More for Less

I like to clip articles. Going through my collection, I rediscovered a story that ran in the WSJ about Magnatag. As the journal article described it, Magnatag "thrived making highly specialized versions of an item that couldn't be less special--the erasable whiteboard." You can go to their website and see some of those versions at www. magnatag.com.

Okay, you might say, so what? Well, here's what: I like it because it's an example of how you can rethink what you have, or what you're trying to communicate and version it to meet the specific needs or interests of your audience. For example, we're working on a project for a client that includes producing an identity video for the general public. And then we'll create different packages from the material for a variety of uses. One version will be for members, another will be to recruit new people to the organization, others will be used as outreach vehicles to specific audiences. You get the idea. And that way each video will be tighter, more focused and more useful for the viewer and our client.

So in a way, you could say we're taking advantage of the Magnatag approach. Instead of making one whiteboard and hoping it will work for every occasion, the old "one size fits all" approach, they take the basic material and refashion it to meet the needs of their clients.

Just like the video work we'll be doing for our client. Which is a great way of getting more for less.