A real-life example of "give inch, take a mile"

Last night, Amanda and I went to a hockey game with some friends. Candidly, we do NOT follow many sports. But every time we go, the home team seems to win in a blow-out fashion. I’m talking 12 to nothing in sports (like hockey) where teams don’t typically score even 5 points. (We think it has something to do with Amanda visiting a Native American reservation a few years back for work. Just as she was leaving the reservation area, a shaman looked her dead in the eyes, mumbled something under his breath (a curse??) and ever since she’s had some too-lucky-to-be-coincidence kind of powers. And one of those powers is swaying the outcome of sports games...Spooky? I know!) Last night was no exception. The team won 6-1, scoring 3 goals in the first 5 minutes of play. But DON'T WORRY! This isn’t a play-by-play of the game. This is about something that happened while we were cheering in the stands. As the home team took a convincing lead, the announcers began turning up the antics to get the crowd excited and involved. Chants on the jumbotron. Cuts to the mascot dancing with fans. Kiss cams. You know the drill. But then, they did something I’d never seen before. Up on the big screen, they ran an ad that said, “GET ON THIS SCREEN!” All you had to do was post a pic (on IG or Twitter) of you at the game with the event hashtag. When the ad first appeared, I thought, “That’s a cool idea!” I mean… Who doesn’t like getting on the jumbotron? But after reading it, it wasn't clear if it would pull a pic instantly or just put you in the queue to get shared another day. So we went back to watching the game for all of 2 seconds. And then Amanda interrupted, “GUYS! That’s them.” She pointed to two people next to us who’d just snapped a pic and were already up on the screen. Well... We wanted to get up there, too! So we also snapped a pic to post… And sure enough, within seconds it was up on the big screen. It was at this point that we realized this feed seemed to be pulling photos automatically. With almost zero regard for the content of these pics. So *technically* you didn’t have to post a selfie like the billboard asked. Technically, you could post any photo and it would go up there as long as it had the event hashtag. HMMMM… Do you see where I’m going with this? Well, it was quite tempting to test it out. So we decided to post the photo of our photo on the big screen to see if anything really could get up there. A Photo-ception of sorts. And sure enough, it also got picked up and posted. [photoception] And well… I guess you can blame us for what happened next. Because after our Photo-ception was posted, other people started to realize the same thing: Any pic was fair game. And things started to ... devolve. First, there was a trickle of pet and baby pictures showing up on screen. Then, a handful of people started posting memes and strange gremlin characters. And then, the real jokesters woke up. And people started posting mildly incriminating photos of their friends. There was one of a guy hardcore eating banana – from a very bad angle (if you know what I mean). Another of a guy falling off a skateboard and smashing his groin. And even more that I probably shouldn’t put in writing. In other words, it escalated fast. What started as a simple call for selfies from fans devolved into the most ludicrous photos being shared on the jumbotron. In other words: Once people were given an inch, they took a mile. As it is with human nature. And client-freelancer relationships. (You knew I'd get it back to copywriting, but be honest, you had no idea how ;) Which is why I always caution freelancers of seemingly small requests that fall outside of the original scope of the project. Because just as our Jumbotron got hijacked by pics that were WAY different than intended… Jumping to do every tiny thing a client asks can quickly become you working on a whole new gig ... without any credit or pay for the additional work you’ve done. Believe it or not, good clients actually like it when you tell them no. It signals to them you value what you do and are an expert who won’t be bulldozed. We’ve just scratched the surface of this here. But don’t worry, we will be exploring this a lot more at our next event (coming up soon). Until then, check out the archives of my YouTube channel for more freelancing and client tips. Some of the old videos don’t get nearly as much attention, but they’re just as good. [( Or if you have $350 to spare and want all my own advanced client-getting, client-retaining, and client-respect-building philosophies… PLUS, insights from 20+ copywriting experts (like Roy Furr, Lukas Resheske, Shiv Shetti, Chris Orzy and more), check out my Freelance Freedom Bundle more. [( You can get the individual resources or bundle all 5 and save. Let's crush next week, Rob “The Hockey Jumbotron Celebrity” Allen Want to invest in your copywriting education? [Check out resources on email marketing, copywriting services, client tips and more.]( Looking for something to watch? [Watch hours of impactful copywriting training on my YouTube channel.]( Are we connected on Twitter? [Follow me here!]( No longer want to receive these emails? [Unsubscribe](. Kings of Conversion PO Box 1175 Boise, ID 83701 ‌