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When was the last time you despaired reading an exec summary?

The Sumo wrestler in Speedos
(ridiculously fat document squeezed into a ridiculously small one)

The 60-second Hamlet
(boring proposal with all the boring bits taken out)

The naked emperor
(Why didn’t anyone tell me this didn’t make any sense?)   

The burst balloon
(a bright and promising pitch with all the air sucked out of it)

The Marie Antionette
(it’s all about me, me, me – let the customer eat cake)

The polished t**d
(fabulously well-written, but the content stinks)

The road to nowhere
(well built, well signposted, but with no clear conclusion)

The vicar’s knickers
(practical and functional, but lacking excitement)

You probably recognise a few of these. We do – we’ve seen them all. That's how we've come to know what works and what doesn’t: the difference between a killer exec summary and a long-winded suicide note.

Get in touch to receive a copy of our 10 tips to help you produce the best exec summary in the business.

We were recently asked to write and produce a new company strategy document for 2020 and the client specifically wanted us to use an infographic style. 

Just a few weeks earlier I had decided to nip over to Normandy for a few days and dragged a reluctant familial retinue around the Bayeux Tapestry.  I couldn’t but help think the needle wielding Normans had cracked the idea a lot earlier than today’s track padding InDesigners.

Technically embroidery, rather than tapestry - fortunately William the Conqueror had no time for pedants – it’s a truly remarkable piece of work and one which can teach us a thing or two.  Created to tell the tale of William’s accession to the English crown it was apparently design to be hung in the cathedral at Bayeux and tell the story to a largely illiterate population (how things have come full circle when you consider the spelling credentials of most graphic designers).

Increasingly people are reading less and less, so the ability to communicate in pictures is becoming more and more commonplace – evidenced by the rise in PowerPoint proposals and documents.  The Bayeux Tapestry tells a cracking narrative with few words – something we can all learn from.  Who knows, in years to come people might talk about ‘the needle being mightier than the sword.

A busy two day shoot with 11 different actors for BMW and MINI, bringing to life the Employee Commitments with a series of 7 different scenarios. 

Working with the BMW Academy, we went to great lengths to avoid the pitfalls of the traditional ‘finger wagging’ corporate training video by using every day language and genuine customer interactions.

We also made the decision to shoot in a working dealership to add a sense of realism despite the challenges of ambient noise and regular interruptions.  Our director, Joel Bygraves was a well-known TV actor who helped get the actors in the mood and ensure the performances were credible – something that’s vital to engage with dealership staff. 

The client was delighted with the results which depicted ‘middle of the road’ customer service and they will be used as part of an in-dealership training programme for the Employee Commitment which will run until the end of the year. It’s the latest initiative behind BMW’s strategic objective to become the number one for customer service amongst premium automotive brands.

A special thanks to our actors for some really great performances and to Steve Penman and his team at Elms Cambridge who went out of their way to help us.

BMW’s Employee Commitment is a series of 10 behaviours developed to help drive its objective to be the number one premium automotive brand for customer service. 

The latest step in a journey we’ve been supporting BMW with for the best part of three years, they’re designed to get dealership staff thinking about how they can deliver a better customer experience.

We were asked to help launch the Employee Commitment to dealers and suggested an interview with the new Customer Director, Richard Price and Managing Director, Tim Abbott. The sports journalist and presenter Rob Bonnet, already familiar to dealers as a conference moderator, carried out the interviews which were recorded in the showroom area at BMW HQ in Bracknell.

Thanks to pre-scripting the interview took a little over an hour to record, saving valuable executive time and the choice of an interview format allowed for a more conversational approach with anecdotes and examples of how the different commitments could be realised.  A DVD of the finished film was distributed to dealers as part of an ‘Event in a box’, so they could watch in groups and carry out exercises to see how they could apply the commitments to improve their customer service delivery.