Big Enough… Yet Small Enough

Posted on February 20, 2013 by Patrick

Insert handy text here and you’ve got yourself a finished ad that just needs the right voice over depending on your audience. Works for most any company and any product or service. Try it out yourself! Requires no creative effort. No expending of calories. And your clients will love it! They’ll think you did your job well and the check will be on the way.

This is actually the concept my advertising copywriting professor, Bill Winters, said he absolutely NEVER wanted to see. Ever. Yet to this day, I see companies using it to peddle just about anything. And every time, I hear his words.

The concept of big-enough-yet-small-enough is designed to appeal to everyone, offend no one and encompasses every possibility. A company needn’t worry about missing an opportunity to reach an audience they didn’t even know existed!

For this reason, this concept is about as bad as it gets. It’s so overused and watered down, any company, let alone advertising agency or creative, should be ashamed to present this as a credible option.

Considering the dearth of messages we’re bombarded with 24/7, an overused, watered down concept will be certain death from the memorability standpoint. No matter how much money you throw at it, you’ll never capture the hearts and minds in a way that translates into a positive, sustainable brand growth.

It’s lazy. And “there are no new ideas” is not an excuse! I once spent two weeks with the legendary Jay Maisel on a photography workshop on color and seeing. He remarked that interesting people take interesting pictures. Same goes for advertising. If you’re not always questioning, always exploring, looking down when most look straight. Or looking up, sideways and diagonally, you’re not stretching your brain. See. Feel. Touch. Experience. Connect. Pay attention to the simplest details because that’s where the big ideas often lie.

Look at how Apple has done that with every product they introduce. They pay attention to things that most everyone else doesn’t. Yes, they’re often quoted, overused example, but that’s because few companies come close to touching the complete experience they create – with such simplicity. Look, too, at how Method took the lowly cleaning product and made it sexy. What a simple idea.

It’s these simple ideas clients find so tough to embrace. They want more. They want to see all the features. They want their money’s worth from you. And to many, that means something complex.

For creatives who are passionate about delivering great concepts, those that aren’t out for the paycheck delivered safe, boring ideas often see their shiny, groundbreaking counterparts face potential death by committee or clients too afraid to take the risk on their own, even though that’s exactly what they need to do to make an impact. Many say they want powerful, cutting edge creative, yet when presented with an idea that makes them squirm – which you and I know is the kind that will get them noticed – they retreat, back track and pass it off to the idea firing squad also known as the cross-functional approval committee. And said client, fearing for his or her job, isn’t willing to do the heavy lifting required to promote such ‘dangerous’ ideas. And you, fearless creative, are once again beaten down. Yet another award-winning idea relegated to darkness in favor of friendly, appeals to men, women and children worldwide ideas. Which brings us another edition of big-enough-to-offer-you-the-prices-you-deserve-but- small-enough-to-give-you-the-service-you-demand. And the client keeps his job for another round of creative slaying.

We’ve all been there, right? If you’re leading a creative team who cares about their craft, who carefully interprets the creative brief and who develops the kind of work that’s sure to get noticed by the people who matter – also known as the primary target audience, only to be shot down, you know how tough it can be to keep up the morale. It becomes easy, especially in an in-house department, to create the kind of work that gets approved. At least agencies get the benefit of higher perceived value because they’re the ‘outside experts’ brought in for their brilliance.

At least agency creatives can lick their wounds and focus on the next client. In-house creative leaders can continue encouraging risk taking and concepting of ideas that push the boundaries, but unless one EVENTUALLY sees the light of day, it’s tough to keep up the good fight. It’s tough to keep the idea pipeline vibrant. Over time, even the best can get beaten down, worn out. They lose the passion to work as hard as they need to for the best ideas.

So it’s our job as managers and leaders to push the ideas, to sell them to those fearful of them. To show WHY they’re not scary and WHY it’s essential to take a risk. To take a stand and risk alienating audiences that wouldn’t buy from you anyway. At the same time, we need to keep creative teams engaged via a mix of projects that fulfill their need to do great work. Photographer Chase Jarvis recently created a short film on living a creative life that shows how each of us needs to carve out the time for work that feeds our soul. Creative people need to know that the work they do matters. It’s WHY they do WHAT they do.

