Watch any news program and you’ll hear statistics about America having fallen behind most other industrialized countries in matters of heath, education, and technology. But I can think of one area in which we excel—creative services.
Ask anyone who has worked with an outsourcing company from China or India to have creative produced—it simply does not work. Much like outsourcing call centers to save money, companies try to outsource creative.
We’ll save a ton of time and money
It usually goes like this; provide the vendor key shots from a story board or concept art and let the vendors team of “artist” fill in the blanks and flesh out the idea. Your company saves money and you get a bunch of free time to persue other tasks.
The reality
The reality is much different. What you get back is off concept and lacking controls to have been properly executed. It goes through five times more reviews than an in-house artist would have required and takes three times as long to complete. You’re frustrated and the client is wondering why it’s taking so long. Fail. While this might work when outsourcing development, it doesn’t hold true for creative.
Other than the Fareed Zakaria article which triggered this idea I can offer no links or article on how this applies to the creative services industry. Have you had this experience or know of any related material? Share below.
TIME: Fareed Zakaria | Are America’s Best Days Behind Us?.
