it all inward. Yeah. Like what, what are you, what do you think is some things or some tricks you've done to kind of like, well, I understand that just mistakes happen and then it's good to have a healthy perspective and understand that these things happen.

And that's why I say like talking to your vendor. That helps because they will have a solution like I, you know, this happened two years ago or whatever, you know, so they can kind of calm the panic a little bit because it definitely will elevate your blood pressure and you just start spiraling and blaming yourself or blaming others.

And it's really important to just kind of breathe, take a deep breath, maybe go for a quick five minute walk. That really helps to just kind of center yourself, allow you, if you have to scream it to heavens, then you have that opportunity. Maybe you're doing it outside of the office, um, but understand that it's not really important.

To start blaming people at all, including yourself, have that initial panic and go through it, but come back to it and understand that in the end, things will be fine, things will work out. The only thing that will suffer will probably be your expectations of perfection, which if you're a perfectionist, which.

Sometimes we delve into that culture a little bit. Um, that's a little bit, yes, understand that. Sometimes what we're doing is pretty complicated and there's a lot of people and a lot of moving parts that, you know, one little mistake here or one missed email or phone call there can really start to. Drive things off the cliff a little bit.

And so, um, that's why being ultra vigilant on some of those things, especially at the end and making sure and checking and double checking and is really critical for that. But like I said, that mistakes still happen and you can't blame yourself if you know that you've been aware and you've been doing your best to try to get things finished.

It's going to be okay. Things are going to eventually work out. Like I said, we've had things happen where maybe somebody missed something on a printer's proof or, um, You know, a presentation that went out and, um, you know, it got fixed and maybe the fix wasn't perfect, but it, it, you'd be surprised how little the outside world maybe notices some of these things that you think are life changing errors, you know, on things, obviously, if it's something that's, you know, there's legal issues around, you printed something that is completely false, then you need to You know, do your best to get out there and destroy whatever evidence you can, but I can't say that I've had a lot of those situations in my, in my life.

You know, most of the time we can mitigate and then fix and maybe something doesn't get delivered and you had four things that you were going to give away in this gift bag, but two of them didn't get printed in time. Maybe talk, talk to your vendors and maybe get a discount, you know, that helps heal the pain a little bit if there's, if they miss a deadline, if it's something that's super critical that.

You know, well, we're not going to do this trade show again, and I don't need 10, 000 pens, you know, so, you know, do your best to try to financially blunt the Damage there a little bit. I think on the self care side of things. It'd be really If we, you get so immersed in these projects or this, these campaigns or whatever you're working on to try and like, and that damage control thing comes into play.

One thing I like to do is, um, just remind myself that, um, in the marketing space where nobody's lives are in our hands. That's a good point, right? Like what's the That's a very good point. I mean, yes, there might be some. Like you're saying, like there might, if it's like threat of a lawsuit, that feels like the absolute worst case scenario of like, and it, and what does that come down to?

It's a financial thing. Yeah. You know, like people move on. We're not dealing with people's lives. I think it's just, it can be really easy to like, Oh, it's the most important thing to you right here and everything. But then in the grand scheme of things, yeah. People might not notice it at all. Uh, I was talking to somebody after an event and they were, they were just pointing out like I was an attendee of the event and I was, I thought it was perfect.

Everything was great. It was a really good event. But you talk to the person in charge of putting it on, they knew all the little things that went wrong. Like nobody notices that. Nobody knows that. Like remember that like, you know way more about it than anybody on the outside will too. Some people may not even notice.

And they're not going to put nearly as much weight on whatever that issue was that you are in. You can move on. I think of the event space. Yeah, the event space is definitely one of those situations where there's so many complicated things that need to take place. It might only be an experience that lasts for two or three hours.

As the audience member, you don't have the time to process all those things, just, you know, the bare minimum is maybe overwhelming as much as it is in those little tiny things that were missed. Yep. Fairly irrelevant and not missed just by you. Yeah. Potentially. I talked a lot about events, printing, things that are tangible, things that have gone wrong and, you know, in those kind of worlds.

