The Successful Are Often Dull, The Dull Rarely Successful.
Most people seem to associate dullness with success.
Perhaps this is because most of the biggest companies opt for dullness. Big companies tend to think they have more to lose than to gain, so they tend to play it safe and do rather boring advertising.
People associate ordinary work with financial success and they get the order of causation exactly backwards. Bigness and richness tends to cause dullness. Dullness doesn¹t cause anything, it¹s not how companies get big or people get rich.
Big agencies spend so much time doing boring advertising for big clients that that¹s pretty much all they can do.
Most small companies and smaller agencies do boring work simply because they are imitating the largest agencies. But if there¹s one thing those of us who build brands should know it¹s that imitation only serves the one who is imitated, never the imitator. When you read results everyday, you know that ordinary doesn¹t move the needle because ordinary doesn’t move anybody.
The rare small agencies that get bigger tend to do interesting, entertaining, surprisingly effective advertising. They get bigger working for mid-sized companies with the courage to stand out. The success of their clients tends to attract attention to the agency from bigger companies. Before long, they have a giant client representing a scary percentage of their revenue. They buckle down and do boring work, or they sell to a larger agency, or they do both.
We decided not to go that route. We determined that innovative, mid-sized growth companies with the courage to stand out aren¹t stepping stones to something better. They are the something better.