By
Team DIGO | 01/03/2017 | in
The brutal 2016 election year left many relationships damaged, if not destroyed. The polarizing personalities of both candidates divided even the most close-knit groups of friends, turning our news feeds and dinner tables into debate-littered battlegrounds.
But the election is over, and in the holiday spirit of togetherness, we wanted to shift the narrative to what’s most important. To give everyone out there a shovel to bury the hatchet. A chance to reach out across the aisle and mend the relationships we’ve fought so hard to build. To prove that having opposing views does not make you the opposition, and that relationships are built on empathy, not policy.
The result was Bipartisan Holiday Cards, an inspiring action project produced by our team here at DiMassimo Goldstein that utilizes the connecting power of Social Media to unite, rather than divide.
Bipartisan Cards from DiMassimo Goldstein on Vimeo.
In just three weeks since their release, the cards – which come in Liberal, Conservative and Across the Aisle packs – have already gained the attention of a number of media outlets, including AgencySpy, AdWeek, Under Consideration, MediaPost, MediaLife Magazine, and DivergeNow.
By visiting our website, you can either download and share the cards with your friends – or purchase a hard copy and deliver it right to their doorstep. And, in the spirit of giving, all proceeds go to the Morgridge Academy, a school on the National Jewish Health campus that serves children with severe asthma, diabetes, HIV/AIDs and other chronic illnesses.
The need to provide children with a safe and healthy learning environment is one thing we can all agree on.
These Holiday Cards are the first installment of a series of Bipartisan-themed cards to be released throughout the year, so please like our Facebook page to stay updated and be the first to know when the next batch is unveiled.
Together we can heal the nation.
Together we can Inspire Action.
By
Team DIGO | 09/09/2016 | in
By Mark DiMassimo
Unilever recently announced its purchase of Dollar Shave Club for a cool billion dollars in cash, and now our mobile devices are buzzing with prospective clients beseeching us…
“Dollar Shave Club Us, Please!
Well, I’m not one to say, “I told you so!” But, I’m going to make an exception this time.
I’ve been talking up Dollar Shave Club for the past four years. In the beginning, when the company’s launch video went viral, people thought I made a lot of sense. Six months later, they thought I had fallen behind the times, and within a year many suspected I had developed a troubling obsession with a quirky little mail order outfit.
But, I kept at it. I wrote a case study on Dollar Shave Club, showing how the company had perfectly executed all the Ten Signs of an Inspiring Action Company.
I interviewed Dollar Shave Club’s creative director, Alec Brownstein, for my Inspiring Action podcast.
I wrote about the company in at least six different blog posts and posted about them frequently on social networks, imploring marketers to learn what Dollar Shave Club exemplified: how to drive up brand value while driving down cost-per-acquisition.
Why the passion? Here’s why:
1) Dollar Shave Club showed us how a tiny company with a social-led brand response acquisition strategy can take share from giants. (Proctor & Gamble’s market cap is something like $232 billion!)
2) Dollar Shave Club showed us that the direct economy is taking over, and the billion dollar purchase shows us that the Unilevers of this world know it too.
The Wall Street Journal said, “Dollar Shave Club’s direct-to-consumer model gives Unilever unique consumer data and insights, according to the Wall Street Journal.”
According to Bloomberg, Unilever and P&G are masters at traditional marketing, mostly offline, but they struggle with the direct-to-consumer brand-building at which upstarts like Dollar Shave Club excel.
“These startups conduct authentic-seeming conversations with customers over social media, while the consumer products conglomerates take to Twitter and Facebook mostly to address customer complaints,” said Ryan Darnell, a principal at Basset Investment Group, which invests in such e-commerce startups as luggage seller Raden.
3) Dollar Shave Club showed us that the ultimate role of social-led, mobile-driven marketing is to drive down overall cost-per-acquisition while driving up brand value. They weren’t free media purists. They bought TV commercials and other paid media, and they optimized the efficiency and impact of the mix.