Talk about the digital. You work a lot with digital marketing and email marketing, um, landing pages, websites. Obviously. you know, websites are a little bit easier because if there's a problem, you can go back and edit it live in a sentence, right? So you can react really quick. Part of that is just being vigilant when things are launched and having the client QC things before their launch and approve everything, which is, you know, sometimes time permits.

What are some of the things that you've run into as far as things on the digital side that we need to be aware of? If we're talking about like launching a website or something like that, there's so many things that, that, I mean, we have like pre flight checks of things that we're going to be doing, like to check to make sure everything goes right.

But, um, inevitably, um, there's something that's not on that checklist or. Something happened. We're so wrapped up in this is our biggest project. This is the thing that people are not good. People are, we have this almost expectation that people are sitting at their computer, hitting refresh on this website every two minutes to see if a new version is going to come on.

And that's just the only people doing that are the people who are on the project, making sure that they're trying to get it launched. Right. So. I think having a healthy perspective on that is something that's more like a soft skill. That's not really super technical, you know, talk a little bit about some of the things that I mean, because there, there are.

Sometimes you're building websites with sensitive information that might need to be firewalled or protected behind maybe a membership, uh, platform or something like that. I mean, those are the things that you're probably hyper vigilant about, right? That's the stuff that's really important and you're probably hyper focused on that.

The damage control is that, hey, that we found stuff that doesn't pass muster. We didn't, you know, based on all of our testing of things. That we'd be rushing it and a lot of it would be. Communication about like, well, here's the risks. Here's what's, here's what's wrong. Here's Full disclosure. This is what's what's here.

This is where we're at. We can launch now and the in try and paint a picture of what would happen if we did or if you, you know, know that most of these things are things that could be fixed quickly. Right? Is it a big enough issue to hold up the launch of this whole thing? Or do we We're Launch with this awareness that these things are there and then work towards fixing it, you know, Well, and that's, I guess that's the advantage too.

Like on any report or a publication, it's like, Oh, well just don't print chapter five. Like with a website, you can just turn off those pages and be like, okay, we'll figure that out. And yeah. We talked about websites, they seem to be a little bit easier to mitigate because the sensitive things that could go wrong are, those are handled almost at the front part of the project, so that it's the focus of the project.

Um, and you can turn things on and off. Yeah. Emails are different though, because those go out one time thing and sometimes it's first impression type dynamics that are going on. I mean, what, what are some of the issues that you've seen with maybe an email campaign that's gone out that's maybe gone off the rails or doesn't work?

Oh gosh. contrarian view of things, or do you want the, um, serving the client, uh, view of things? Because they're two different, uh, answers, really. How about from the perspective of that marketing team of one person that's in charge of sending the email campaign? Maybe there's a typo. Maybe there's the link doesn't work.

Maybe it has a title from a previous email campaign that you forgot to change that one thing in MailChimp. Um, you gotta let it go. In most cases, that's my contrarian view, but like, like. Oh, that sucks. All right, we got to move on. You can't pull emails back. You can't do anything to change it. And honestly, some people might not even notice that stuff.

Some people will. But you know, like, um, Sometimes it's almost worse to send another email. Hey, you know what? We, uh, in the last email we sent, we misspelled this word. Here's a new It's like so much more work. It's so much like, like, I think just embrace that There's, that humans are behind all this stuff, and there might be mistakes, and most marketing emails, I'm sorry, aren't that important to put all that, all that in.

So maybe in the world of AI, those mistakes actually identify you as a human being, and you're just gonna be that much more in love with the brand, because you realize, hey, a robot didn't write this. Right, yep. A person did, and they messed up this, yeah, it's not perfect. You have to do it when it's a mechanical issue, like a link doesn't work, or something's broken that way potentially, but if it's Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean like if you're providing, like if the main call to action there is like, is, Hey, check out this, you know, go to our store for 20 percent off and the link doesn't work.

Yeah. You know, like, maybe you need to In that case, I think you just need to expose your humanity a little bit more and, and own up to it and don't, don't get too corporate with it. Don't get too, like, I think the best, some of the best emails I have seen some of those where they're like, you know, like, Hey, uh, we messed up.

We're so, you know, yeah, like not. Unfortunately due to

Say we messed up. Hey, thought you might want this link. Here you go. It's kind of, it reminds me, yeah, it kind of reminds me of the same issue with Oh, the wheels are starting to fall off. I'm going to immediately call my boss or my leader, you know, head of this department don't maybe don't yet, like see if you can figure it out and like, is it really that critical?

