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Team DIGO | 12/17/2015 | in
Inspiring Action
Happy Holidays 2015 from DiMassimo Goldstein on Vimeo.
In many ways, Santa was the perfect client for DiMassimo Goldstein. We specialize in direct-to-consumer, life-changing brands. That pretty much describes jolly old St. Nick, right? He sees you when you’re sleeping, for crying out loud. It doesn’t get any more direct-model than that. And, every December 25th, he changes lives all over the world in one night. (We still don’t know how he does this, by the way.)
We advised him against Twitter. We think every action a client takes should be on brand, if it is to inspire. And our research showed that Santa’s brand was more inspiring when he stayed mysterious and never spoke to his customers through technology. But he saw some internet guru talking about “if you’re not on Twitter, you don’t exist” and he mandated it. Thanks, Vaynerchuck.
Yes, we were fired by Santa. But look on the bright side: now we have room for a life-changing, direct-model client. The new business elves are standing by.
And, for a stocking stuffer, here’s a behind the scenes look at how it all went down.
Digo Holiday Video 2015 BTS from Tom Christmann on Vimeo.
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Team DIGO | 12/15/2015 | in
Inspiring Action
Key #8 of 10 to Inspiring Action: 10 Keys to the Future of Marketing. Download our summary poster of the 10 Keys here.
I led a brainstorm with a new client just the other day.
Their list of “growth blocks” was so like what other marketers have said, I thought I’d share them with you (and let you in on a powerful solution):
“We have the goods, but we don’t connect with the audience as well as we should,” admitted the COO, who had previously been the CMO.
“Seems like there are two kinds of creative people — those that understand the product and those that are great at talking to the audience. Unfortunately, we’re having a lot of trouble finding the overlap,” said the marketing director, still working through the grief of the recently ended agency relationship.
The internal creative director continued: “Most people don’t define creative excellence the way we do either. To us, it’s all about results first, and yes, being true to our brand. But that doesn’t seem to inspire or hold the attention of the best creative people. Plus, how do you literally put two messages into one communication. Isn’t that going to hurt results? I’m confused …”
Prioritize Creative Excellence.
What works better for growing a brand and business: great creative or powerful sales activation?
Here’s an intensive analysis of all 700 cases in the files of London’s respected Institute for Practitioners in Advertising (IPA), which found that companies with both outperformed those with either by a wide margin.
In fact, they found the two most important factors for success were advertising spend and creative excellence (as measured by, believe it or not, awards). Of those two most important factors, creative excellence even edged out size of budget as the most important factor.
In an increasingly crowded marketing landscape, great brands win. Great brands are built by great experiences, amplified by communications that move people powerfully. Smart marketing organizations are full of great strategists and brimming with great strategies ready to be tried. Most simply fail to be executed with great, on-strategy creative.
Connecting great marketing to winning creative isn’t easy, which is why it’s not normal either. Getting two very different tribes to work together to transcend the ordinary takes specific values and skills. Check out my Inspiring Action in Creative Teams: Seven Strategies for Prioritizing Creative Excellence.
-Mark DiMassimo, Chief
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Team DIGO | 12/09/2015 | in
The Creative Director of the Dollar Shave Club is also the guy who made himself famous with a Google Experiment that got him a copywriter job in a top agency (budget $6). His name is Alec Brownstein, and he’s also the co-author of two best-selling comedy books, an award-winning copywriter, a film director and, yes, currently the creative director at the Dollar Shave Club. Spearheading one of the world’s fastest-growing and innovative companies, he’s quickly established himself as one of best outside-the-box thinkers in the industry.
Brownstein is also the mastermind behind the above mentioned “Google Experiment“, an inspiring example of how creative problem solving and persistence can put you in a position to succeed. The experiment gained him some overnight fame, but more importantly, it landed him a job. Listen in as Brownstein tells host Mark DiMassimo about how an unemployed International Relations graduate with zero marketing experience was able to catch the eyes of some of the industry’s most highly touted executives.
And, if you’re into laughing, you may want to order his books HERE and HERE. These books fit perfectly on a coffee table or even a bathroom, right next to your razor which you probably got from signing up to the Dollar Shave Club HERE.
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Team DIGO | 12/09/2015 | in
I once worked in an agency that did good work, had smart people, and yet grew relatively slowly. Even though I was on the creative side of the business, I was an avid proponent of growth because I knew how much better and how much more fun a growing agency could be.
