At some point, it happens. The consensus begins to build that your campaign is a bit long in the tooth. Your attempts to freshen it up and tweak your way to ever-higher levels of ROI are yielding smaller returns, or worse. Plus, let’s face it; the people you work with are sick of it.
Do you take your “old friend” out to the back of the barn and shoot it in the head? That’s the way most advertisers do it. They work up a new campaign, either with their current agency or through a pitch process. They “test” it using a couple of focus groups and then roll it out. Unfortunately, this process yields more suffering than success.
Take a page from the direct marketer’s playbook. Test your new campaigns for real using matched sets of geographic markets. Identify two, three, or four similar markets and run an entire test campaign in 1 to 3 of them while you run your current/control campaign in one. Then track the results. When you have a clear winner, roll it out nationally. Yes, it takes a bit longer. But, remember that tortoise…
My day begins with a loud alarm at 6:15 a.m., but I typically press snooze four or five times before getting out of bed. After a routine morning of getting ready for another day of my internship at DiGo, I make my way to the station in hopes of finding a seat on the train. Nine times out of 10, I’m in luck… but I’m always squished.
An hour later, I make my way out of Penn Station into the incredibly hot summer streets of Manhattan. I arrive at 220 East 23rd Street and like most days, I decide to take the stairs. After a 30-minute walk, I figure the extra steps help complete a good thigh workout before getting into the day. I make my way through the office toward the patio conference room, which has been my little spot for the past couple of months. That being said, you can catch me in all areas of the office, as I can’t stay in one place for too long.
Once at my desk, I immediately open my laptop to check my emails and calendar. Once I have an idea of what the day has in store, I head over to the kitchen to make myself some iced coffee and cool down. Yes – I admit, that’s me who takes a bunch of cubes in the morning – but at least I fill it back up, right? I see the same few faces every morning in the kitchen, always talking about the latest episode of a television show they watched the night before. I typically try to block out what they are saying because I am always behind on the few shows that I actually do watch.
I make my way back around the office to check in with my manager, Casey. Just a few adjectives to describe Casey so you can get a sense of who I work with: one of the sweetest, most hard-working and diligent women I have met, and I truly mean that. Casey informs me with updates from clients and assigns tasks that need to be tackled. I have definitely mastered making research-based decks!
Once back at my desk I begin to create a to-do list to prioritize everything that needs to be done. On a typical day, I’ll then receive an email from Louise telling me that if I need any help whatsoever, to ask her. Lou always finds the time to sit down with me and create timelines always being sure to explain the reasoning behind each date. I must say, that is one of the great benefits of working for a smaller company – I am not just “an intern” but part of the DiGo team. P.S. If you ever have free time, sit in on a meeting with Lou and watch her type a mile per second and catch every detail. It’s UNREAL.
Each day consists of a few internal meetings, brainstorms with other teams and client conference calls. Just sitting in on meetings with members from the creative, strategy and media teams has helped me gain a better understanding of how the agency works as a whole. At least once a week, I check in with my main manager, Nehal, who is always rocking a cute dress that soon gets added to my “must buy” list. So far there are eight items, which I know my bank account will not be too happy about. As a team, we go over each client’s current projects and the next steps.
One memory that I will always remember from my time at DiGo was when Nehal and Casey sent me out to pick up a magazine that featured some of the creative work we did for a client. I ventured out to Barnes & Noble (yes, I took the stairs) and picked up a few copies. When I opened it up to the page that featured our work, chills ran down my arm. It was so amazing to see this ad from start to finish and be part of something impactful.
Side note: If the rest of the DiGo team thinks their area of the office is the most fun, they are wrong. No matter the day of the week, there is always some music playing , but it all depends on the mood. Typically, at the beginning of the week the songs are a bit mellow. John Mayer playing and some light singing, but by Thursday and Friday, Kasey and Morgan break out some Blink 182 and sing along to “Drop It Like It’s Hot.” Can’t go wrong with some Snoop Dogg. But you really know it’s Friday when you catch James singing throwback jams – always a crowd-pleaser. I’m happy I am able to help Raquel out and add some brunettes into the account area, as there is a high proportion of blondes.
But all jokes aside: If anyone ever says they don’t like their internship, I know why. They don’t work at DiGo. It’s as simple as that. When you work in an exciting environment with amazing people, it motivates you to get up and go to work each day and continue to be inspired.
A few Fridays ago, our Chief Creative Officer, Tom Christmann, had the brilliant idea of testing whether or not our advertising skills would transfer over to lip-syncing.