Do you need to like throw yourself under a bus just because of something that maybe you're not even responsible for, but. The person who, or the group that wasn't, couldn't pull it off, you know, then obviously it goes back to that point of like, figure out where that fine line is before you throw yourself under the bus and realize that maybe you don't have to.

Yeah. Yeah. I think this is the way it plays out. An email is kind of scheduled through something. It gets sent out, and then inevitably somebody who wasn't supposed to get that email. Gets it and then says hey, what is this all about? And then the people who sent it go Oh, man, we we targeted the wrong list or we do it like a human would don't don't like don't try not to get too Buried in the yeah, I think it's more endearing if you just kind of like say hey, you know what like, you know what?

This email platform we're using is kind of overly complicated throw them under the bus. There you go, you know That's a good technique blame others blame others. I like that one a lot. Yeah, I use it all the time Um, but you know like hey, you know what? I guess I fully didn't understand how this thing works and I unfortunately sent this to you Sorry about that We're gonna make sure it doesn't happen again.

Like just I don't know. Hey, there's nothing you could do. It's out there That's the thing about emails Like you said you can't pull them back or change them or edit them or anything like that So it's so many things that we do it is out there and we don't have control over it once it's out there and I think you just got to throw your hands up and kind of Evaluate how big of a deal this is Keeping in mind that nobody's lives are in our hands when we're doing this stuff.

Replay all the steps that went down. Especially towards the end when things started to go off the rails. Identify working with your partners on, if you were working with partners on that, what can be done earlier ahead of that. Here's the thing, it's like, you're gonna remember that for the rest of your life probably.

Whether it's conscious or unconscious. So you're always gonna have this kind of You know, not to say the more mistakes you make the better you get, but you do tend to, Oh, you totally would. Your radar is like on full stop, you know, uh, next time you go into those projects. So it does help to kind of just go back and revisit all the steps and see, maybe there was areas where things could have been communicated better or clearer or sooner, uh, and outlined better.

I think it might be healthy to. When you look at that and one thing we try and do is like ask more positive questions in the front end like how did How do we feel like the overall thing like forget all the well, that's circumstances that went into it But like did it meet our goals overall like yeah that you might have been bumpy getting there But did did we reach our ultimate goal?

How do we feel about it now like now that we've got some distance in the from the pain, right? You know, how do I feel about it? I think that's really helpful And then being able to go back into like, okay, what were the steps in the process? Like what, what could we have changed? What can we do next time to prevent this type of thing?

What are, and then trying to make that, make that after action thing more of the part of the process is I think super helpful and can help. Prevent that damage. And, and as a marketing team of one, you're maybe stuck in the middle between leadership and a vendor and kind of responsible for deliverables but relying on other people.

You might have to do two post more, two after action. Yeah. Where one's with the vendor and partner and then you have to, this is another one of those managing up things where you're going to want to talk to the leadership because you brought up a good point. The leadership might be, yeah, that was amazing.

We had a great, we had so many people sign up or we had so many new customers. Okay. Well, if that's the result of something that was a problem or a mistake, or there was, there was really no damage there then, you know where the damage was. And, but that's a really good thing. Cause you get the perspective of maybe people in leadership that kind of polish off that rough edge of what you thought was such a terrible experience.

Yeah. And maybe you don't need to pull them into the meeting or something like that. Like I, I try and do this every once in a while. It's just kind of reflect on that on things I've done. Without bringing other people in. Just kinda my own little, mm-hmm . Like, okay, what happened there? Like what did I, what maybe was there something else we could have done?

But I like, and it's hard sometimes when, especially for certain people, like you can get so focused on the negative, it's hard to like think back to the positive, but like you just kinda like look at the outcome and we're like, Hey. It's pretty darn good. This is where, kind of getting back to that self care thing, it might really help to have kind of a mastermind group or a group of mentors or a mentor, a single mentor, or just a person and maybe a different company that does a similar job as you, maybe.

Can go blow off steam with that person and maybe get some stuff off your chest to see how they deal with similar issues or problems. Cause that's always really helpful to know that you're not alone in this effort. Are you a big proponent of having a dedicated couch for said interactions? Hello, I'm sitting on it.