4) Dollar Shave Club showed us where the jobs are going, and what the modern definition of lean is. According to the New York Times story, $1 Billion for Dollar Shave Club: Why Every Company Should Worry, “The deal anecdotally shows that no company is safe from the creative destruction brought by technological change. The very nature of a company is fundamentally changing, becoming smaller and leaner with far fewer employees.”
5) Dollar Shave Club built a real brand because they thought of brand in the largest sense – Big Brand — not just as logos and standards, but as the entire customer and market experience. According to Bloomberg, “The key to Dollar Shave Club’s appeal is not so much its online prowess but the fact that it built a powerful brand in four years.”
6) Dollar Shave Club exemplifies the Ten Signs of an Inspiring Action Company, which mark brands that tend to outperform in driving sales growth and brand value. The company knew what it was against – ridiculously high priced grooming products for men, starting with shaving. It knew what it was for – affordable grooming you could brag about. Dollar Shave Club’s leaders knew what their target aspired to be and do – well-groomed and smart, not cheap and face-nicked. And they knew their devotees loved being members of a cool club with lots of well-designed visual signs of their membership.
7) Dollar Shave Club used technology and system to shorten the cycle of test and optimization and to speed growth. The New York Times showed how small the company was able to remain by leveraging technology to the fullest, contrasting Dollar Shave Club to the giants that are shedding jobs by the thousands, searching for “efficiencies.”
8) Finally, Dollar Shave Club dramatized their brilliant brand idea with a few iconic actions that got us all talking, sharing and working on promoting the company for free! First, of course, was their brilliant viral video. But notice something about it that is absolutely key – it isn’t just a quirky “viral” video, but it’s also a fully functioning hard-hitting brand response television commercial as well! Later, it would run on television as well. Internet cool? Check. Hard-working sales generator? Check!! Stretches the media budget? Check!!! Generates lots of free media mentions, social shares and word-of-mouth? Check!!!!
The next action that got us all talking was when they started advertising on television – becoming one of the very few “e-commerce” start-ups to do so, and said that their ultimate goal was for HALF of their media to be paid and for half of their media to be earned!
The next thing they did was launch moisturized wipes with an equally funny video that also made the rounds.
And, finally, the sale to Unilever for that iconic number – a billion dollars, in cash no less!
Dollar Shave Club Us, Please! We suppose we’re not the only agency that is receiving that request these days, but we may be the only one that is 100% delighted. Because the main reason I’ve been writing, talking, podcasting and preaching about Dollar Shave Club these past four years is because this is exactly what we do for the excellent, disruptive, direct model, brand response, inspiring action marketers whom we are proud to call our clients.
If you too want to drive brand value up while driving cost-of-sales down, let’s talk.
By
Team DIGO | 09/09/2016 | in
By Mark DiMassimo
Unilever recently announced its purchase of Dollar Shave Club for a cool billion dollars in cash, and now our mobile devices are buzzing with prospective clients beseeching us…
“Dollar Shave Club Us, Please!
Well, I’m not one to say, “I told you so!” But, I’m going to make an exception this time.
I’ve been talking up Dollar Shave Club for the past four years. In the beginning, when the company’s launch video went viral, people thought I made a lot of sense. Six months later, they thought I had fallen behind the times, and within a year many suspected I had developed a troubling obsession with a quirky little mail order outfit.
But, I kept at it. I wrote a case study on Dollar Shave Club, showing how the company had perfectly executed all the Ten Signs of an Inspiring Action Company.
I interviewed Dollar Shave Club’s creative director, Alec Brownstein, for my Inspiring Action podcast.
I wrote about the company in at least six different blog posts and posted about them frequently on social networks, imploring marketers to learn what Dollar Shave Club exemplified: how to drive up brand value while driving down cost-per-acquisition.
Why the passion? Here’s why:
1) Dollar Shave Club showed us how a tiny company with a social-led brand response acquisition strategy can take share from giants. (Proctor & Gamble’s market cap is something like $232 billion!)
2) Dollar Shave Club showed us that the direct economy is taking over, and the billion dollar purchase shows us that the Unilevers of this world know it too.
