Becoming a TrailBlazer

I DARE YOU TO WATCH THIS AND NOT SAY WOW…

The value proposition for what a great agency can (should?) deliver

By Robert Wheatley

What is powerful communication? Well you know it when you’re confronted with it, right? When it moves you. When it evokes a strong feeling or visceral response. This leads us directly to discovering the value proposition for an agency such as W&T. What is it exactly that we deliver to our clients?

Hopefully it includes transformational ideas that can alter the course of a brand’s trajectory and business results. To be sure the usual litmus test of our capability is often examined through the lens of campaign-able events and larger-scale integrated projects and programs.

That said at a fundamental level PR and social media communication is made powerful by how we use specific words and pictures to convey a story. In-other-words WHAT we say and importantly, HOW we say it. With sentiment. With anticipation. With passion and emotion. Please watch this video all the way through — then let’s talk some more.

Was there an “aha” moment here? Yep. A change of verbiage delivers a change in behavior. Sure this is a story well told. Point has been made: words matter. They can be used to great impact or something less than that. You can state the obvious — or develop dramatic new context by altering the way a brand message or proposition is conveyed.

Every so often we come face-to-face with process working to overtake ideas. With the urgency to “get the word out” driving the program boat, sometimes there’s a chance this momentum will super-cede the need to devote time and energy to creating a stronger and more compelling message.

Words can take you somewhere unexpected – or not. What you say can be simply a statement of the obvious – here’s my product, my feature and my benefit. Or, with a change of positioning, you can alter the course of brand history with a thought that grabs consumers in compelling fashion.

This is what we’re on the planet to accomplish at W&T. To find the right context that inspires and engages.

What say you?

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April 15, 2011
   

PET OWNERSHIP MAY BE BETTER FOR YOU THAN AN ASPIRIN A DAY…

Pet Food Forum presentation challenges industry to consider new pet ownership paradigm

By Robert Wheatley

If anything our agency has a long-standing love affair with the pet care category. It’s a business we have a passion for. And that comes out routinely in our efforts to position ourselves as thought-leaders and public relations/social media experts in generating pet care brand growth.

This week I had the wonderful privilege of presenting at the Pet Food Forum convention here in Chicago. Delightfully, the folks at Watt Publishing (Debbie Phillips in particular) who produce Pet Food Industry magazine and this annual conference for pet food manufacturers, allowed me to collaborate on a unique presentation with David Lummis of Packaged Facts research.

Both David and I share a personal interest in emerging evidence that there is a tangible, demonstrable, documented connection between pet ownership and human health and wellness benefits. This is a transformative idea for pet ownership and may well be for the pet care business generally.  Bottom line: successful brand communication springs from relevance of the message to the consumer. And what could be more relevant than your pet supporting your own health?

Dr. Marty Becker, perhaps the nation’s most well-known celebrity vet and pet care advocate wrote a book called the “Healing Power of Pets” where we describes pet ownership as a “Human Life Support System.” Marty deserves credit and a big thank you for helping me gather data for this presentation.

Human health — virgin territory for pet brand building…

Right now the go-to-market platform for most pet care brands is focused on celebrating the emotional bond that resides at the center of the relationship between pets and their two-legged parents. More recently there’s been an avalanche of pet food brand communication centered on superior pet food ingredient story telling. A phenomenon we call “premiumization” has taken root and drives the entire industry. The massive 2007 pet food recall opened the doors to public discovery of what pet food ingredient terms mean and ushered in a new era of redefinition and re-staging of higher quality pet diets. That said, the focus on ingredients breeds too much similarity (we call this specsmanship) in brand conversations with consumers.

No one has really moved as yet to expand their brand voice to address the connection between pet ownership and improved health and wellness for the pet parent. Hence our goal at the conference to get this on the industry’s radar screen…

See it here…

Below is my Forum presentation.