I mean, this isn't just used for a podcast. There's all the tears stains are really off camera. They're more over here, which you can't see. Yeah. Um, but those are, you know. Yeah. We're going to have to replace that cushion. Yeah, surrounding yourself with people who can kind of offer perspective. And I had something recently where I was like, I, I was kind of in the weeds on a problem that happened.

And I was letting it bother me more than, than I should. And then. You know, my wife said, well, what, what happened in the end? And I'm like, oh, well, it worked out. Everything's good. And she's like, what are you worried about? Yeah. Yeah. What am I worried about? A hundred other things, not this anymore, you know, and then.

You realize that you're just eating yourself alive in a sense, which is not healthy. That's not a sustainable behavior. You really need to be able to either completely emotionally disconnect, which is also not healthy, but it's a balance of really just giving yourself some grace a little bit, giving the people on your team some grace, understanding that, and hopefully they're doing their best.

That's the thing about working with vendors and great vendors is that. Um, you know that they're pulling out all the stops and they'll walk over fire for you just like you would for them and you try to do for them, grow a memory for that pain inside of your head and it will make you vigilant against that specific issue in the future, which is great and is very, but it tends to be very specific and so it's good to kind of measure that a little bit more with the realities.

Thank you. of the entire project and understand that the potential for another thing that you had no idea that maybe was perfectly solved in the first time it went around may be the thing that throws you off the next time around and understand and be open to the idea that a lot of when working in complex projects and scenarios, just because it worked the first time to may not mean it works the next time around and just Just so you're vigilant on that, this speaks to that being hyper focused on that one thing that went wrong.

If you're, if you're too hyper focused on that, have a balanced approach to it and understand that you need to be, just stay focused on all the different things and understand that. I think having a healthy perspective on its place, like whatever that thing that happened is, right? Like, if you're doing the same thing over and over again, and the latest time something went wrong.

Was it even something that, is it something you need to react to? Is it something you need to change to? Like maybe there's another influence there. Like, can you look back at the other stuff? Like, well, every other time we've done this, it's worked out fine. You know what, maybe this is an anomaly and you know, maybe there's other, Oh, there's an outside influence here, here, here, here, my, which affected this.

That's only happened once. We don't need to get, this isn't a sky is falling situation. Yeah. The other problem is, you know, the next, let's say it's an event that happens every year or something, or a marketing campaign that needs to go out every three months or quarter or whatever. You're going to have, the next time that comes up, you're going to be a little bit more jittery and more nervous and a little bit more freaked out about things, which also stresses you out.

Just knowing that it's coming up in the calendar could really set you off a little bit too. So, I think having that perspective of going back and trying to learn. Get ahead of it, maybe even do some pre work months before the project even launches is probably, you know, maybe you need to look at a different vendor or partner.

Um, look at somebody that can be a little bit more problem solving, helpful in that problem solving side of things. You need to understand yourself and have a healthy perspective so that it doesn't eat you alive. Cause that will tear you up if you can't deal with that. What perceived stress it's like you're already stressing out because you know, you're gonna be stressing out kind of a dynamic Yes, it's just figure out healthy ways to deal with that.

Go run a marathon go talk about stressful Lift 300 pounds. I don't know, you know, whatever people like to do. Yeah, that relieves stress go dance Maybe yeah, is that I don't do that in my head. I do I guess yeah, I dance and sing Triple threats Wow. Yeah. I dance, I sing, I act. What kind of dance are you doing in your head when you're, like, what genre?

It's mostly, like, electronica. Like, rave music. Okay. Yeah. I mean, it's pretty obvious. You all got a bunch of LED lights all around. Right. Teddy bear backpacks. Yeah. Yeah. Just spinning and, yeah. Oh, man. We need to. Do we know anybody who can recreate this? no. No, no, like I'm, through art or something like that, like I'm not asking you to dress up or anything like that, but I see a dramatic reenactment of this in your head.