The Wall Street Journal said, “Dollar Shave Club’s direct-to-consumer model gives Unilever unique consumer data and insights, according to the Wall Street Journal.”
According to Bloomberg, Unilever and P&G are masters at traditional marketing, mostly offline, but they struggle with the direct-to-consumer brand-building at which upstarts like Dollar Shave Club excel.
“These startups conduct authentic-seeming conversations with customers over social media, while the consumer products conglomerates take to Twitter and Facebook mostly to address customer complaints,” said Ryan Darnell, a principal at Basset Investment Group, which invests in such e-commerce startups as luggage seller Raden.
3) Dollar Shave Club showed us that the ultimate role of social-led, mobile-driven marketing is to drive down overall cost-per-acquisition while driving up brand value. They weren’t free media purists. They bought TV commercials and other paid media, and they optimized the efficiency and impact of the mix.
4) Dollar Shave Club showed us where the jobs are going, and what the modern definition of lean is. According to the New York Times story, $1 Billion for Dollar Shave Club: Why Every Company Should Worry, “The deal anecdotally shows that no company is safe from the creative destruction brought by technological change. The very nature of a company is fundamentally changing, becoming smaller and leaner with far fewer employees.”
5) Dollar Shave Club built a real brand because they thought of brand in the largest sense – Big Brand — not just as logos and standards, but as the entire customer and market experience. According to Bloomberg, “The key to Dollar Shave Club’s appeal is not so much its online prowess but the fact that it built a powerful brand in four years.”
6) Dollar Shave Club exemplifies the Ten Signs of an Inspiring Action Company, which mark brands that tend to outperform in driving sales growth and brand value. The company knew what it was against – ridiculously high priced grooming products for men, starting with shaving. It knew what it was for – affordable grooming you could brag about. Dollar Shave Club’s leaders knew what their target aspired to be and do – well-groomed and smart, not cheap and face-nicked. And they knew their devotees loved being members of a cool club with lots of well-designed visual signs of their membership.
7) Dollar Shave Club used technology and system to shorten the cycle of test and optimization and to speed growth. The New York Times showed how small the company was able to remain by leveraging technology to the fullest, contrasting Dollar Shave Club to the giants that are shedding jobs by the thousands, searching for “efficiencies.”
8) Finally, Dollar Shave Club dramatized their brilliant brand idea with a few iconic actions that got us all talking, sharing and working on promoting the company for free! First, of course, was their brilliant viral video. But notice something about it that is absolutely key – it isn’t just a quirky “viral” video, but it’s also a fully functioning hard-hitting brand response television commercial as well! Later, it would run on television as well. Internet cool? Check. Hard-working sales generator? Check!! Stretches the media budget? Check!!! Generates lots of free media mentions, social shares and word-of-mouth? Check!!!!
The next action that got us all talking was when they started advertising on television – becoming one of the very few “e-commerce” start-ups to do so, and said that their ultimate goal was for HALF of their media to be paid and for half of their media to be earned!
The next thing they did was launch moisturized wipes with an equally funny video that also made the rounds.
And, finally, the sale to Unilever for that iconic number – a billion dollars, in cash no less!
Dollar Shave Club Us, Please! We suppose we’re not the only agency that is receiving that request these days, but we may be the only one that is 100% delighted. Because the main reason I’ve been writing, talking, podcasting and preaching about Dollar Shave Club these past four years is because this is exactly what we do for the excellent, disruptive, direct model, brand response, inspiring action marketers whom we are proud to call our clients.
If you too want to drive brand value up while driving cost-of-sales down, let’s talk.
By
Team DIGO | 09/06/2016 | in
Recorded in front of a live studio audience at the beautiful Time Square office of LDI Color Toolbox, longtime friends Mark DiMassimo and IT guru Thomas Clancy Jr. of Valiant Technology took the stage for what turned out to be a very special episode of the Info Junkie meets the Inspiring Action Podcast.