Today’s Google Doodle says it all. Alice Paul, a leader in the Suffragette movement of the 1910’s, was born today in 1885. The Suffragette movement can teach us a lot about Inspiring Action. People had been talking about a woman’s right to vote for decades. But these brave women knew that talking was not getting them anywhere. So they took action.
They did all the conventional actions that protests are known for. They marched. They organized. It got them some press. But it also got them ridiculed. Indeed, the name “Suffragettes” was first used in a derogatory way by a journalist, adding “ette” to the word suffrage to feminize the idea of freedom and thereby make it oh so cute. “Look at these adorable little women pretending to want to choose their leaders! Bless their pretty little heads!” But instead of fighting against that ridicule, they embraced it. They even hardened the G and began pronouncing it “suffraGETs” implying that they intended to GET everything they were asking for.
In 1909, Alice Paul and Amelia Brown took a brave action that they knew would land them in jail. They disguised themselves as cleaners at a banquet for English Prime Minister Asquith and other cabinet ministers. When Asquith stood up to speak, Paul and Brown threw their shoes and broke stained glass windows, screaming “Votes for women!” They were arrested and put in jail, where they began a hunger strike. Their jailers force-fed them with tubes.
The movement began selling a board game based on this story. It was called “Pank-A-Squith” (based on the names of Suffragette leader Emmeline Pankhurst and Prime Minister Herbert Asquith). The goal of the race-style game was to reach the Houses of Parliament, the pinnacle of achievement for the campaign for Woman’s Suffrage. But first you had to get through the dark stuff. Like going to jail. And being force-fed. And laughed at. The game was sold in shops and could be ordered by mail. The proceeds went to the movement.
Board games were the social media of the time. Imagine daddy being forced to sit and play a game of “Pank-A-Squith” with his wife and two daughters. “Oh, poor Daddy! You’ve been thrown in jail for asking for your rights again!”
Next time you think your brand is too serious to make something fun or to engage in social media, remember Alice Paul and the Women’s Suffrage Movement. What would they do? Roll the dice. You might just win.
The final episode of Season 1 features a very special guest with a unique story. Ben Rothfeld is the founder of Plannerben Anecdata, a planning consultancy that helps marketers and their agencies cut big data down to size.
Rothfeld and Host Mark DiMassimo have a long and storied history. The partnership started over two decades ago when they first began working together as colleagues for Kirshenbaum & Bond. When DiMassimo decided to leave K&B to launch his own agency, Rothfeld agreed to leave his post at a San Francisco brand consultancy to become the very first employee at DiMassimo Inc. Cooped up in Rothfeld’s parent’s Greenwich Village co-op apartment, their journey began. After a few start-up years, Rothfeld went on to a storied strategy, analytics and data career, including a long stint as Axciom’s Global Marketing Strategy Director and Bloomberg LP’s Global Content Strategy Lead.
Now, after 20 years of inspiring action, Rothfeld joins DiMassimo on his “Inspiring Action Podcast” to cover a variety of topics such as: Analytical Investigation, Google cars, the future implications of the internet and much much more!
Key #9 of 10 to Inspiring Action: 10 Keys to the Future of Marketing. Download our summary poster of the 10 Keys here
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Every business and brand that grows has a Golden Goose.
Sometimes that’s sales. Sometimes it’s direct mail. Other times it’s e-commerce and a digital, affiliate network. Sometimes they tell me it’s “word-of-mouth.”
For a while, whatever it was, it produced the Golden Eggs. It worked. And the Goose’s enemies were marketing and branding. Or perhaps they were the Goose’s servants, such as when the marketing team was really the sales collateral team. Or the direct mail team. Or the in-house studio.
“Our salespeople sell and they’re starting from zero.” “We’re the leader in our category, but no one knows it.” “This channel is just getting too expensive – we need what’s next.” The Inspiring Action Moment is launched with sentences like these.
Our clients have some things in common. They can’t wait two years or even six months for “the brand campaign” to start working. They can’t tolerate poorer sales numbers while they invest in getting more famous. And they aren’t willing to match large advertisers dollar-for-dollar in order to capture a share of the market.
The kind of brand building they need is the kind that makes the selling more efficient right away. They need the kind of brand building that improves their return-on-marketing-spend right away, and then just keeps getting better.
And often they need more than a marketing revolution. They need at least an internal culture evolution as well. They need a team with a new common understanding of what it takes to succeed at the next level today.
This is what we mean when we say “inspiring action.” The great thing about an Inspiring Action Moment is that it can lead to the most exciting and impactful era for a business. Are you ready for yours?
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.
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.