At the same time, ideas need care and nurturing because in addition to the fear factor, clients don’t always know how to handle great work. They need help to do so. To survive, they need help navigating the approval process. Marty Neumeier talks in The Brand Gap how you know you’re on to something when it scares the hell out of people.

I’ve always maintained it takes a good client to get good work, and know all too well how tough it can be to get the best work out the door. There’s so much fear and few people willing to take the risks necessary. But whining won’t get you anywhere. In fact it makes people dig their heels in and mark you as a Creative with a capital ‘C’, aka a prima donna. You have to establish the trust and credibility of the senior team.

You have to spend far more time than you think necessary taking clients through the process, including them as much as possible to get them emotionally committed from the start. That way they’ll feel invested and you’ll gain a lot more credibility. Collaborate intensely on the strategy and research. Gain agreement on the premise on which you’ll develop your killer concepts BEFORE you show them. And when you show that super simple idea, the Client will feel like they got their money’s worth.

The actual creative part of any campaign is really less than 20% of the hurdle you need to clear. Effectively managing the relationships inside and outside your company is the single most important part of getting good work approved. Fail to do that and you’re relegated to the safe zone where mediocrity abounds. Please spare your fellow citizens such pain. In fact, I invite you to commit to NEVER allowing a big-enough-yet-small-enough concept to see the light of day.

Originally published on I have an Idea in September, 2011

Enter the Database, Where IMC Benefits from Data and Automation

Posted on January 18, 2013 by Patrick

At its core IMC (Integrated Marketing Communications) is data driven to support a customer-centric company. Today, technology gives us access to all kinds of data – more specific, more targeted, bigger, but is it better? Please join us Sunday, February 10^th at 5:00 PM Pacific / 8:00 PM Eastern on Twitter for #IMCChat as we tackle this topic via the following questions:

IMC is data-driven, so where do you start with orienting data to the customer?
How can data help bridge the marketing functions (and really the whole co)?
Is there a way to keep data top-of-mind
How do you keep data relevant (fresh)?
As a marketer, what’s the most important data you collect? Why is it so important?
What is the most important data to keep collecting and reviewing?
How do you keep data from collecting dust on a shelf?
In a customer-centric co, is there room for automation?
What tactics or efforts make the most sense to automate?

We might not get to all of the questions depending on the flow of the conversation during the hour we have, but these are there to stimulate thinking and dialogue.

Transforming the Marketing Department into a Media Team – #IMCChat – December 10th

Posted on December 6, 2012 by Patrick

#IMCChat was originally a weekly chat that discussed best practices in Integrated Marketing Communications. Originally hosted by @BethHarte and @abarcelos a wonderful community gathered around to impart their hard-earned knowledge. Over the summer, a few of us discussed reviving the chat, and so, @cloudspark and myself (@pprothe) will once again host #IMCChat to continue the discussion twice monthly on the 10th and 20th at 8:00 PM Eastern / 5:00 PM Pacific.

Please join us Monday, December 10th where we’ll focus on Transforming the Marketing Department into a Media Team. We’ll center the discussion on the following five key points

The shift of communications, content and hyper personalized marketing
Who’s on the internal team
How to bring in external agencies to the team
Setting expectations when everyone is on the same team
Do we need new defined roles

Looking ahead to December 20th, we’ll start looking at Making 2013 the Year of IMC

Is your company ready for IMC?
First steps
Setting expectations
Common hurdles to getting started

We look forward to seeing you December 10th!

Marketing and the customer experience #IMCChat November 7, 2012

Posted on November 6, 2012 by Patrick

How many times have you seen a company spend a lot of money on a flashy advertising campaign but the actual product or experience didn’t live up to the hype?

How often do you visit a retail store and experience lackluster or even rude service? And let alone get answers to your questions! It’s certainly natural for marketers to focus on flashy campaigns. They’re exciting. They’re easy to wrap your head around. And they’re easy to point to as an example of the work you’re doing. The flash likely worked years ago when there were but a few channels and the conversation was one way. There were few opportunities for consumers to publicly complain.