In this hour long episode, DiMassimo and Clancy explore the world of podcasting, field questions from a live crowd, impersonate Rush Limbaugh, discuss different ways to successfully motivate people and much much more.
Tune in to the full episode below!
By
Team DIGO | 08/11/2016 | in
By
Team DIGO | 07/07/2016 | in
This year’s Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity brought some 15,000 creative minds from the advertising world to the South of France for a week of self-indulgent celebration and free Rosé, in honor of the past year’s creative work.
Here at DiMassimo Goldstein, however, we view creativity in a different light. We measure our creative ideas not by the number of Lions we bring home, but by our capacity to inspire action. To produce creative work that goes beyond commercial intent, by helping people develop more empowering habits and lead better lives. Creativity, we believe, should be used to make actions rather than award-winning ads. The latter is simply the means to an end.
So while the rest of the industry was toasting to ‘creativity’ on the beaches of Cannes, we held our 2nd Annual Festival de Cans on our very own DiGo beach last Thursday. Just like the other Cannes, but with less emphasis on navel-gazing, and more on helping others less fortunate than us.
Friends, family and acquaintances in New York were invited to bring a can of food to our office, in exchange for a can of beer, wine or soda on us. Not only did we make lasting memories with friends old and new, but we did so for a good cause: 83 cans were donated at the end of the night to St. Francis Food Pantries & Shelters, a local organization that provides food, clothing and shelter to those in need. We even built our own Cannes Lion last year using our collected cans, before donating them to a local food bank.
Ayn Rand has said that, “A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.” Rather than using our creativity to win awards, we’ll continue to build brands that inspire action and influence positive change in ourselves and others. If you’d like to do the same, we’ll see you at next year’s 3rd Annual Festival de Cans. Who needs bottled Rosé, anyway.
-Chloe Evans, Integrated Marketing Intern
By
Team DIGO | 05/05/2016 | in
For twenty years, we’ve been happily helping the innovators of the direct economy take business from the old school intermediaries.
For twenty years, we’ve worked side by side with visionaries helping to create the new direct and platform economy you see all around you.
And, for twenty years, if you weren’t one of our clients, other than our creative work, you probably had no idea what we did.
So, for our 20th Anniversary, if you’ve been one of those clients, we thank you. And, if not, we will tell you:
1) We help the client escape the false choice between selling and brand building.
2) We knock down walls to make results the center of the conversation.
3) We deliver more than enough great creative to test and optimize the great strategic thinking we and our clients have.
4) We bring an uncommon clarity to strategic thinking and our inspiring ideas, which shows in our work.
5) We never settle for the better of a few good ideas – we don’t rest until we get to great.
6) We give the client the power to answer back to sub-optimizing stupidity like mixed-up measurement and last-click laziness.
7) We free the client from the results-killing theft of non-transparent media. (Check out this blog post to learn how)
8) We help the client discover the idea that will organize and change everything.
9) We mine that idea to speed growth by up to 10x and more.
10) We use the ten strategies of an inspiring action brand to do all of the above.
This is why we’re on Inc.’s list of the fastest-growing private companies in America year after year. This is why we’ve stayed happily independent, growing with our clients, focused only on building our clients’ brands and businesses. And this is why the next twenty years are going to be even better than the first.
Thanks for being an inspiring part of our world.
-Mark DiMassimo, Chief
By
Team DIGO | 12/04/2014 | in
INSPIRING ACTION.
You can impel action without inspiring it.
Tyrants do that. So do frauds.
But, if your action isn’t inspiring,
then all the actions will never add up to something greater.
All the clicks, hovers, registrations, deposits, sales, subscriptions, shares, visits…
Wasted.
That may work for a while, but never works in the long run.
Don’t be fooled by short-term results. Many failed regimes and business models had excellent short-term results.
Determine never to merely invite, tempt, seduce, compel or incentivize action when you can inspire it.
It’s the only way to meaningful actions, relationships and organizations.
Inspiring action.
When first,
Inspiring is a verb
And then is an adjective
is the only way.
When you build with
Inspiring Action
What you do means so much more
Than what you say.