“Human Life Support System”

What rich territory to mine for engagement when you consider the chance to expand the pet care value proposition to include protecting, elevating your own health. The pet and pet parent relationship is an amazing story of emotional bond in itself. The symbiotic nature of this – one protects the health and wellbeing of the other – is just exciting. Brands that get this right can redefine the conversation and drive a wedge of differentiation in how they go to market.

What’s your take on this??

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April 14, 2011
   

WATCH, LIKE, BUY…THE FUTURE FACE OF E-COMMERCE?

YouTube functionality supports converting engagement to sale

By Robert Wheatley

Scanning the recent edition of Google’s recent self-published e-zine Think Quarterly, I ran across an article on functionality improvements at YouTube that permit viewers to buy items they like within the production via a point/click hotlink to another web platform.

Video is an engaging and entertaining medium. With high involvement categories that naturally attract an enthusiastic fan base, you can immediately see the business-generating opportunities when taking advantage of viewer interest and converting “in the moment” to a purchase opportunity.

The site above, You-Tique, is a great example of a fashion business aggregating a series of trend videos around everything from “What’s New for Spring” to occasion based ideas, such as what to wear for a hot date. The use of a Stylist expert helps set the credibility and value equation at the right level right out of the gate.

From there viewers can watch a model wearing the products and click to buy while viewing the video. It’s easy, pretty painless and, in my opinion, way more effective than looking at still photos of a product with narrative information alongside.

Zappos has figured out that online e-tailing gets compelling when you combine the right products with exemplary service. So who knows if the folks behind You-Tique have similar policies for returns and friendly live support. That said, the concept of watch and buy is just plain captivating.

You get richer story telling, context, validation and other benefits that outshine static web site galleries by adding the flavor of video production to the whole proposition. May not be right for every product category but this peek at the future is exciting none-the-less. Think Quarterly says the click through rates for You-Tique have been stellar…

What do you think?

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April 5, 2011
   

THE FIVE MAGICAL ELEMENTS OF A BROADER, TRANSFORMATIVE MARKETING PLATFORM

How a strategic mission can fuel the next historic move in marketing and PR.

By Robert Wheatley

Most of us have experienced a point in our careers when the stars aligned as our PR campaigns and marketing programs achieved dramatic perhaps even monumental results. A moment in time when we almost can’t believe what we’ve just witnessed in business growth, consumer buzz, perhaps major media attention — or to leap-frog a much bigger competitor with a better idea the world says yes to.

Life’s achievements, career or otherwise, are to be savored — and we hope dearly, to be repeated. No one-hit-wonder here. Nope, not a one-trick pony, right? We always say this under our breath with a slight tinge of trepidation that maybe the big outcome will be hard to come by a second or third time. So we push ahead eager that some of the magic and creative lightening will strike twice and hit the results jackpot again. Dumb luck you think? No….

So what is the grist of this success made of these days?  Is there a consistent theme within these experiences and projects that metaphorically or mathematically blew the doors off? It is highly probable they were big bets representing a strategic swing for the fence. Some risk capital, personal and otherwise, was expended. Let’s explore some evolutions in the current path to remarkable marketing achievement….

Finding Your Mission…

Lately we’re seeing some organizations up the ante and scope of their marketing and outreach efforts by enveloping their brands in an initiative that draws from a more cinematic scope and mission.

Take ConAgra’s recent announcement of a multi-brand campaign entitled Child Hunger Ends Here. No small cause and one that resonates with moms everywhere who understand and appreciate the plight of less fortunate children. The project unites a portfolio of their packaged foods brands under a single banner.

Or Pepsico’s massive “Refresh Project” – an initiative that falls from the company’s efforts to emphasize social values while working to embed greater meaning into their brands and businesses. Refresh invites investment proposals from all comers at the local level for arts, music, community and education projects.

And the comprehensive, “Live Music Series” lifestyle program from Jim Beam bourbon that helps unlock the social connections inherent in their business category. Beam is sponsoring and presenting an array of music events, offers and experiences. What resonates here is the commitment to relevance with their core target audience’s lifestyle passions and aspirations.

