Think Different

Army Strong

The Driving Machine

These are not just taglines from well-known campaigns. These are examples of game-changing concepts.  Throughout history, concepts have been the way to sell in an idea. Whether we were trying to sell the idea of a country where everyone has freedom of choice or the idea that you could order a hamburger without pickles or lettuce, it has always been about the CONCEPT.

Cut to: Interior of a studio at any ad agency. Two twenty-somethings sitting in the editing bay feverishly cutting together a “spec spot.”  Creative Director with short-cropped hair, salt and pepper scruff, and black horned-rimmed glasses hanging over their shoulder.  “We need to get this perfect for the RFP submission.  Can you move in tighter on the product shot?”

WTF!

So here's what. Why are we are skipping right over concept and going straight to execution?  Since when did that win an account? 

This might be hard for some of you to conceive but clients are not buying our ability to write copy. They are not buying our ability to capture the sun setting on a Napa Valley vineyard. They are buying our ability to think.

Does creative win pitches? Of course it does.  But it is the unseen, yet to be produced creative, that actually wins the pitch. The 3 concepts you show must be strong enough to evoke 300 execution images in the mind of the Client.  That’s when you win.

Think Different.

Concept: Don’t be like everyone else buying a home computer

Army Strong.

Concept: It takes a higher level of strength to be a soldier.

The Driving Machine.

Concept: The journey should be just as thrilling as the destination.

So, here’s what! Take a cue from the iconic concepts in our industry.

Don’t be like everyone else. Go to a higher level to make sure your next new business presentation focuses on the ever-expanding journey, and not just the destination. 

And…fade to black. 

What the Producer Said...Hey 19?

My cousin Matthew Kasindorf is a very successful tax and real estate attorney in New York.  While working together on the development of a videogame, he taught me, what has come to be, my favorite word.

Fungible:

being of such nature or kind as to be freely exchangeable or replaceable, in whole or in part, for another of like nature or kind.

Something (or someone) becomes fungible when it can be easily replaced by something else with the same perceived value.  Example: If I ask you to exchange the $10 dollar bill in my wallet for the two $5 dollar bills in your wallet, then my bill is fungible.

In Hollywood fungible is sometimes the only way movies get made. Will Smith becomes fungible when he passes on a role that goes to Keanu Reeves (Guess before you click). Molly Ringwald goes fungible when she passes on the role that made Julia Roberts a household name (Guess before you click).  It’s just how things work in that industry.

In the advertising agency business, however, it is no fun being perceived as fungible.  More than ever before we are seeing Clients switch out agencies the way Basketball Wives switch out hairstyles.  We have no one to blame but ourselves. With all this bullshit talk agencies do about “culture” we have forgotten about what really used to define and set agencies apart...”Style.” 

Style is that particular approach someone brings based solely on their individuality.  For those who have style, it isn’t just about how they work.  It was how they live.  My son calls it "Swag" . But in any generation it means the same thing. Confidence-based leadership.   

We don’t hire “style” any more. A young David Ogilvy; Rick Boyko; Dan Wieden or Lee Clow, wouldn’t get the time of day from an agency based on the way we perceive talent.  We hire “relevant experience.”  Which is just a fancy term for “fungible.”  We hire someone with the exact experience of the person we are replacing.  We ask…we demand they have no style of their own,  so that they seamlessly mend the tear in our culture.  When you hire based solely on relevant experience, you end up with an entire agency that can be made irrelevant by the next shop filled with relevant experience. Darwin’s theory in reverse.

So, the next time you hear about a Client changing agencies after a year or so, don’t be so quick to lambaste the Client. Because it could be that the agency just experienced what it’s like to become out of style.

 

And…fade to black.