Yet so many companies neglect the front lines of their businesses, staffing with poorly trained, poorly rewarded employees who are simply not invested in delivering a great experience. Which makes it almost shocking when you DO get good service.

Let’s face it, working on customer service is a tough, long-term endeavor reaching far beyond the marketing department. Yet the rewards are high. Just not very flashy.

Join us on November 7^th as we talk about the importance of the customer experience in marketing and how marketers can and should approach it to ensure that each marketing campaign can deliver better on it’s promise.

We’ll ponder the following questions but open the dialog to what’s top of mind for you in this area:

What are some recent examples of companies that ‘get’ customer service?
What are some horror stories (Need not name names)?
How can marketing influence customer service?
How can marketing help fix a bad experience?
When can customer service become the marketing?

How to facilitate communication and collaboration in an integrated marketing team: #IMCChat, September 5, 2012

Posted on September 5, 2012 by Patrick

Integrated marketing communications reads well and the results of successful teams using IMC are well known. So you’ve read a few books or ventured onto a few blogs to get up to speed. Or maybe you’ve been working to build IMC in your own company. And then comes the challenge – opening the lines of communication and collaboration when people have “jobs to do.”

How do you build open communication and cohesive collaboration between marketing team members (and the broader organization)?

On the IMCChat hosted on Twitter on Wednesday, Sept. 5 at 8:00 p.m. Eastern (5:00 p.m. Pacific), we’ll focus the conversation on creating collaborative communications to build strong and successful IMC teams. Guiding our conversation we’ll address the following questions:

Do you have systems in place to build open communications among team members? E.g. Yammer, Basecamp, etc.
What’s the biggest barrier to keeping everyone informed of all the “moving parts” of marketing?
How do you encourage cohesive collaboration?
How do you integrate new members into the team who may not be familiar with IMC?
What tools do you use or recommend to open the lines of communication and collaboration?

Join the conversation on Wednesday, Sept. 5 on Twitter, follow the hashtag #IMCChat.

Building an Integrated Marketing Team – #IMCChat August 1, 2012

Posted on July 30, 2012 by Patrick

For the first edition of the reincarnated #IMCChat previously lead by Beth Harte and Anna Barcelos, we thought we’d focus on building an integrated marketing team and the challenges therein.

Digital offers so many opportunities to link and measure marketing efforts, yet it still comes down to the people on the team: getting them aligned, thinking strategically and focused on the RIGHT goals rather than the flavor of the month.

This applies not only to the internal team, but the external partners as well. To be most effective, you need people inside and out working in lock step each with a open spirit of collaboration and transparency.

Join us Wednesday, August 1 at 8:00 PM EDT / 5:00 PM PDT as we talk about how to build a high performance integrated marketing team – from both the inside and outside.

We’ll focus on the following questions:

What factors influence team performance most?
How do you hire for culture / fit – employees and agencies?
How do you ensure smooth communication across inside and out?
How do you achieve consensus while maintaining an open, flexible and responsive team?
What are the biggest areas for growth in IMC?

Let us know too, what topics are top of mind for you and your teams?

Five books you should read now and why

Posted on March 31, 2012 by Patrick

I certainly don’t read as much as Julien Smith, however I find books a great way to go deeper into a subject – a nice break from the snackable chunks of information you get while grazing the interwebs. I’m also quick to quit a book that isn’t delivering on its promise as I look for things that I can put into action within my life and work. If you can’t do this, then you’re just passively consuming information and might as well read some good fiction.

Here are five books I think you should read now and why:

Content Rules by Ann Handley and C.C. Chapman distill the essence of content marketing into an engaging read that arms you with the tools to implement quickly. After they present the rules, they provide examples of them in practice along with results achieved. This book is perfect for skeptics and those who are completely new to the practice. The key takeaway: if you’re not thinking like a publisher yet, it’s time to start.