By definition we’re wading into territory populated with larger-in-scope, transformative projects that carry with them the potential to impact brand and business behavior. And in doing so fulfill the definition of what we would call a “BIG” idea: bigger in agenda, bigger in reach, bigger in ambition and hopefully attached also to bigger outcomes and long-term benefits.

Efforts in this vein surely will work harder to break through the rust of rampant, epidemic indifference that exists virtually everywhere. Sounds good, but what’s the path look like? Let’s examine five key elements that together bring some magic to the table when working to elevate the brand’s mission and meaning to a higher level:

1.    A historic sense of gravitas, mattering and purpose – consumer behaviorists tell us that people want to be a part of something bigger than themselves (And so by the way do employees, too). Projects that spring from a foundation of greater meaning, value and symbolism in turn infuse the business with superior significance and worth. There’s just a richer conversation to be had than the year-to-year rework of product feature and benefit messaging

2.    Momentum to ante-up a clutter-busting focus of resources (not tonnage in spend but in cross-channel deployment) – more horsepower is secured when the concept also waves the flag of moral imperative or corporate calling. The aggregation of assets on a single platform creates potential homerun clout. Much needed in a marketing environment already riven with attention deficits and loss of grip in conventional media channels

3.    The concept is drenched with inherent merit, married to simplicity – and thus it immediately gains power and demands attention. Said another way the intellectual space a brand can expect to own exists in direct proportion to its meaning and value to the consumer. Projects of larger scope won’t work successfully if burdened by too many agendas or alternative messaging priorities all competing for brain time. Instead the simple thrust of hunger, community betterment and music are liberating in their ability to finally get somewhere with a human who invests very little mental territory with any one idea before moving on

4.    Relentless devotion to consumer insight – These platforms all spring from understanding consumer aspirations, values and passions. Hunger, what gives? It’s the common thread of value and importance moms place on their primary role as caretaker of their children’s welfare. This is an over-arching common trait and mission within moms’ understanding of what matters. Matching the brand agenda to this prevailing behavior embraces the emotional ties so important in building brand relationships

5.    Corporate reputation and brand reputation no longer separated – both are intertwined. Consumers watch and observe businesses to see if actions match words. Are an organization’s beliefs and values of equal priority with the demands of commerce and balance sheets? You are making a statement about what you believe in, what is important as a business and as a brand. A strategic mission creates an internal and external flagpole all stakeholders can rally around and salute. In doing so the faceless corporation gets an endearing face and the business results can benefit from this humanizing experience

Yes there’s a process required to correctly sync an organization’s DNA, values and understanding of the consumer’s lifestyle priorities with a mission that makes sense. But in equal measure it requires one other thing to make this “jackpot” moment recur. Fearlessness.

Go for it. Life is short and no great thing is accomplished by staying in the comfort zone.

What do you think?

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March 24, 2011
   

FIVE WAYS BRANDS CAN BECOME A “TRUSTED SOURCE” OF MEANINGFUL MEDIA CONTENT…


By Robert Wheatley

One of the greatest marketing evolutions in the Internet era: brands have acquired the ability to be content creators – publishers, producers of their own media. This fits perfectly with the other great strategic upheaval — brands can no longer simply imprint messages and attempt to exert “control” over consumer behavior by pushing messages at consumers.

As I write this, many brands still believe this will work.

The brand/consumer relationship is tougher to build now and demands a more selfless form of engagement. It requires singular devotion to understanding and mining relevance to the consumer’s lifestyle interests and passions. Brands-that-matter to their users can earn permission for a relationship by connecting tangibly, emotionally to activities and interests their consumer already cares about.

So doesn’t it stand to reason that working hard to become a source of valuable, interesting, engaging, entertaining information about these lifestyle passions could be important? For a fashion or jewelry brand it’s the opportunity to tap into that creative self-expression that is at the core of what drives a fashion-focused person. For the food brand it might be enabling the culinary creativity, learning and emotional payoff going on everyday in the kitchen (experimenting with new dishes, tastes and techniques).

