By
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.
By
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…)
By
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!
By
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!
By
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
By
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
By
Team DIGO | 11/19/2015 | in
Buying a mattress can be a disastrous struggle.
You trek to your local Sleepy’s. You bounce around from bed to bed, testing each out, all under the very ambitious belief that the 3-5 minutes you spend lying down will provide an accurate depiction of what a year’s worth of sleep will be like. Based off of that assumption, you proceed to spend roughly $1,000 on a mattress that you will inevitably have to haul up three flights of stairs, and somehow, some way, manage to fit through your tiny apartment door.
“Maneuver to the left!”
That doesn’t work.
“Tilt it to the right!”
Nope, that doesn’t work either. Eventually, with sore arms and an aching back, you get your overpriced mattress settled in its new home in your bedroom. But your precious Saturday afternoon? That has come and gone.
Enter Casper. An online, direct-economy mattress company that’s waking up a multi-billion-dollar industry.
Adopting the online retail model made famous by eyewear company Warby Parker, Casper is bypassing the middleman and delivering mattresses straight to your bedroom. The mattress, designed with cutting-edge technology, can be folded to fit inside of a box, providing Casper with a delivery capability unrivaled by competitors. Why is that significant? Well, by eliminating the 3rd-party supply cost, Casper can sell their mattress for a much cheaper price, increasing its value and putting smiles on customers’ faces.
For Casper, it was simple. Find out what your consumers are struggling with and provide a solution. By tackling the customer experience issue that has forever been associated with mattress shopping, Casper isolated itself from industry competitors who are still using outdated tactics. Casper put the customer first, and the customers have responded.
With a $55M investment this past June, Casper solidified itself as a pioneer of the direct-model revolution.
Retail giants like Sleepy’s cannot afford to sleep on Casper any longer.
For more on Casper, read our Inspiring Action Case Study HERE.
from: Shontell, Alyson. “There’s A ‘Warby Parker Of Mattresses’ That’s Shipping Fluffy, King-Size Beds In Boxes As Small As Golf Bags.” Business Insider. Business Insider, Inc, 22 Apr. 2014. Web. 20 Nov. 2015.
By
Team DIGO | 11/18/2015 | in
Sometimes we say, “actions, not ads,” but what if you find yourself working on an ad? What do you do?
Do you feel inspired to see your assignment as an action, not just an ad? Or do you feel like your company doesn’t value what you’re doing?
Does the challenge to make the ad not just creative, on brand, on strategy and effective, but also an action, feel inspiring? Or does it feel like we are freighting a banner or print ad brief with a standard that can only ever apply to a minority of what we do?
I think that sometimes inspiring action means inspiring actions. But sometimes it means ads that inspire action rather than just manipulate or motivate it.
For any given brand, we are likely to do both.
Instead of brand ads and direct ads, we’re doing inspiring actions and we’re inspiring action. Too often, brand ads just tell people what the brand claims to be about. And direct ads just try to bribe or manipulate people into responding.
The same brand could say one thing in its brand ads and act like a completely different company in its direct ads.
We say everything represents the brand. Even a selling email is an action that the company is taking. So, we don’t say, “No emails.” But we do say no brand-killing, manipulative soul-sucking emails.
We are not against ads. We’re against just ads. We’re against the idea that an ad is ever just a means of transmitting the information on the page or screen. Because the very fact of the ad as an action the company is taking speaks volumes about the company.
Are we saying that people think this deeply about ads.?Of course not. But it’s exactly because they react rather than consider, instinctively rather than rationally, that they judge this way.
When we say, “Actions, Not Ads,” we’re acting in a provocative way, hoping to provoke you to higher standards whenever you inspire, write, inform or work off of a brief.
Now, back to work.
