September 24, 2009
shit creek consulting
The groovy cats over at Shit Creek Consulting commissioned me to design them their own “Cube Grenade”. After looking at the half-dozen or so ideas I presented to them, they chose the one above. I believe they’re looking to use it for their business cards, for example.
Shit Creek are a Microsoft Gold Partner. It seems a big part of their business is coming in and cleaning up the mess left behind by the large tech consultancies [I’m not naming any names]. So that’s the idea I ran with.
The name of their company implies they have a lot of attitude. They wanted a cartoon that conveyed this. Easy. It was a fantastic commission and I’m very happy with the cartoon they chose.
I’m looking to take on more of these kinds of commission. Feel free to e-mail me if you think you could use my work, Thanks.
[Backstory: About Hugh. E-mail Hugh. Twitter. Newsletter. Book. Interview One. Interview Two. EVIL PLANS. Limited Edition Prints. Private Commissions. Cube Grenades.]
love it, Hugh. I definitely think we could use your work. After spending a couple of hours with the team here, I’m confident that you would believe we don’t take “no” for an answer and we have superhuman powers to be more impactful than the “big boys.” Love it.
Nice to see that someone really knows who they are, and therefore, who their customers are.
The attitude is a beautiful comment on people’s reaction to the chain of bubbles and the consultants who diligently inflated them.
I worked at Freddie Mac. All of the foreign consultants that worked there brought all of their second world attitudes to work with them. The worst of first world bureaucracy mixed with the worst of second world bureaucracy.
Every one of them a consultant.
What a shit storm.
Remark-able
Hugh, this is the best business card yet! I wish I had thought of this one because its theme is exactly what I do as a SharePoint consultant: bail out the FUBAR situations.
Great design!
That is awesome, I can’t believe there is actually a company called Shit Creek Consulting. Brilliant! I am kinda suprised Micro$oft would allow a partner to have that name. But hey, whatever works.
pretty cool!
–Brandy
Just found your blog and I can’t wait to read posts daily. I absolutely loved “Ignore Everybody” and your drawings. Your book was a great motivator in my decision to kick start my blog and a refreshing read for a copywriter who many times wonders why she’s writing about dental health everyday.
Jenny, I know how you feel. I have been trying to get a Women’s Educational Health Blog started and plan to do so soon. Am doing lots of writing. It can become overwhelming especially when one looks around at the competition.
Don’t give up. People need to be informed about health, which includes dental health, from the regular person; not the powers that be. Keep at it!!!
Brilliant!
All those names of companies mentioned speaks a lot!
I’ve clicked every link on the perversely compelling S__t Creek website without finding out exactly what sort of work they do, except in the most general sense.
Every page of the SCC website reeks of snarky attitude and massive self-love. SCC apparently is so good that it can afford to turn down the business of those who don’t like the word “s__t”.
I like to see a little humility in the specialists I pay to work for me. This may mean that I “have my head up my ass”, or that I am a “douchebag”.
But let me tell ya, today’s douchebag may be tomorrow’s client. It doesn’t pay to alienate anybody, if you can possibly avoid it. SCC will learn this lesson, painfully, in the months ahead.
(Gaping Void is great!)
“it can afford to turn down the business of those who don’t like the word ‘s__t’”
That’s actually not a bad position to be in, don’t you think?
Sure, their shtick isn’t going to work for everybody. But they don’t need “Everybody”; that’s the whole point.
A friend of mine is a political consultant. He has an unlisted business number. That might be frustrating to someone who finds him via a Google search and wants to contact him, but he has enough business he can do that.
I agree, being able to choose your clients is a pretty good sign of success.
Have they settled on a preferred supplier of paddles yet? I might be interested in tendering.
Tim
@caffeine_head, while my consulting firm isn’t quite as confrontational in name, my approach isn’t far off from theirs (I’ve made a fair bit of money cleaning up after bigger consulting firms messes).
We get asked to submit responses to RFP’s and we refuse, asking for a meeting to talk about the problem instead. That pisses off a lot of clients who just want someone to bid on the RFP and do the job as specified. However, a smaller group is intrigued by the fact we don’t do RFP responses and we get a few hours of their time to genuinely engage them about their problem. And, it turns out, that engagement usually leads to much better projects than playing the RFP game.
I understand your desire to see a little humility. However, understand that many consulting firms don’t like to work with clients who view the business relationship as “working for me” rather than “working with me”.
I know in my own practice, if you want someone who will work “for you”, I’m not the right consultant.
I’ve got more than enough work and actually had my biggest boom years right in the middle of this economic downturn.
Their approach (and one that Hugh’s stuff takes as well) is to work in such a way that 20% of the general audience LOVES what you’re doing and 80% HATES it rather than everybody looking at it as bland and common. Generally, trying to avoid offending anybody results in nobody loving what you do.
I’d rather work with the 20% that loves what I’m doing. They’re *happy* to be paying me. They respect me *more* when I say “no”. They value the fact I call them on their bullshit and question their assumptions. It’s not for everyone, but I can only work on a limited number of projects in a year and, since I started doing tech consulting (1999), the number of people who want me to work on projects has always exceeded the number I can actually do (through 2 bubbles bursting).
Mr. MacLeod, you may be right. Perhaps the SCC name will constitute an asset, rather than a self-imposed handicap, as it might be for many business people. Exclusivity is a fine thing, but one must take care not to draw the circle TOO close…
I sincerely hope that SCC’s approach to nomenclature does not spread much further, as I do not wish to drive a “F__k” automobile, or use a “C__ks__ker” laptop. Alas, all things seem possible in the 21st century…
Good luck to SCC, and may the words “Shit Creek” become synonymous with quality, value, and pride in workmanship.
Nice shit brown color scheme to match the name. This is a parody web site I assume. There are no people behind it as far as I can tell. No client references , no portfolio.
But it is mildly amusing.
Twitter says your blog is down!! Get the boys from ShitCreek on the job!!! That is, if anybody knows what they actually do…I get the impression this is a parody, just like the other comments..funny, but I hope nobody thinks this is real..
Lovely attitude, great engagement, and I wish them well. Don’t see a client list on that website though, or any testimonials.… maybe I’m missing something.… and maybe they’ll get a bite?
Love it! It’s full of attitude without being obnoxious — hysterical! I would love one for ArtofTalk.tv.
We don’t really feel the need to justify ourselves or our way of doing business. But given some of the comments here, we do feel the need to assure the doubters that Shitcreek Consulting is legit. We do real work for real businesses each and every day.
Yep, we have loads of parody and satire on our site but we are dead serious about our work, our clients, and people we work with.
Just keep your eyes peeled as we tell our story.
[…] As well as this there is a big trust issue in terms of security and reliability. This stems from the big boys making mistakes (see Microsoft, Google etc) and inexpert bloggers reporting on these and making the classic mistake of thinking there is only one cloud. Just because Microsoft screwed up their Cloud doesn’t mean we can’t do a good job of with ours, which reminds me of one of Hugh’s recent posts. […]