In virtually every category insight research can help you unearth this unique emotional grist that drives the most devoted fans and followers. And from there is an enormously powerful opportunity to cement that relationship by casting the brand as an enabler and provider of stories and content that offers intrinsic value – How? Information, ideas and experiences that help the consumer enjoy, do what they do better and connect with others that share their interests.

Trust is the key to engagement…

But the word trust looms large in this. How does a brand successfully establish itself as a trusted and valued source? Here are five ways a brand can develop a respected and reliable channel of rich-content media:

1. The value of respected outside voices

In the news business, outside quote-able sources are employed to validate assertions made in a news story. Similarly, outside experts, influencers and knowledge-brokers can bring their own credibility and cachet to the story telling in brand-owned media. Bring in the experts as contributors and steer clear of putting them in a compromised position of endorsing or directly selling your product.

2. The type, tone and tenor of the content matters

Watch the overt selling. Your media mission is to be helpful, useful. Think like a magazine editor or TV producer working to build exciting, interesting stories that add value to the reader’s lifestyle. Operate like a traditional media organization focused on reader and viewer benefit. Take a reportorial approach to the content. If the communication comes off like reporting and informing rather than persuading, you’ll earn the attention of your best followers.

3. Identify the storytellers

Create an editorial board of editors and contributors. If you identify and position the writers and producers, you humanize the entire interaction for your audience. You also create an environment for trust to take root because the contributors are identified and thus “real people” are engaged in the communication.

Create an editorial board of editors and contributors. If you identify and position the writers and producers, you humanize the entire interaction for your audience. You also create an environment for trust to take root because the contributors are identified and thus “real people” are engaged in the communication.

4. Transparency

How do real friends speak with each other? Honest, straightforward, real, open communication is fundamental between true friends. Treat your audience with the same respect. When issues and complaints arise, don’t hide or spin. Be matter-of-fact. Admit mistakes – probably the hardest thing to do, but also the most refreshing and endearing behavior you can show. Nobody’s perfect. No one expects your organization or brand to be perfect.

5. Be entertaining

You can’t bore your customer’s into loving you and coming back for more. Valuable, useful information is a prerequisite. How that information is served up can vary from tedious to fun and interesting. Make them laugh and make them cry. Video may be the most powerful medium available and offers the magic of words, picture, sound, music, personalities and color. It’s a bite-size world we live in now so keep it short. But most of all keep it entertaining. Mainstream media is working overtime to achieve this and so should you.

What’s the end game? Once a respected source, you have an open channel of communication that’s direct. And with content that’s got their attention – a long way from the good old days of beating people over the head with repetition and self-serving messages you hope and pray will break through the noise. Ten years ago brands could only dream of creating such a relationship. Now it’s possible.

What do you think?

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January 28, 2011
   

WHIRLPOOL DAZZLES WITH RELATIONSHIP BUILDING TOOL

Great Moments in Trailblazing:


By Robert Wheatley

You know what’s great about powerful ideas? You can recognize the strengths almost instantly. And yesterday that happened at ragan.com’s review of Whirlpool’s web content strategy. So today we’re applauding and recognizing some terrific work in PR and brand building. As we’ve said before here at the Brand Trailblazer blog, if you look at your best consumers as walking wallets and view the relationship with them as transactional, you are risking failure in your ability to engage and communicate effectively.

On the other hand, treating consumer relationships the same way we regard our closest friends and family (we truly care about them) opens the door to an entirely new spectrum of programs and strategies — aimed at building relevance for your brand in the lives of those you hope to sell to. We call this finding and mining your brand’s “Higher Purpose”.

Whirlpool offers us a terrific example of this kind of thinking, well executed, that demonstrates a profound understanding of how brand relationships are built in the era of consumer control. Whirlpool has created the Institute for Fabric Science and Institute for Kitchen Science as platforms intended to help, advise and engage consumers on problems and needs they may have in their daily lives around cooking, cleaning (appliances) and laundry.

This works to establish Whirlpool as an expert knowledge broker and advisor on issues the consumer faces. Further real people are involved in the content creation and delivery, which helps humanize the brand. It takes about a second to see the vast array of potential extensions these platforms offer for earned media activity and additional multi-media content creation, so vital to aggregating and activating an audience at Facebook.

Monica Teague, Whirlpool’s Senior Manager for PR and Brand Experience had this to say in her Ragan.com interview: “And that’s the whole point of the Institute of Fabric Science and its sister, the Institute of Kitchen Science. Acting as a resource—versus promoting products—goes a long way in developing brand loyalty.” Amen to that. And we would go a step further to point out that now brands are obligated to earn permission for a relationship with consumers based on their ability to authentically connect with lifestyle needs and aspirations. It’s this kind of thinking that helps forge real bonds with people over time.

In the absence of strategies like the Whirpool effort, brands risk disengagement and commoditization – where finding a lower price becomes the only emotional value consumers experience with your business.

Bravo!!


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October 28, 2010
   

The Most Important Quality an Agency Can Offer

This is the first in our series of question/answer posts about effective communication, best practices in PR and social media and an occasional look inside Wheatley & Timmons.

Any burning questions you would like us to weigh in on? Let us know!



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September 15, 2010
   

POWERFUL, SUCCESSFUL PR CAMPAIGN ILLUSTRATES DRAMATIC MEDIA SEACHANGE

A backwards glance shows seismic shift in the PR world

By Robert Wheatley

It was without a doubt one of the most powerful PR campaigns I’ve ever been associated with. An entirely new product category created from scratch off a compelling, dynamic public relations strategy. Yes, I said PR — not advertising or sales promotion. Over $100 million in sales (and that’s in 1994 dollars) was achieved and an 84% share of market within 16 months of launch. It was the introduction of First Alert brand carbon monoxide alarm products.

Recently we heard from the Wall Street Journal that futurist Richard Dawson believes newspapers will be irrelevant by 2022. The reference point for this incredible shift can be more fully appreciated by briefly looking backwards to a moment in time when conventional print and broadcast media were popular and respected sources of news, information and influence on consumer behavior and public opinion.

Here’s the story of PR campaign media strategies that were built from a full-scale deployment of earned media tactics.

• And the approach is no longer as relevant. New businesses are now developed in an interactive, narrowcast environment without push-button scale-ability

The lesson: the old rules no longer apply. New media protocols, planning processes and program strategies literally demand a transformation of our beliefs about brand building, PR strategies, how PR firms are put together. Thus how we look at messaging, outreach, measurement and evaluation of ideas is different than it was even 10 years ago.

When editorial media ruled!!

It was 1993, the firm I owned at the time, Wheatley Blair, was hired by First Alert, the leading home safety products brand in the US. They had invented the residential smoke alarm category and literally owned the retail market for them. Rich Timmons, now principal and President of Wheatley & Timmons, was the global marketing chief at First Alert – a marketer who had followed conventional paths focused on TV advertising and who was going to do something unprecedented: launch the next biggest thing to come along in his company’s history through PR.

A new category: Carbon Monoxide (CO) Alarms

We were awestruck the moment we learned that CO poisoning was the largest source of accidental poisoning deaths in America.

First Alert had created the first affordable residential detector for this previously unseen and little understood hazard that claimed at least 1,500 lives every year and injured thousands more.

The Silent Killer

How do you convince Americans to protect themselves from a hazard you cannot see, taste, smell or touch? And after all, headaches are common and ubiquitous, right? We created a theme that dramatically defined the threat.
• Poison center physicians, indoor air quality experts, leading fire service officials and others were recruited to help explain the problem and support the solution
• We built the Carbon Monoxide Information Bureau to house the scientific and medical evidence
• Brought together consumers who had lost loved ones in CO accidents to personalize and make the hazard tangible and real

Launching a Media Tsunami

Media tours were conducted with CO survivors and coordinated with local fire department representatives. We booked medical expert appearances on TODAY, Good Morning America and all of the network news programs. Placed in-depth hazard education features in national newspapers and virtually every major daily in the US. Similar treatments on family protection were secured in women’s service, lifestyle and DIY magazines. We assembled an in-house TV news production department that was producing a regular flow of 90-second video news packages.

Our tracking on consumer media impressions within six months topped 700 million and grew to over a billion. There were 6 o’clock news stories in major markets about lines outside stores exclaiming that First Alert alarm products were sold out. A major trade publication featured a quote from a senior buyer at Walmart who described First Alert CO alarms as the “cabbage patch doll of the hardware department.”

A business was created. A category established. First Alert doubled in size. Thousands of lives were saved in the process. Importantly, editorial media in virtually all channels was the instrument of awareness, education and motivation. The decline of traction, audiences and the splintering of media into hundreds if not thousands of platforms of self-interest make this story simply a reflection of a another age in media communication.

The same product launch, repeated today would be wholly different and geared to empower individuals to spread the word as much as media properties are addressed to influence the influencers.

For First Alert we constructed a media machine that hummed and produced and delivered editorial attention. That is no longer the way communication operates. Yet many still attempt to apply the old rules of quantity thresholds to a world now devoted to the quality and personalization of encounters with communication.

Nine years after we began, the agency moved on to represent Kidde, the other leading category brand. We helped them secure the number one market share position. This dramatic video PSA was part of the effort:

How would you launch the CO alarm category today?



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August 31, 2010
   

FOOD PRODUCTS BORN FROM PR-SAVVY FORMULAS??

Marketing can move from assertions of goodness to tangible proof points

By Robert Wheatley

There’s an interesting trend emerging in branded food products, one that’s about “inherent goodness, freshness, wholesomeness and balanced nutrition,” rather than vague assertions of good or better for you. This is just a great edible bandwagon and we hope to see more and more of it. Here’s why…

We operate today in the era of transparency and authenticity. Thus the product itself is front and center in the marketing. So genuine claims absolutely will trump any attempt to concoct a story more about marketing-speak than simple truth.

And simple is the transcending idea here: New products are gaining acceptance on simplified formulations — a sort of “less is more” proposition that authentically moves packaged food towards natural, real and additive free recipes. Ingredients you recognize and know. Marketing Daily has a fascinating article on the subject, tracking the emergence of products with fewer, more natural ingredients across an array of categories from beverages to meals and side dishes. This simple proposition invites scrutiny and boldly stands the acid test of what is essentially more wholesome by eliminating the artificial. On the snack front, Frito-Lay simply says the only thing in the bag of their Lays chips beside some potatoes, a bit of oil and salt is your hand. Haagen Dazs delivers great tasting ice cream with just five natural ingredients. Hmmm. How simple. (Tried the Coffee flavor – it was amazing).

If you claim you’re wholesome how does this secure more believability?

A fundamental tenet of sound public relations strategy is respect and advocacy for brand propositions and communications that accentuate and magnify what’s real and true. Consider the history of PR and its historical devotion to editorial channels of communication. We were obligated under the spotlight of editorial scrutiny to present truth and proof of what we claimed about a client’s product or service. We knew they would check into what we said, look for their owns sources to corroborate and then report.

So we labored greatly to line up the facts, provide the data and sources to validate our claims. (Of course Hollywood’s presentation of PR as hucksters and spin-doctors violates this idea of PR people as conveyors of truth. However, I happen to be telling– the truth). What can be more self-evident than a short, sweet and simple ingredients statement?

Now comes food that is deliciously straightforward. Goodness that invites inspection. That breathes the basics of healthier choice. How refreshing. We hunger now for real and are attracted to what’s honest. Better-for-you options made easier to identify and to believe through simplicity. As a marketer and PR expert I’m excited. Are You?



