Digital

@SPEED How to think, lead, and succeed as a digital marketer in a time-starved world.

 All them Grand Masters and them Europeans... With they government subsidies and whatnot to sit on they asses and play all day... They ain't livin' in the world! Put the clock on 'em, put the heat on they backs, they break down. Put 'em in the park fishin' for dollars, and they break. That's Bobby Fisher, Some say he's the greatest player to ever play the game, I never played him. All them patzers sittin' around the park... Waitin' for him to go back there like Jesus. Me, I don't give a shit. Put the clock on that motherfucker... I'll chew his ass up just like the rest of 'em. Chew it right up. Samuel Jackson, speed chess master in the film Fresh, by Boaz Yakin

 Table of Contents: Starters A note on how to use this book. Quick note on the use of the singular pronoun. Congratulations, youre hired. Why does everything take so much longer than I think its going to take? Talk about it. Do it. Dont look back. Its coming! If I dont see it, it doesnt exist. Market Categories are bullshit. The last slide-rule manufacturer. The Best Place I Ever Worked. The best place. Love what youre selling. Becoming a Digital leader Timewasters Quick Reality Check 1) You get canted. 2) You get decked. 3) You get tailed.

4) You get siloed. 5) You hesitate and get lost. 6) You get stoned to death with popcorn. 7) You buy into the perfect process myth. 8) You lead from dissatisfaction. 9) You scare the hell out of your team. 10) You suffer from a bad case of old think. 11) You wait for all the facts. 12) Youre not ready to do a lot, so you dont do a little. 13) You wonder if your target audience is really online or on social media. 14) You think your CEO doesnt understand digital media. 15) You dont think you have to. 16) You settle for 9s. Systematic Its Not A Straight Line. Whats a Resume? Remember Names. Dont have status meetings, have progress meetings. Two Tracks, Simultaneously. Getting people going who dont work for you. Shine A Light On What You Value. The Hawthorne effect

Expect Success. The observer-expectancy effect

Give your people high expectations to live up to. