Too often, large amounts of time are spent by people polishing ideas for presentation in order to get internal buy-in. They may tightly edit copy or spend hours on a computer selecting colors and kerning typography. This can result in a waste of time and unnecessary frustration on the part of the specialists, because they've fallen in love with their concept, only to find later that the concept is weak.
For this reason we encourage participation in The EyeBall.
The concept of The EyeBall is to get our embryonic concepts exposed for any or all of the following reasons:
- when there's no time for The BBB or The Wall.
- to get feedback from the coaches.
- to get feedback from team members.
- to spur additional suggestions for solutions.
The self-directed teams make the decisions as to what goes to the client. So there's really no need to sell an idea to agency management. The team is better off getting critiques and response to their conceptual ideas. So, when that time is spent refining a concept, it has a better chance of actually hitting the page or the screen.
Associates are encouraged to make photocopies and to leave the copies on various people's chairs and ask them to react. Some associates have made excellent use of e-mail and Web-based surveys (such as Zoomerang) for quick polling and brainstorming.
PR specialists rely on The EyeBall for much of their writing. When responding to journalists leads, they're often on tight deadlines. So it's faster to run a pitch angle by a colleague.
The EyeBall also is an excellent educational tool. Associates reviewing work with their coaches learn from these more experienced people while they improve the quality of their concepts.