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August 4, 2010
   

AGENCY/CLIENT PARTNERSHIP IS AN OBLIGATION AS MUCH AS AN OPPORTUNITY…

Agencies that lead bring more value than order takers

By Robert Wheatley

Hugh MacLeod is a creative and insightful expert who regularly exposes the soft underside of the marketing world — and helps us laugh at ourselves. His thoughts, expressed as graphic images, can be down right powerful. Today’s post in some respects is a perfect foil for a few of his engaging ideas. (Check out gapingvoid.com – and subscribe to his daily image emails).

Great work falling from great ideas can transform the future direction and growth of business. Yet more often than not, by definition, it will require clients to stretch, to have faith and take risk. And none of this will see the light of day unless agencies step up to passionately support and defend solid out-of-the-ordinary thinking. This is often the price of strategic concepts that are unique, unexpected and disruptive (in a positive way).

An insightful article on this subject was published today by Cory Treffelett of Catalyst SF. You can read it here . In his excellent piece he accurately describes the difference between a vendor and partner style relationship between agency and client. Essentially the order taker vs. the leader.

Good agencies are in the strategic idea creation business. Clients make investments in programs and concepts that will grow business, build brand reputation and attract or retain new customers. No easy task. And I can recount over the years in virtually every instance of needle-busting results, innovative concepts always supplied the accelerant. Thus risk and leadership is demanded of the agency.

The path of least resistance is easily followed and at times it feels much safer to stay within the comfortable bounds of serenity — a quiet surf made calm by the absence of tough discussion that can whip up a big wave or two along the way.

Fear – collectively our greatest enemy
What stands in the way of great ideas and game-changing initiatives? It’s fear. Fear of rocking the boat. Fear of losing the account. Fear of failure. Fear of disagreement. Fear of ruffling feathers. Fear of slaying sacred cows. Fear of the unknown. Fear of folded arms and taught expressions. Fear of shaking heads. Fear not being loved. Fear of losing the budget. Fear of the boss. Fear of mistakes. Fear of conflict. Fear of perception leading reality. Fear of risk, of making the big bet. This insidious human condition interferes so many times, closing the gate on otherwise powerful moves that may occasionally require a willingness to “boldly go where no man has gone before.”

This is not a call to arrogance and conceited behavior by the way. What is in the client’s best interests at all times will be growth and development of their brand and their business results. The fact that innovation is often at the fulcrum of transformative periods only means that risk will be part of the mix in bringing these things to fruition. Clients who are challenged by their agencies to accomplish more through bolder initiatives are needed now more than ever. And are often in short supply for all of the reasons mentioned above. Just take the order, do the work and make sure everyone is happy and smiling all of the time? No great thing was ever accomplished by simply riding the existing wave. Blazing a new trail will be required of us.

Agencies and Clients Together Offer the Best Formula…
There’s an old saying, “an agency is only as good as its client.” Well in some end-game sort of reference I suppose this is true if all you ever hear is no. Should clients run from risk and punish their agency for bringing bold ideas then Houston, we have a problem!! Ultimately however, agencies have an obligation to bring this kind of thinking routinely. It should be the rule rather than the exception.

Clients can help this process by openly inviting and encouraging their agency partners to challenge them, to say no when its necessary, to think big, to look for new territory to trail-blaze. In essence to disrupt the category conventions and accepted brand behaviors that can deter major leaps ahead. Clients also acquire an obligation: to be willing to approve and fund campaigns with risk involved. And be prepared to accept a mistake along the way and learn from it.

This kind of healthy give and take — lively discourse built around discovery and epiphany — is essential if transformative programs are to get out of the developmental garage. Our daily mantra should be to make this quest genuinely a part of our culture and operating philosophy. To do less is to compromise the values and integrity of what we’re on the planet to accomplish.

What do you think?



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July 29, 2010
   
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