If you've read the ohTwentyone blog for any period of time, you know how much I like Seth Godin. He has some really interesting thoughts on the subject of marketing, and on the relationship that marketing builds with the customer.

On his blog today he addresses the subject of "open buying and selling" and how that influences the balance of value in a transaction. This is something I've been doing a lot of thinking about lately too, so I thought this would be a good time to address it.

Value vs. Ease of Acquisition

The basic principal of his post on the topic is this: the easier something is to get, the lower the value of that thing. Not because it was easy...in fact, vice versa. It's easy because it is low in value. This applies not only to goods and services, but employment and business relationships as well. For example, customer acquisition.

This has become a topic of reflection for me recently as I've been noticing the number of "fill-in-a-form-get-your-design" shops that have been popping up on the internet in the last few years, as well as the advent of "crowdsourcing¹" contest sites and stock vendors attempting to offer more and more complicated wares to a public that doesn't know any better than to use them.

Frankly, I can see by looking through the portfolios on these sites that the quality level is poor, but in a way that most consumers are not equipped to recognize. You can tell that a lot of the work was developed using a me-too design philosophy, through a relationship that is not collaborative, but instead buyer/seller oriented.

"What's wrong with that?" you might ask.

Here's what's wrong with that: It's not how good design gets made, and for one really good reason. No one has anything invested in the process. The designer didn't work to locate, qualify, and acquire the client. The client didn't invest any time in finding a designer whose work they liked, or who has successfully solved problems for clients in the past, or who they think they could work with successfully. Both parties have essentially said, "This isn't worth my time," before the process has even started.

The Hands of Fate

This is especially true on the case of "crowdsourcing" sites, where the customer (note that I didn't use the word client there) doesn't even take the time to look at portfolios, but instead throws their hands up and leaves the ultimate design of their project up to whichever dubiously qualified "designers" happen to have a few free minutes during the period of their contest. I can't imagine not qualifying the partner I choose to do something as subjective and complex as design.

Low Value for Designers

The value of these engagements for the designers is dubious as well. Like Seth says, 

"If you answer a classified about making money from home stuffing envelopes, is it any wonder you're not going to get paid much? If it's really easy to get a job, the job probably isn't worth much."

And it's pretty much the same for the designers engaging in these contests. You can't expect jobs that magically get posted to a website, where you don't have a relationship with the client, and you don't have to go out and meet with 10 people in order to find 1 that you'll work with to be worth very much. In most (90%) cases these jobs are worth NOTHING, and that's exactly why.

Low Value for Clients as Well

People tend not to spend time or money on things that they perceive as low-value. It's a pretty simple equation. Because of this, designers with pretty much ANYTHING better to do, will not participate in these low-value jobs, be it a contest or a generic design-in-a-box website (or a stock materials site) and that seriously degrades the value of the things these services can offer.

The very best you're going to get is a possibly talented, but underemployed, and probably inexperienced designer who will spend exactly the amount of time thinking about something as your low-cost job allows. If you have a $200 budget for your logo and their hourly rate is $50, they'll spend a couple of hours doing a couple of ideas, allowing a couple of hours for alterations, and they're done.

The problem with that is that there is no time in the equation for research, for building an understanding of the customer's business, for strategy, or for failure. Linus Pauling said, "The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas." and nowhere is that more true than in design. A designer heads down a lot of blind alleys during the process, and they need time to recognize whether or not a) it leads nowhere, b) it leads somewhere, but someone else has already set up camp there, or c) it leads somewhere really great, but it's going to take a LONG time to get there. Without the ability to figure out these potential pitfalls, the designer has no choice but to rush to the end of the maze and solve it backwards.

Get Invested

The moral of the story is this: If you, and by you I mean the designer as well as the client, can't be bothered to invest yourself in the relationships you form with your client or designer, you get what you deserve. If you want to get more out of the designers (and clients) you work with, you need to have a personal relationship with them. That means you're going to have to talk to them. You might have to argue with them. You're going to have to earn their trust, and their respect by doing right by them...and vice versa. The equation needs to maintain balance. That's when you get a better value out of the relationship.

¹ _{I quote the word crowdsourcing because design contests are not crowdsourcing. Even the guy who coined the term crowdsourcing thinks so. Crowdsourcing is a very powerful tool. Design contests exploit designers as well as design buyers. No Spec!}