10 Things Nobody Asks for Anymore (And Why We Miss Them a Little)

Twenty years in this industry means we have seen a lot of things come and go. Every new platform and every shifting brand standard required us to figure out something we had never figured out before. We showed up, said yes, and made it work but there are some things that have stuck with us. Here are ten of our favorites:

1. "Can we just use clip art?"

Before affordable stock photography existed and before brand standards became carefully curated ecosystems, clip art was a completely legitimate creative tool. There was a pointing finger. The smiling businesswoman with the headset. The impossibly enthusiastic group of coworkers gathered around a laptop for reasons nobody could fully explain. It was a golden era for anyone who knew where the clip art folder was, and we knew exactly where the clip art folder was.

2. "Can the homepage play music automatically?"

The early internet was a place of genuine creative optimism, and autoplay audio was one of its most enthusiastic expressions. Clients wanted personality, energy, and something that felt very on brand the moment you landed on the page. The vision was immersive, but the reality was someone panic-closing browser tabs in a quiet office while an instrumental version of the client's favorite song blasted through their speakers.

3. "Can we create a catalogue of all of our products?”

Ask anyone on our team and they will tell you the same thing: we’ve always had a soft spot for a well-made catalogue. There is something about holding the real thing, the weight of it, the photography, the paper, that no email has ever quite replicated. Clients moved away from them when digital got cheaper and faster, but the catalogue has been making a quiet comeback lately, and we’re rooting for it!

4. "Can we add a visitor counter?"

We think the traffic ticker was one of the early internet's most endearing ideas. Brands wanted everyone to know that people were showing up, and the spinning odometer at the bottom of the page was proof. The only question nobody asked out loud was whether your own visits counted toward the total on the report. (They did. We all know they did.)

5. "Can you optimize this for Internet Explorer?"

If cross-browser compatibility was one of the great creative puzzles of the early web, then Internet Explorer was its final boss. We dealt with buttons that floated to the wrong side of the screen, layouts that collapsed for no reason, and padding that worked in every browser on earth except this one. We fixed it every time, usually through a combination of skill, determination, and CSS hacks that we found on SitePoint Forums.

6. "Can we make the logo bigger?"

Okay, we’ll be honest, we still get this request. Some client requests never go out of style. We have resized logos on websites, brochures, billboards, email headers, social graphics, and probably a few things that shouldn’t have had logos on them at all. After twenty years in marketing, one thing remains true: no matter how modern the strategy gets, someone will always want the logo just a little bigger.

7. "Can we check our Foursquare page?"

For a brief moment in time, Foursquare felt like the future of local marketing. Customers checked in everywhere they went and competed to become Mayor, turning coffee shops, bars, and frozen yogurt spots into oddly intense turf wars. Entire marketing strategies were built around the thrilling possibility that someone might unlock a virtual badge while ordering a latte. Somewhere out there, someone is probably still the Mayor of our local frozen yogurt shop.

8. "Can you put this presentation on a CD for me?"

Before cloud storage and file transfer services made sharing large files effortless, the CD-ROM was how you delivered something important and made sure it arrived looking exactly right. We burned them carefully, labeled them by hand, and sent them off. Somewhere out there, a client probably still has a spindle of discs with our work on it, and we find that completely wonderful. Extra credit points if you printed out custom label stickers!

9. "Can you hide keywords in white text so Google finds them?"

White text on a white background. It was invisible to humans and supposedly irresistible to search engines. Then the algorithm caught up with everyone all at once, and an entire generation of marketers quietly agreed never to mention it again.

10. "Can you mail the proof to me for approval?"

That’s right! Physical proofs used to be printed, packaged, and sent through the mail. We would ship them, call to confirm they arrived, wait several days for feedback to come back handwritten in the margins, decipher the notes, and start the next round. The whole process could take two weeks for a single revision. The fact that we can now share a link and get a comment in twenty minutes still feels a little bit like magic. 

Looking back, every single request on this list came from a client who trusted us to help them figure out something new, and we’re grateful for every one of them. The industry looked almost nothing like this when we started, and watching it change from the inside, alongside the people and brands we have been lucky enough to work with, has been one of the great privileges of our careers. Here’s to twenty years, and to whatever is waiting for us in the next twenty that will someday make a list of its own.