Another week of layout is finished, and I’m relaxing, glad to be able to work on freelance writings and my books. Late this evening, Phoenix told me that one of the advertisers was complaining about his/her ad. My time for relaxing was apparently over.
P2 copied me on the e-mail, and I was shocked. This person, Eren Padar, accused the M2 of showing favoritism to some other Elven group, among other things, and was just downright nasty. Read for yourself:
Phoenix, I just checked out our ad in the Metaverse Messengers. To be plain, I am very disappointed.
I followed MM instructions specifically, and sent a high-rez JPG ad as per instructions– to exact measurements. I just checked the ad copy I sent you, and it is pristine. Why then, does the ad look out of focus and blurry in your magazine?
I also notice that in the same issue, an Elf Circle sim wins “sim of the week”, plus a lengthy article, and I am once again struck by the same thing that has hit me in the past: Metaverse Messenger is obviously not the place for Elf Clan to advertise.
I’m the Market Manager for Elf Clan Fantasy Market. We had planned a significant set of ads over the next year. In addition I had planned personal advertising for my company Dragon Forge. All such plans are cancelled. In the future, we will take our advertising business to other SL magazines.
Phoenix wrote replied with a very nice response. I was and am very proud of him. It has to be frustrating to deal with someone who appears to be completely unreasonable. His reply:
Eren, I’m not sure what to tell you. You seem to be accusing us of some sort of favoritism toward Elf Circle, which is bunk. Sim of the Week is selected by a dedicated staff and neither Katt nor I have anything to do with that process.
As far as the ad is concerned, there is always some degradation of images when saving to a PDF, unless you are willing to accept a gargantuan (and I’m talking 50 MB +) final PDF file, so yes, your ad will not always look quite as crisp as it does initially. We process everyone’s ads in an identical fashion.
Sorry you feel the way you do, but I also feel your anger is misdirected.
I wish you the best in everything that Elf Clan does.
P2
Eren again replied, but apparently, accusing us of favoritism wasn’t enough. He/she had to add to that by saying that we altered the ad.
Well,sorry but I’m looking through an entire issue of ads and they all look fine, and I get to ours and it’s JPEG reduced blotchy. Only one I saw in the entire zine that looked fuzzy and bad. Since I sent you a to-the-pixel measured ad in perfect condition, “pdf format” doesn’t explain the mess.’
If there’s no favoritism for Elf Circle… glad to hear it. Not sure the evidence supports the claim, but whatever. The only evidence I’m really concerned with is the quality of our advertisement… and I’ve been professionally involved in advertisement in RL for too many years to believe that’s just how it came out. Sorry. That ad was poorly produced and its resolution and quality altered. It reflects poorly on our group and makes it look bad in the presence of other ads which look far better. That’s not what we paid for.
P2 surely has the patience of a saint. He again replied nicely, and even threw in a week of free ad space. I don’t agree with that, however. If the problem with the ad was our fault, then yes, we should do whatever we can do correct that. However, we can’t give free ads to everyone who is less than satisfied with how the ad comes out. Many people would use such a policy to gain free advertising on a regular basis.
P2’s reply:
We don’t change a thing about ads that are submitted with the following exceptions:
a) If an ad is at a resolution other than 300 dpi, I will resample it (this should only have a positive effect, and wouldn’t have produced what we’re talking about here, and I don’t recall whether that was necessary with your ad or not)
b) I will sometimes adjust brightness and/or contrast if it appears that an ad will be too dark (this was definitely not the case with yours).
I will be happy to add a week to your ad run and see if we can’t resolve this issue for you, but I assure you that nothing about your ad was altered.
P2
I don’t like it when advertising clients are unhappy. I eagerly make changes when they are requested, from ad placements, to page placements, etc. I will try my best to accommodate clients. Why? Well, not only do I want them to continue to purchase ad space, I want them to be successful. I want those who advertise with the M2 to have flourishing businesses.
But if someone is going to write nasty e-mails to defame us professionally, I am not so willing to assist. In my opinion, the kiddie gloves should have come off when Eren said we altered the ad. Oh em gee! *insert sarcasm* Those of us at the M2 are immersed in a conspiracy against the Elf Clan! How wicked of us…
Why on earth would we alter an ad? I have no professional or personal ties to anyone in the Elven community and neither does P2.
So my response was not as nice as P2’s:
I compared the ad that ran in the M2 versus the ad you sent. Yes, there is a remarkable difference. I then compared the Farhaven (on the same page as yours) original ad versus what ran in the paper. There too was a remarkable difference.
I’m sorry you are dissatisfied. If you had come to us politely with these issues, we would have bent over backwards to assist you in discovering the problem and fixing it. But accusing us of favoritism (how is that possible when the Eledwhen column writes about the Elf Clan frequently?) and then going so far as to say we altered the quality of the ad only means we won’t be working with you anymore.
Keep in mind that the M2 has 35,000 readers, far more than any other publication in SL. With the very popular Eledwhen Wonders column, a large segment of that readership is the population YOU are trying to reach out to.
One last thing, I assure you that I have absolutely no reservations in telling the entire SL community what a disdainful, disparaging, mean, hateful and rude person you are.
She heatedly replied, under the impression that I was threatening her (wtfbbq?). She also seemed to be rather clueless as to who owns the Metaverse Messenger. *scratches head at that one before adding Eren’s email to this blog post*
LOL Kristen, since I now have a copy of your email… and the unprofessional attitude shown there, there are only three things I have further to say to you:
1. As an advertiser, I have a right to contact your staff with misgivings about the professionalism (or lack thereof) of your staff.
2. Threatening an advertiser with with “I have absolutely no reservations in telling the entire SL community what a disdainful, disparaging, mean, hateful and rude person you are” is about as vile and unprofesional as a person can get, an only serves to cement and verify my prior opinion of your staff.
3. Your drama queen attitude and threatening manner gives my ne reason to believe that my initial impression regarding your zine was incorrect.
4. I will be forwarding a copy of your email to other members of the Metaverse Messenger for review.
Be advised that if you should decide to take this private business matter public… my response will be put publicly publish a copy of your email. If that is how you wish to run your business… you will find there are repercussions of such attitudes.
Had you responded in a professional, business manner, we could have resolved this issue. As it is, I will contact Phoenix and inform him there shall be no further business involved between our agents. I have nothing to be ashamed of in my initial missive. I am nothing more than a dissatisfied customer with reason to question paper policies. Welcome to the business world. Your attitude madam, is shameful.
Oi! I’m laughing… “…had you responded in a professional, business manner…” Perhaps she/he means I should have behaved like him/her?
*sighs* I will climb to the top of the highest building to shout out the fact that I don’t know everything there is to know about business. But I do know that if you have an issue you want someone to fix, the surest way to sabotage yourself is by being ugly to whoever it is you are dealing with.
Eren should have, could have wrote, “Hi Phoenix. I was not happy with the way the Elf Clan ad came out. Would you please work with me in improving the appearance of the ad? Also, I noted that another Elven community was SOTW. How does that work? How can I encourage the M2 to cover Elf Clan more?”
We would have jumped at the opportunity to assist someone who addressed in that manner. We don’t expect anyone to bend down and kiss our feet because of what we do. But we DO work very hard and producing a paper every week.
So remember, a bit of “nice” in your business dealings can go a long, long way.
Regards,
Katt
Recent Comments