This was a draft version of the poster - I must try and dig out the final version at some point...

The story behind the poster

What was our vision behind creating the perfect client?

Last year Jason Mesut presented a poster at Euro IA entitled "Creating the Perfect EA". The idea behind it, and the execution, helped to crystallise and focus some of our company's thinking - and was naturally the cause of some constructive debate.

A few months after last year’s event, in an idle conversation with Iain Hinchliffe, the idea behind the Perfect EA led us to another question - "If we can give an ideal for our own people to aim for, what other ideals would make our client engagements better?". And thus the idea of "Creating the Perfect Client" was born.

What was our process?

Our idea was accepted for Euro IA, and this spurred Iain & Jason - with the essential and highly appreciated help of Bersi Keuper – into action. We decided that a good starting point for the idea would be to gather information from within our own company. As LBi is a European market leader that brings together many strong brands in the interactive agency space, we could draw upon the expertise of highly skilled and experienced colleagues with diverse backgrounds.

We used one-on-one interviews and workshops, along with gathering input from our almost 50-strong team of User Experience colleagues during our regular get-togethers, to draw together some invaluable insight. We had our data.

What's next?

Though we have already crystallised some useful factors and metrics on the poster (and also on this handout), the process in gathering them had one consistent theme. Everyone we talked to had a story. Some were hilarious, some informative, and some downright libellous - but all of them were interesting.

We think that some of these stories would make interesting and informative reading. So we've created a blog for people to share them.

Have you got a good client story?

LBi have had some fun putting together our Perfect Client poster for the Euro IA conference. In fact, we often had trouble keeping on track as our poster inspired the telling of many tales about good and bad clients.

We'd like to hear some of your experiences.