Clients Who Butcher Your Work

I was just checking out a website I did a small job for last week to find that the client has more or less destroyed my copy - introducing spelling errors, removing entire paragraphs... he basically destroyed my work. He even peppered my copy with multiple exclamation marks.

These businessmen, they don't seem to understand marketing. It's all about subtlety.

Makes you wonder why he bothered paying my rates. I wouldn't mind, but I would have liked to add that job to my rather slender portfolio.

Anybody else ever had this happen to them?

 

Is the site's purpose branding, or sales? Because sales is about revenue, not subtlety. Subtlety may be nice to a designer, and may be nice for branding purposes, but ugly long sales pages with plenty of exclamation marks are proven revenue-generators. Of course it depends on the service or product being marketed.

If you want to add it to your portfolio, you could either have a screenshot or host a local unadulterated copy.

 

While the site is about sales, the way they've gone about the alterations makes them seem moronic, not forceful. It's as if the webmaster had only discovered punctuation that afternoon, and was determined to make the most of it in case it was taken away from him.

While I fully understand that in certain cases copy has to be fairly emphatic to drive action, I can't imagine anybody actually buying from this site now. Personally, after reading the copy I would have no confidence that the owner would be able to handle the responsibility of delivering the goods. He seemed like such a nice guy, too. Shame.

 

And I thought this person was your client...

 

Not any more, he's not. Never in the future, either, unless I have absolutely no choice

Bah. I'm probably being a little too negative. I've been working now for 22 hours straight and - after imbibing 4 litres of Diet Coke - I'm getting a little punchy. Maybe it's time to take myself for a snooze. It ain't the end of the world, after all.

 

Hahaha! I feel your pain. This hasn't really happened to me before, but i can imagine how frustrating it must really be to see something you worked so hard on, butchered up like an animal.

I guess in this line of work, one expects the disrespect at times. The fact of the matter is, you did your job well - and the rest is up to your client. If he thinks multiple exclamation marks will get him the business, all you can do is hope he's right.

Cheers!

 

Disrespect?

Nah ... disrespect is when the client doesn't pay but uses the copy anyway.

Maybe I'm just a mercenary sod but if the I have the cash in my hand and my name isn't on the product then the client can do what he wants with it.

It's really no different to submitting something through an editor - a writer may think his copy is worth framing but editors often have other ideas.

 

After a couple of pints in the pub I'm willing to let it go. You're right, Stuart. As long as I have the money in my hand I shouldn't worry. I'll just put the next good project in the portfolio. No great loss.