I think the worst scenario that I ever stepped into was, it was an annual report project. We were having it printed in New York. We're in California, so that's far away. Last I checked on the map, it is. I think, still, still far away. So, I designed the painting report, everything got through it, everybody looked at proofs, everybody loved it, I went to the press, I got flown out to New York, I got put up on Times Square, I was in this amazing hotel, and car service, and all the, all the bells and whistles, I was top of the Top of the pops, you know, I was the man, you know, could go anywhere, had my own car that would drive me anywhere I wanted, you know, I went to the press check Because they wanted me to press check it.

So I press checked it in Hoboken, New Jersey. Yeah, Jersey Thought it was amazing. You know, made a few moves on the press check like you do, you know, press checks. That's why you go do them, you know, make it a little darker, make it a little lighter, make it more yellow, blah, blah, blah. All that went to the press check, brought back my samples.

Cause when you leave a press check, you get to take stuff back with you. And uh, at the time my boss, I brought it back and showed it to him and he immediately said that the type was too light and he could barely read it. And I thought, Oh my gosh, this is the end of the world. I mean, this whole thing, it was months in the making and all this stuff.

And then I was raked over the coals for it a little bit and I was just so sad, but that's one of those perspective things that it's like, did the client complain about it? Did no, they loved it. Everything was great. Never heard anything. But accolades for that project. So it was one of those things where I was thought I had completely failed, but checked in with everybody else on the project.

One person thought it was not optimal, but most everybody else, everybody else on the project really loved it. And so it was kind of one of those weird perspective things that I was riding high, riding extremely low, and then brought it back out of the, the ditch and, uh, It was one of the more fun projects I worked on.

I would have thought it would have went from high to low as you went from Times Square to Hoboken. Oh, yeah. Don't pick on our fan base in Hoboken, Mike. I mean, we must have dozens of people from Hoboken listening. What's a more dated, uh, reference? Top of the pops or press checking an annual report? Yeah.

Top of the pops. That's a British thing, isn't it? I think maybe I heard that on the BBC. Maybe that's it I didn't but still we're talking BBC from the 40s. Yeah, so press checking. I was still press checking any reports, you know Not that long ago. Okay, so top of the tops. Yeah, that's for old I'm just just for the yeah for the younger audience out there like pops means like the charts the music charts.

Yes So you got it. You knew what it meant, right? I've heard of top of the pops. Yes. Your grandpa told you about it? My British grandpa told me all about it. Um, but no matter what, how much you plan things are going to happen, how you control. That damage, you know, it says a lot about your, you as a professional and everything.

And, um, what is the damage? Like put that in perspective, right? Damage is, you know, if you're in it and you're living it, the damage could be extreme or your perception of the damage could be extreme, but really look at it from multiple perspectives. How much is it? Really damaging. Yeah. To the situation or your brand or whatever it is and really kind of try to understand and then mitigate work with people to try to help figure out a solution that will, you know, there's always something that can be fixed or moved or changed or edited or pasted over or left alone or who cares?

Maybe it's not a big deal. I think I'm good. Just as a parting shot, I almost feel like you could almost map the problem. Where does it fit on, you know, Maslow's hierarchy of needs? Oh, yeah, right. If you're down towards the bottom, those are big deals. But if it's, if you're, mm hmm, I think in the marketing space, most of our stuff is way up.

Yeah, way up at the top. We don't need to. Lives will not be lost. Yeah, nobody's going to be injured. Nobody's going to be psychologically damaged. I don't think. I think the important thing is to look at it and have healthy perspective on things. But also, give yourself a break. Know that, and do the work to, you know, look at the project after it's been done.

Analyze where things, where those opportunities may be to have prevented some of that. Try to mitigate the light next time around understand that maybe something else will go wrong the next time to like that You can't always predict what's going on. I think it speaks to what you're talking about is it's gonna be fine lives will not be lost You know, the, the worst, worst, worst case scenario is if there's some legal issues around some of these things that come up and then most of the time it's just financial damage that takes place, which yes, is no little thing sometimes, but like I mentioned earlier, I'm one who damages everything around me, right?

Yes. Hundreds and thousands of mistakes. I'm still standing. Some may say thriving. It's not that big. They're not that big of a deal. Right. Yes. I was one of those damaged people working next to you every day and cleaning up my mess. I appreciate it. Thank you. It's been a delight, mark . Take care, Eric. That's great.

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