Field Notes Inside an Integrated Communications Agency

Interbrand's top one hundred most valuable brands of 2009 is out. I dove into the research looking for some clarity in this tilt-a-whirl world of economics and communication.

First thing I noticed is…well…nothing. There has been no change in the top five brands over the past two years. Coke, IBM, Microsoft, GE and Nokia still reign supreme. A closer check showed only little change in the second half of the top ten as well.

I decided to look for trends from the past decade and saw again that the top five stayed relatively consistent.

However, as brands moved further down the list, there is greater volatility in value. For instance over the past ten years, Coca-Cola and IBM stayed as predictable as a day trip through the desert. Unfortunately, some former blue-chips like the financial sector's Morgan Stanley were like a double black diamond nose-dive. I'm sure there's a name for this 'lower-value-higher-volatility' phenomenon. Whatever it's called, it tells a compelling story.

If we look at the list's biggest risers and hardest fallers an obvious pattern emerges. Fast rising, ever-evolving brands like Google and Amazon clearly show us what the consumer wants. They tell us innovation…serious innovation…is business critical. To get the most from a brand, a company can't just invent, they must reinvent whole concepts like retail or phones.

The hardest fallers are pretty clear to understand, too. Four of the top five losers were in financial (Morgan Stanley, American Express, Citibank and UBS).

The other major non-financial faller was Harley Davidson. I understand that people had less disposable income for luxury items but some brands like Prada and Burberry did okay. It appears the luxury brands that tried to be more accessible by opening to other (aka lower income) markets lost the luster of luxury. Joining Harley in the tumble were Armani, Rolex and Cartier. It definitely wasn't the year of luxury brand growth.

So what does this tell us? First, stability matters. Brands like Coca-Cola, IBM, Microsoft and GE are monoliths. Sure they gain and lose money like any business but they stay true. Second, consumerism is playing a bigger role than ever. And we consumers want a steady stream of innovation on a grand scale. We're numbed by innovation. Brands have to bring far bigger ideas to the consumer to break through. Lastly, it remains all about trust. These are still uncertain times. Brands are a reflection of us. They help us to belong to a community, define our values and comfort ourselves.

Brands that will be fast risers in 2010 are the ones that act like leaders by setting the highest industry standards, staying consistently fresh, actively listening to customers and accurately measuring their impact. Assuming a brand does all the right things, they then must clearly communicate their position and engage the consumer on all levels. Something tells me we won't see a big shift new year.

 

After reading yet another bloviator dissect the creative process it finally hit me. And boom! I realized how utterly simple the creative process is.

Just care.

Before rolling your eyes hear me out. The most talented people don’t always make the best creative professionals. But the ones that care the most do.

They care about their client.

They care about creating good work.

They care about their professional reputation.

They care about their job.

They care about their relationships.

After you’ve exhausted other creative gimmicks, just care. Good work will happen.

A colleague shared a theory that we tap into our reptilian brain for buying decisions. The reptilian is the oldest area in the ever-evolving human noggin. Its impulses are instinctual and ritualistic. Over millions of years, more evolved gray matter has been built upon this foundation. This reptilian theory coincides with two main pillars of brand development I've realized over time. First, people buy on emotion and justify it with logic. Second, we're made of brands. They define and unite us. We fall in love with them.

Since love is an "instinctual" need, I thought about the brands I'm passionate about. Here are a few full-blown crushes.

Diet Pepsi: They attempt to court new flames with One, Lime, Cherry and Caffeine Free. I'm loyal to my original Boo.

Lexus: At the risk of being bourgeois I'll admit I love this brand. Everyone I know that drives one agrees. The dealer relationship is spectacular and the car is solidly made. Seriously, it's a mind-boggling experience. They thought of everything…and it goes fast to boot.

DeWalt Tools: They make tools that work perfectly. They're well designed with incredible usability and durability.

Apple: Okay. What creative person would dare not have a crush on Jobs and Company's darling brand? Their products are functionally and aesthetically amazing.

What do these brands have in common? Premium price? Long lifespan? Emotional connection?

Maybe. I believe the companies that make these brands are amazingly in tune with the customers. They know them. They observe them. They flirt with them. Most importantly, they listen to customers to create long-term value. A good brand knows creating a relationship with a customer takes hard work, dedication and relevance to stay fresh. Good reminders for all of our relationships I'd say.

The inspiration to take action is often much harder to come by than the inspiration to brainstorm.  At SXSW 09, Scott Belsky of Behance held an interesting panel* that included the following formula for making ideas happen.

Making ideas happen = creative ideas + organization  + communal forces + leadership capability

Of particular interest was what he calls the “action method,” which can be applied to any brainstorm, creative dream, etc you might have. Belsky’s action method necessitates three things:

1) Make action steps.

• Keep action steps separate, use verbs, and manage them separately in your notes (use a different colored pen for action steps). 
  
• Aim to foster a culture where capturing action steps makes up the final few minutes of every major meeting.  

2) Separate out 'reference items' that can cloud action steps.

3) Note backburner items.  

• These are items that do not need to be addressed at the particular project stage or that might seem irrelevant to the project in general. 
  
• Create a backburner ritual.  Take fifteen minutes out of your week, at the same time every week, and sit down with a red pen and go through your backburner items. 
  
• You might find inspiration that didn’t strike before or you might find that a random idea applies nicely to another project entirely.

A few extra tips for implementing the “action method”:

• Be ‘ok’ with occassionally canceling reoccurring/standing meetings if the agenda doesn’t really warrant a meeting this time around.
• Prioritize projects visually by using an energy line.  An energy line encourages teams to be honest about how energy is being spread over the spectrum.  Challenge yourself to have only a few items on the extreme/urgent end of the energy line to keep teams from operating at 160% and to maintain focus on specific upcomming deliverables.
• Distinguish the difference between urgent versus important.
• Encourage all team members to spend some energy staying organized (creativity x organization = impact).

