Susan Clark Advertising, Marketing & Design

Matt, Always a pleasure working with you and your catering business. Gearing up for this busy holiday season! Thanks for the review. Susan

Ms. Jackson owns a clothing store in Atlanta which she wanted me to assist in figuring out ways to promote the store and drive more traffic to it. We signed a contract with an hourly rate of $30/hr. In total there was 13hr. 3min. of work completed, two meetings at her store location, 8 phone calls, and 72 email communications. One of the first items I did for her, which she asked me to do, was to put together an initial marketing plan that included: Marketing Vision, target markets, list of target market mediums to review, marketing strategic goals, avenues to reach out to the media for free PR, and the marketing materials needed. I completed that in 6 business days. We did have a 5 day delay in getting a meeting scheduled to review this plan, but the delay was due to both of our schedules. She was billed 5hr.19 min., then another 1.5hr for a meeting to go over the plan and narrow down where she wanted to focus her advertising dollars on. I gave her a hard copy of this plan and then emailed her a digital copy when I returned back to my office. From that meeting we decided to focus on using targeted direct mail postcards, outdoor billboard and transportation advertising, print advertising with AJC, The Voice, Creative Loafing, and explore mobile advertising. My job was to contact these outlets and get pricing, specifications, and any advertising programs they had to offer. This took place over about 10 business days. I delivered the costs for the targeted mailing lists, printing costs, and rough costs on outdoor. It took a week to get media kits and proposals from publications. Those I have in my possession, but received right as Ms. Jackson refused to pay. I billed her for 2 hrs. 35 min. We also agreed that a press kit was needed in order to encourage the media to write about Curated. I gave Ms. Jackson a list of information I needed from her to begin. In fact, I had to email it to her twice over a two week period. To this day, I never received all of those items. One problem area that we had to address was that the store branding was not consistent. The store, Curated, had multiple logo looks using multiple fonts and looks. The only logo icon she had in procession was a low res jpeg. I explained to her that the branding needed to be the same moving forward with advertising and getting PR from the media. We agreed that I would re-create the icon as a vector file and submit several looks for the actual name for her to choose from. I completed and sent that work for her review in 3 business days. She was billed for 2hrs. 52 min. During this 3 week period, Ms. Jackson decided on her own to have an art showing of work from a young artist she had met. She asked me to help with the mass email invitation her graphic designer was going to put together. I did this by choosing art images to utilize for the “flyer”, told her what copy info to use and where to place it on the invite. I reviewed the designers work on the invite and made suggestions. When I saw the final invite that went out, they had left off the name of the store! As far as Ms. Jackson’s claim that I didn’t promote the event? Ms. Jackson and I had agreed in an email that the media kit was not done, the logo was not yet completed and I explained that trying to get PR for this event was premature. I billed her 1 hr. When I sent the work in progress invoice for the above time she first sent me an email telling me she would pay it in the beginning of the next week. Then she emailed me that next week stating that she could not justify paying me because there were no results and no more traffic coming to her store. I explained that much of what I was doing was planning to achieve the goals we set in place. Any good business knows flying by the seat of your pants won’t work well. I also explained that planning takes time and time is how I bill. The reason why I am filing a small claims case against Ms. Jackson and Curated is she doesn’t want to pay for anything. Period. I have given her over 2 months with no response and no payment. The total of the bill was $456.75 No one should work for free.

Thank you Alisa and Chris for the nice review. Looking forward to getting started on your website! Susan