The Answer to How is Yes by Peter Block. This is one of those books that bends your mind a bit in a good way. It forces you to look at situations from another perspective and ask some tough, thought-provoking questions. It’s not a book for those who don’t like to think or want everything presented in a tidy bundle on a silver platter. And that’s why I like it. Too many books regurgitate the same stuff – particularly on leadership. If you’re open to changing your approach to solving problems, you’ll find this more than worth your time. This is also a book I wouldn’t have normally picked up and credit Valeria for the recommendation.

The Lean Startup by Eric Ries. Technology has enabled almost anyone with an idea the tools to start a business. Spend any time perusing the myriad new startups vying for attention at SXSW or the 20,000 new products at CES and you quickly realize that path to success is and will be littered with many failures. While failure is a good way to learn, it’s best to minimize your risk in the process. That’s what this book helps you do. It shapes the path for efficient innovation and testing – to make sure you’re solving the right problem and iterating quickly through what Eric calls the Build-Measure-Learn feedback loop. You’ll learn to avoid waiting for your product to be perfect before testing it. It just needs to be good enough at the start.

Brandwashed by Martin Lindstrom. Martin is a great storyteller who draws you in from the start. He details the many tricks marketers use to lure consumers into opening their wallets evermore. As a marketer, you may say you wouldn’t fall prey to these tactics but we do. Martin shows how our minds are hardwired to connect the dots brands want. He takes you through the way Whole Foods stacks up crates of fruit to suggest a fresh-from-the-farm delivery, to fish on ice for that ‘fresh from the sea’ feeling, showing how a trip through the store is an exercise in savvy marketing. And then there’s the power of celebrities, making of celebrities, including celebrity doctors to sell everything. It’s a great book for consumers and marketers alike to increase awareness of these tricks as a consumer (you’ll still fall for many of them), and thought provoking for how marketers can increase their effectiveness. I believe it’s a great companion to Marc Gobe’s Emotional Branding.

Minding the Store by Stanley Marcus. This is an oldie but it’s clear that most companies still have not received the memo on what makes for good customer service. You get the inside perspective of building a business from the ground up: from developing the product mix to weathering tough times, managing competing personalities and succession planning. While technology and the pace of change is obviously faster, Neiman-Marcus successfully navigated many of the themes that still affect business success today. The key is they never lost sight of the customer. Read this as well as Delivering Happiness about Zappos and you’ll understand how customer service is everyone’s job and a marketer’s best friend.

Shout Quietly

Posted on February 15, 2012 by Patrick

In the pursuit of qualified leads, marketers, when they’re not getting the response rates desired, are compelled to shout louder. To make bigger claims, so-called stronger offers and calls to action. Maybe inject a starburst or two. At the very least you’ll find one of these: !.

Yet still there’s no response. Why?

Because your customers are smart. They can smell your marketing – speak a a 1,000 pixels away. They see through your hollow claims and puffery. And ignore you. Because they know that once they fall for you flimsy claim, they’ll be disappointed. And even more jaded than the last time.

If it weren’t for the years they’ve been pounded with messages, you might have a chance. If it weren’t for the infinite number of channels they can go to, you might have a chance. It’s too easy to tune you out. And they know it. They have the power like never before.

When TV was born, advertising was new and shiny. The channels were few. Customers had to listen. It didn’t take long for ‘commercial’ to equate to bathroom break or time to make popcorn, but you didn’t have the clutter.

Now you have to work harder. Much harder. You have to make claims in plain, human language. Next generation, industry leading goodness doesn’t cut it.

No one wants to be sold.

The new buzzwords are join the conversation, engage and let’s have a relationship. Sounds warm and fuzzy – the right thing to do. But then again, customers don’t always want to have a relationship with you. They can’t have a relationship with every brand and service they purchase. Nor do they need one. Some are meant to be purchased and consumed.

I’m certainly not looking for a relationship with my olive oil of choice. Or my oil change service.

But a contractor? Or an accountant? Now that’s someone I want to get to know. And who I want to care about me. It’s tough to find a good one. Horror stories abound of contractors gone bad. Just ask Mike.

You still need to get the word out about what it is you do. You still need to confidently state why you’re the one people should choose. But it’s time for a much different approach. Forget SPAMMING and Screaming.