* Tips for making Ideas Happen *

We've all been there. In brainstorming you're tossing around seeds of ideas, then faster than you can say "Beelzeboob" some yahoo evokes the evil power. "Let me play Devil's Advocate."

You can throw away the fragile idea. This simple phrase lets people claim no personal responsibility by raising questions and concerns that kill vulnerable ideas. This role is poison to creative thinking and pervasive in the corporate environment. The Devil's Advocate is wily too, often masquerading as a dose of helpful reality.

Reality? Sure. Like delicate children, ideas don't enter the world fully formed. They WILL need development. The WILL need examination. They WILL need challenge. Brainstorming is not the time, though. Let them grow a little first.

Okay, so it's reality but helpful? Not at all. There's no more powerful death to innovation. That role only casts negative doubt with Z-E-R-O investment in progressive thinking. These normally nice people mean no harm. But when possessed, doubt intended to review an idea effectively puts the kibosh on it. It takes far more work to build an idea.

I’m a missionary for Devil's Advocate free zones in concepting and brainstorming. If you summon that evil power I'll exorcise it out of you with the power of Idea Angels.

Can I get a witness?

I received an irresistible email this morning. It came from Ted Dale. Did I know Ted? I didn't think I did, but it had an interesting subject line, so I decided to open the email and give Ted a chance.

"Subject: When the darkness comes your watch will still show you the right time."

I read that and thought, "Ok fine, I'll see what it is Ted wants". I knew there was a 99.9% chance he was just gonna try to sell me a watch, but he went about his selling with an attention-grabbing lead, and I took the bait. So the email opens up and to my surprise, no pictures of knock-off discounted Rolex watches. There was just one line of copy followed by a link.

"Lose all your weakness with a Submariner SS watch. Come on and click"

I don't even want a Submariner SS watch, but what I did next surprised even myself... I clicked that link. I clicked it with no remorse. I didn't even feel like a sucker for clicking it.

Why was this email so effective? A creative pitch.

"When the darkness comes..." plays on everyone's anxiety about the insecurity of the economy. Then once you took the bait the email didn't use the stereotypical approach to selling watches, rather there was just one more interesting line about losing all your weakness. I assume this would appeal to the target demographic of Submariner SS watch buyers (men who are insecure about their masculinity). So there I was, responding to a SPAM email by clicking on the link. Where did it take me? Well, evidently the SPAM campaign has been so effective that the host has noticed the traffic and taken the site down. This was their note:

"SPAM Violation! This site has been banned for SPAM violations. If you have any questions please contact technical support."

So, thankfully I didn't end up with a new Submariner SS knock-off watch. But I did learn a powerful lesson.

 

A creative pitch can truly help sell the unsellable.

Following on the unethical roundly-lauded success of Threadless.com, there's a new entrant into the crowd-sourced design market: CrowdSPRING.com. Business owners take note: if you need some design done, it's simple. Create an account, give your vague brief, and set a price for the winner that you pick.

Sounds good? Sure does. Read on.

In their FAQs , crowdSPRING states:

"When working with traditional creatives, the buyer takes all the risk - they pay up front and hope their project turns out well. When working on many other sites, creatives take all the risk - they do the work up front and hope to get paid in the end.

We've tried to find a balance that works for everyone. Here, the buyer pays up front and the creatives get to work right away. We promise buyers that if they don't get at least 25 entries to their project then they can walk with a full refund. In return, we promise creatives that their projects won't go cancelled or abandoned for no good reason."

What these FAQs don't reflect is the utter imbalance in who's assuming risk. The buyer sets a price and waits to pick the one he likes. Off in the cloud, 25+ designers work obediently for only the possibility of reward.

Let's illustrate this with a scenario. Let's pretend I want to spend $250 for a logo. 25 "creatives" jump at the chance and get to work right away. They spend an hour apiece, 'cause that's how long good logos take. 

A few days later, I pick one design and the designer gets paid from the crowdSPRING escrow. Not a bad deal: $250/hr to the lucky designer.

Not such a good deal to the other 24 folks. They didn't even get their share of the $250, or $10/hr. And, oh by the way, they just paid an opportunity cost for not doing funded work. In fact, the only value proposition that crowdSPRING offers them is this: the lucky designer will get paid, since the funds are held in escrow.

But hey, they got a portfolio piece and some experience out of it, right? 

I find this site to be particularly disrespectful, unethical and extortionist. Sure, it's the designer's decision whether to accept work on such glaringly unbalanced terms. But to any designers considering this arrangement, I'd encourage them to read AIGA's position on spec work.

 

PS. Let's not mention the fact that, if you submit only one design, you have no better than a 4% (or 1 in 25) chance of getting paid. So, make more designs you say? Well, that reduces your hourly rate --it's a fixed price racket, mind you--which makes any reward you receive bittersweet.

There is a point at work and especially being a Web producer when you reach the ultimate stress level, the apex of the vortex of stress. Many things can cause this and most days you are hovering at some level of stress. It isn't a bad thing, most days it's the adrenaline that gets your job done right, gives the perfect creative spark to a meeting or the urge to buy the whole office cupcakes.

But moments do exist when you could snap just if someone asks you what time it is. We all get to that point, it's okay. It's not about how stressful a project was or how crazy the timeline was, it's about the team that helps you get the finished project out. As crazy as it all seems at the time I always look back at those moments and am thankful because it made us all work better and harder together.

I salute you stress vortex, you make my job interesting and you make me realize how lucky I am to have a team that works like a well oiled machine.