An open letter to clients

Hi! I’m sure you’re just as busy as I am — but if you’ve reached this page, you obviously want more information. So, here’s a short-but-comprehensive statement of what I’m trying to achieve with Moore Creative.

When I was on the ad agency side, I was often frustrated seeing clients end up with a lower-quality product than they could have had. Sometimes this was due to short deadlines; sometimes to a lack of experience or commitment to quality on the part of the people involved. Sometimes it was due to the agency’s acquiescence to unfair or unreasonable client demands. Or to something no one could have foreseen. Occasionally it was all these things combined.

Naively, perhaps, I felt that if I held the reins, I could change these things, and could dramatically raise the quality of clients’ work (which in turn helps enhance a client’s image in the market).

I’ve always known that delivering real quality and service to clients isn’t as difficult as we sometimes make it. I’ve looked carefully at the things in my industry that diminish quality, and I’ve addressed every one of them. I’ve assimilated the get-it-done-regardless-of-all-obstacles attitude of my first ad agency boss (a former Marine Corps sergeant), and tempered it with my own personal approach, which, simply stated, is:

I will meet — or exceed — a client’s objectives, so they will want to continue working with me. More importantly, I have to do a great job, because I can’t be happy with anything less.

Since opening Moore Creative, I’ve found that many clients prefer the flexibility of working with a freelance group, and that it’s possible for such a group to offer many of the services, and every bit of the quality, offered by an ad agency. I’ve also found that I wasn’t so naive after all, and that I really can exercise the control over projects necessary to achieve my own, and the client’s, high standards.

(In fact, one of the keys to this is amazingly simple: allow adequate time for a project to be completed at the level of quality everyone involved wants. Sounds simple? It is! As the saying [and the book title] goes, If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?)

Of course, it’s not always as easy as that. Sometimes, ensuring high quality means confronting a client with an unpopular idea or opinion — “I think this decision is short-sighted, and it will hurt you in the long run.” Sometimes it means putting on the brakes and re-evaluating your strategy before proceeding further. Sometimes it means going all-out on gut instinct, refusing to second-guess yourself. But always, it means being detailed, thorough, honest, open to new ideas and ways of doing things, and being willing to “do the right thing.”

If this sounds like the approach of a company you’d like to do business with, I’d like to talk to you. Please feel free to e-mail me, or call me directly, with any questions or comments you may have. I can be reached at (617) 271-0901.

Sincerely,

Charles H. Moore

Moore Creative

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A little history. . .

Charlie began his advertising career in 1986, after more than ten years as a professional musician and sometime photographer. He became a copywriter/account executive at a small ad agency, working on a wide variety of industrial and high-tech accounts. He quickly grew into an essential player, servicing and writing for virtually all agency accounts over the ensuing four years.

In 1990, Charlie was hired as Senior Copywriter/Account Executive for Harper, Bellotti & Company, a medium-sized ad agency providing full-service consumer and high-tech advertising to a broad range of corporate clients. Again he became a key force within the agency, and was copywriter on the team that produced award-winning catalogs for Wang.

During his six years on the agency side, Charlie took advantage of the opportunity to gain experience in virtually every aspect of the advertising business, and this provided a solid foundation for his next venture. In 1992, he opened Charles Moore/Freelance, offering professional copywriting services for ad agencies, design firms, and corporate clients.

During his first two years operating CM/F, he built on his ad agency experience, broadening his capabilities to include design and production services. He also found that teaming with other freelance writers, designers and desktop publishing specialists was an effective way of meeting the diverse needs of his clients while remaining true to his original concept of a full-service freelance group (see Our approach and philosophy, page X).

In January of 1995, Charles Moore/Freelance became Moore Creative, reflecting broader capabilities, a fine-tuning of the organization, and a full complement of creative talent available to clients though an affiliation with other top creative professionals — artists, musicians, writers, designers, graphic/computer artists, and electronic publishing specialists.

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In January of 1995, Charles Moore/Freelance became Moore Creative, reflecting broader capabilities, a fine-tuning of the organization, and a