I did a little informal listening tour around the agency.Read More (more…)
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Team DIGO | 12/04/2015 | in
Sir John Hargrave is an inspiring innovator, published author, agency owner and the current CEO of Media Shower, a premiere content marketing company that has written editorials for The New York Times, Business Week and MSNBC among many other publications. His upcoming book “Mind Hacking: How To Change Your Mind for Good in 21 Days” is an inside look at the life hacking techniques that Hargrave has developed to turn his life in a more positive direction.
A self-proclaimed computer geek, Hargrave has a comical yet refreshing take on how to tackle life’s obstacles. Listen in as Sir John tells host Mark DiMassimo all about the best practices to “reprogram” and “debug” your brain so that you can accomplish anything you put your mind to. And, since we know you’re going to feel inspired enough to want to read his book, we’ll just leave the free download link for you right HERE!
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Team DIGO | 12/02/2015 | in
Don’t settle for less. Find, ask, challenge, orchestrate, search, revisit…do what it takes to get inspired to do your best.
At DiMassimo Goldstein, we put our values in a document we call “The DIGO Standard.” It doesn’t just hang on the walls and sit on our desks and desktops. We use it every day. People who visit often ask for a copy. Here’s yours, and you didn’t even have to ask.
Join the INSPIRING ACTION tribe!
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Team DIGO | 12/02/2015 | in
When I first moved to the city, I was finishing ad school. And when you’re living on a student’s budget in New York City, you learn how to find the best deals in town. Especially when they involve food. Even though I’ve now joined the world of employment, finding ways to save money is still a pretty great deal.
So when DiMassimo Goldstein started a lunch program, where you get thirty dollars to spend on a lunch with a co-worker to get to know them better, I was definitely inspired!
But before I actually asked people out, I had to build a campaign to market a buddy lunch with the only Mexican in the agency. Thankfully our CCO, Tom Christmann and our CD, Kevin Karp, gave me the tools I needed when they posted about the rewards of taking them out for lunch. Taking inspiration from some political speeches, I retooled them to work as my voting campaign. And boy did it work…
Since the program started, I have been to 19 lunches so far. Getting to know the creative team, the account team, the production team, and as of today, the media team. (Watch out leadership team! You’re next!) I have had fun experiences and stories to tell everybody.
So what do I know now?
I know about the people who do kosher, the ones who do pasta, who hate bananas and I even took out the Shake Shack virginity of one. Oh yeah, I also know Erica now and also that there’s a good Renfroe too. I know their names and what they do for the company, but most importantly, I know them well enough to say hi every day and to ask for help if I ever need it. I believe that’s what you’d call integration.
Also, I finally realized why politicians never make good on their promises. I promised to take everybody to the best Mexican places near the office, but nobody ever asked for Mexican so I just didn’t do it. But if any of my next lunch buddies want to go Mexican, well… you can’t go wrong with me!
-Antonio Fragoso, Copywriter/Socks Specialist
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Team DIGO | 11/30/2015 | in
Key #7 of 10 to Inspiring Action: 10 Keys to the Future of Marketing. Download our summary poster of the 10 Keys here.
One of the best things about doing my Inspiring Action Interviews has been the opportunity to have deep conversations with several of my most successful clients.
These are the CMOs that CEOs worship – marketers who have been highly successful again and again.
A common theme came up as we talked about the formative experiences we’d shared.
“Since that time I’ve been what you’d call a Brand Direct marketer.” – Ty Shay, CMO LifeLock
“That methodology has become the methodology I’ve applied ever since.” – Leslie Dukker Doty, CMO the Reader’s Digest Association
I first wrote about “brand direct” publicly almost twenty years ago. Since then the direct economy has taken over our lives, and just about every industry has been disrupted by it. This has mostly been a very good thing for me, as our clients over the past two decades have been doing more than their share of the disrupting.
Drowning in data, today’s marketers cry out for coherence. Even with programmatic trading desks, dashboards and optimizations, incremental improvements are only detectible to sophisticated machines.
Significant, meaningful, ongoing improvements in marketing efficiency are still possible, however. They simply require more than mere visual and verbal consistency.
The answer begins with a journey of discovery. The path of that journey is the customer journey itself. Together, we learn to see things from the customer’s point of view, from the prospect’s perspective. We uncover the insight – the inspiring idea – that will change and organize everything.
Then, together, we mine that inspiring idea to accelerate growth by up to ten times. Of course, this also dramatically alters the marketer’s journey!
Let’s alter your journey too!
-Mark DiMassimo, Chief
