For several years we’ve said that a “company’s CEO has the greatest impact”:http://www.teehanlax.com/blog/?p=249 on customer experience. We’ve said that when a CEO is the most demanding customer of their own product, it shows.

It’s a “recurring theme”:http://experiencematters.wordpress.com/2008/05/06/are-your-senior-execs-customer-centric/ we’ve seen from people like “Bruce Temkin”:http://www.forrester.com/rb/analyst/bruce_temkin at Forrester.

I don’t think many senior level executives have any idea what it’s like to become a customer of their company. They’ve become out of touch the experience as it exists today and rely on internal and external analysis to understand the experience their providing. Analyzing the experience is a great step to take in bettering whatever it is you do but it doesn’t replace experiencing it first hand.

More senior level executives need to take the initiative and become a new customer of their company every year. By doing so they’ll have a much better sense of the type of experience they’re providing their customers. In time they’ll also be able to see the impact their decisions are having.

Design Director for NYTimes.com, Khoi Vinh, speaks his mind on why small, focused design shops produce better work than their larger counterparts.

Well we couldn’t agree more, Khoi.

April 26th kicked off with the horrific news of a surprise TTC strike, leading me to resort to begging and pleading for a drive into work. Work on a beautiful, sunny Saturday, after the news promised rain and misery. Not a good start. But that’s okay, because we, (4 T+L cubs) were all entered in the Young Lions Competition, making this a very important Saturday, and no weather, transit, or mental health issues were going to get in the way. They may be part of the aftermath, but were certainly not going to get in the way until then.

We were briefed promptly at 9am, as promised. From 9:01 until the early hours of the following morning, our schedule was pretty much, work work food work break work work break work drink drink work, check Raptors score, work food work work. There were of course, a few snags, some frustration, confusion, and a side of panic, but that was mostly from the basketball game. Nothing we didn’t eventually find our way around. As my colleague pointed out, this is what I thought advertising was going to be like all the time, late nights and boxes of take-out Thai food.

I admit it, that dreaded, “O.M.G what if we don’t make the deadline?” thought did run through my head at one point. But we made it after all, and with 6 hours to spare! Those extra hours would have been used for celebration time, had our brains not been short-circuiting.

Leaving downtown Toronto on a Saturday night at 3:00am with no TTC, the streets are flooded with clubbers trying to stumble their way home. My cab driver, Moe, even said to me, “look at all the happy people… And you were at work.” Thanks Moe, I realize that. But you know what? It was awesome, and I’d do it again. In the end, it’s good experience to work under that kind of pressure, and with the likes of France and a shot at Cannes as the stakes, it’s a thrill. More importantly, we were happy with what we produced, and in that kind of situation that’s all we can really ask for. That, and a whole lotta luck.

I am looking for stories from creatives and clients on your best and worst experiences selling or buying creative.

If you are a creative director I want to know your number one tactic/trick for getting a client to buy a piece of creative.

If you are a client I would like to know what you like and hate about getting creative pitched to you.

Please drop me a line directly at jon{at}teehanlaxdotcom.

I will be speaking at “MeshU on May 20″:http://www.meshconference.com/meshu/. I am planning on doing something really special for the presentation because, to be honest, I am totally intimidated by the other speakers.