• by Patrick Moran , December 14, 2009

Creative agencies and departments are built around collaboration. The success of your business depends on regular interaction and brainstorming among creative and media teams, customers, and partners. In a perfect world, you'd get to work on and present your ideas in person, but with reduced travel budgets, it's just not possible to meet in person all the time.

But many companies are finding that phone calls and emails are a far cry from an in-person meeting. One of our customers, a global creative agency based in Boston, recently gave us some insight into how things typically worked with remote collaboration at their company. In most cases, their process involved emailing PDFs and other files to clients and colleagues, getting everyone on a conference call, and trying to navigate people through the documentation over the phone. With video, they would typically overnight a DVD to a client and then discuss the video over the phone.

While this process was, of course, time-consuming and reduced the fidelity of the experience, the real pain point for them was the loss of control. When they presented new ideas to colleagues or clients, they wanted to carefully craft the argument to lead their audience to the idea. If they sent a presentation or a video ahead of time and people reviewed it before the meeting, the impact they were going for could be lost.

That's why many agencies are now using Web-based virtual meetings to present information and collaborate on creative content. With new technologies that support streaming media and high-resolution images, you can present your ideas to clients and prospects in a highly visual way that maximizes their impact, sharing everything from print ads to TV commercials in real-time. And with new Web- and mobile-based technologies, it's easier than ever to quickly connect a creative team in New York, a sales team in Boston and technology developers in San Francisco to work together on new business presentations, ad copy and videos. People can even be in the back of a cab, participating in the meeting from their iPhones or BlackBerrys.

Here's an anecdote from a customer that truly underscores the power of this medium. The agency was working on a big pitch on a Sunday: the creative team was at the office working on the presentation and needed to link in the president, the chief creative officer and some others to finalize the pitch for Monday morning. They were able to get everyone onto a virtual meeting -- working from the office, working from home, or from wherever -- to review the whole deck together and make changes in real-time, instead of processing multiple revisions via email.

However, with all the benefits of Web meetings, there are some definite differences between virtual and in-person. If you're ready to start using virtual meetings to work with colleagues and clients, here are few things to keep in mind:

1) Meet the needs of your audience. You may be sold on Web meetings, but your audience may not be as comfortable -- so whether you're meeting with a new client, a prospect or colleagues, think about their needs first. Particularly with clients and prospects, the technology should be easy enough for them to use with just a click and a phone call. If your solution requires a download or has some level of complexity, make sure participants are familiar with the technology before they log on. Nothing derails a meeting like hearing: "Hold on, I'm being asked to download something."

2) Set ground rules for the meeting. You want your meetings to be an interactive dialogue, so at the beginning of the virtual meeting, set a protocol for passing control and speaking. Some technologies even have ways for participants to virtually raise their hands or click on a flag to chime in. Let people know about these ahead of time. Also make sure participants know how and when they are able to use chat in personal and broadcast fashion so you minimize side-bar conversations!

3) Monitor the user experience. The impact of your content will be greatly enhanced if everyone is seeing it at the same time. If your meeting technology allows for it, check the connection quality of participants to make sure everyone will see your content as it appears on the screen. If your tool doesn't do this automatically, ask participants whether they are caught up before launching into the discussion.

With a little practice, you can use virtual meetings to approximate the feeling of being in the same room -- and maybe even make them better than the real thing.