It’s time to shout quietly. What? A twist on the old show, don’t tell approach. Make every word count. Make your typography sing with fine craftsmanship. Show that you care. As if you pasted each pixel on the page just so. Use images that not everyone else is using. How often do you see the same photos from iStockphoto used in a presentation? Or an ad? A lot. In fact, pay attention to the number of downloads on an image you’re thinking about. If it’s a lot, maybe you should find another one.

Keep it fresh. You know how a bowl of fresh fruit and fresh flowers make a room seem cleaner and shinier? Same goes with your marketing. We respond to what’s different.

When you pay attention to the craft – people notice. There’s a LOT of really GOOD stuff out there. The smallest details matter. Invest in them. Sweat them. It’s the way you can shout quietly and still be heard. In fact you’ll be heard even more . . .

Finding your single most important point

Posted on January 17, 2012 by Patrick

We marketers are a funny bunch. At the beginning of each year we layout our grand plans for generating leads and growing revenue. We look at our wins and losses during the past year and project a nice increase for the new one. That’s our job, isn’t it? Always growing, always at the leading edge of our market? Last time I checked it was. We’re mostly optimistic about our prospects of hitting our targets.

So we create our media plans, craft email and direct mail campaigns and weave in a little social media to round it out and off we go. Through the internal review process making sure all stakeholders have an opportunity to weigh in. We agonize over each point. Each word. Hoping for the best, we launch then wait, measure, rinse and repeat.

And when we don’t get quite the results we’re looking for, we come back stronger, shouting louder and louder. Like a classroom of 28 Third-graders hopped on sugar at their Valentine’s Day party all talking at once.

It’s a cycle that plays out in companies around the world year after year. Each year it gets harder because our customers are getting smarter. And they have the tools to tune out everything we say on a whim. At best we’ve got a couple of seconds to grab their attention.

Part of the problem is that there’s simply too much of everything. Products, services, information – you name it. None of us really needs any more stuff. At the recent Consumer Electronics Show an estimated 20,000 new products were introduced. TWENTY THOUSAND!!! And that’s just the new products. Nevermind the line extensions and new versions of the old. Talk about competition.

I’d argue though that your toughest competition is time. You don’t have enough time to do everything you want. To read and learn everything you could to get ahead. Neither do your customers.

So what’s a marketer to do? Get clear on what it is you want to accomplish and now. Get tough on what you communicate in each of your initiatives. Take time to get to know the customer that means the most to you. And I mean really get to know them. Their aches, pains and why they get up in the morning. Only then will you know what you need to say to them to get their attention and have a fighting chance to win them over.

Sounds simple doesn’t it? Getting down to one single but oh so important point. It’s not fancy nor requires any secret formulas. But it requires a strong, steady hand at the wheel to convince your internal stakeholders exactly what that point is. Everyone will have a different one. But someone – and that someone is you – needs to take all these internal inputs, compare against the external inputs and choose. And when you choose you put your reputation on the line. You’re taking a risk. If you’re right, you’re a hero. If you’re wrong, you have an even tougher job the next time.

It’s because few can do this well that there’s so much clutter and mediocrity in our messages and products. It’s why products are crammed with features we’ll never use.

What will it take for you to get to your single most important point?

2011 captured in an image and word a day

Posted on January 10, 2012 by Patrick

In 2010 I captured the sky each day from wherever I was. Last year I started posting one image combined with the word that image evoked over at Mundaily. It’s where I captured the random details of daily life – nothing fancy or pretentious. Just whatever I came across each day. All captured with my iPhone. A snapshot of each day to form a snapshot of a year. I’ve now put it all365 together in this little film:

It was hard to limit my thoughts to just one word, but that’s the constraint I put on this project. For 2012, I’m loosening that up a bit and participating in Cowbird. A storytelling platform by Jonathan Harris, creator of some pretty interesting projects. Everyday I’ll post an image and short – sometimes VERY short – story. The goal is to be spontaneous and free form – much different than my more business-oriented writing.

These little projects exercise and sharpen the brain. They force you to focus and think quickly. Keeps the brain nimble and I hope infuses my other work with more creativity and perspective.