Self Promotion, the Coudal Way!

On the heels of their first short feature film debut, Coudal Partners talks with Designorati about the piece, its intentions, and the firms overall feelings towards self-promotion.

Earlier this week, Coudal Partners released Copy Goes Here, a short film about the life of a Copywriter as he joins a small Graphic Design studio and then soon realizes he is the only one who can read the copy he creates. I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Steve Delahoyde, Copywriter for Coudal Partners.

Designorati: How did you initially come up with the idea to create this piece?

Steve Delahoyde: Originally, I had come up with this idea to do a film a week on the site. Just a fun kind of silly challenge for all of us. I come from a background of doing loads of weird little short films, and I though that’d be fun. So I had a batch of ideas I’d written down for it and one of them was this idea that the reason we did so many clean and simple layouts and designs was that we were all illiterate. More a design-based-on-necessity vs. a conscious decision on our part. We were all out at some event and I brought it up to Michele, who thought the idea was funny, and we got to talking about all the funny little bits we could put in. So I went home, wrote it all up one night, and it kept getting longer and longer because I’d decided to make it more narrative-based, instead of some quickie two minute thing. Passed around what I’d written the next morning, everyone seemed receptive, and, well, here we are.

D: What was its original intention? Was it for shits and giggles, or rather, to act as a promotional piece?

SD: Really, all purely for fun. But I think we’ve always got that in the back of our heads, with anything we do, that it’ll help serve a promotional purpose. For our regular visitors, people familiar with the firm, we hope it’s the kind of thing that they watch and think, “Hey, it’s fun that they did something like this.” With new visitors, it’s the kind of thing that we hope draws them in by way of “Who are these people?! Is this the kind of thing they’re doing all the time?!” But we never really know what will happen. That’s another part of the fun of the whole thing.

D: There seems to be an underlying message that “just because you can read and write, it doesn’t mean you can write copy”. Was this intentional or am I reading into the piece too much?

SD: Wow. You’ve now been hired as the official explainer. That makes complete sense, though that really wasn’t something we’d certainly ever thought of. Going back, it was again, more a little joke on the stuff we design, the kind of less-is-more aesthetic. But if anybody asks, we’re going to use your explanation.

D: Coudal Partners has grown into a very recognizable brand for designers over the past few years - with participation in K10K, creating a side company that specializes in beautiful DVD/CD-ROM packaging, and constant updating of your own blog - have you seen your participation in self-promotion increase your ROI?

SD: Oh, most definitely. And that’s really how those side companies, Jewelboxing in particular, came to be. Jim explains the whole thing much more articulately than I could in this essay he wrote, but the long and short of it was that we wanted to try to become our own client and make a profit off something we were producing, instead of the work-for-hire model, where we’d do all the advertising and design work for a fee, then never see another dime from the potentially huge amounts the clients would draw in. So a couple of years ago, we realized that we had this fantastic readership base for the site, people who enjoyed coming and seeing what we were up to, that maybe, who knows, if we found the right product, something we would use, then maybe we could become both the client and the advertiser. And so, certainly, the promo stuff has definitely helped out. Of course, we still do a lot of client work, but we’ve been really fortunate to also have these customers who enjoy what we do and support these side projects.

D: What are the advantages to promoting yourself to the design community?

SD: Other than getting to be “known” enough that people you admire will stop by when they’re visiting Chicago so you can have a couple of beers with them, I suppose it’s just the standard list of advantages. You might get some interesting client work out of it or be asked to participate in panels and such. Overall, I think we just enjoy the ability to exist among other firms or people whose work we really love, and that [the] community responds to what we’re doing positively as well.

D: What advice do you have for design studios that do little or no self-promotion?

SD: We’re fortunate enough not to be in a position [where] we have to solicit ourselves to get new clients, but if that’s the case with a firm or a freelancer, I think it would be really, really important. Heck, even if you have a good amount of work coming in, it’s important to think, “So, what’s next?” instead of remaining docile and complacent with what you’ve got. But I think the key is not to think about self-promotion as self-promotion. We never think of the things we do in that way. The process is nearly always a case of us thinking up something we think would be fun to do, then putting the gears into motion to get it done, then, eventually, wondering if maybe we’ll get some attention for it. People are much more willing to be curious as to who you are if you’re someone they relate to and are interested in, than someone yelling, “Hey, look at me!” Unless that person has on really cool pants. Then all bets are off.

D: Anything else you would like to share on self-promotion?

SD: Please, drop whatever you’re doing, and visit www.coudal.com.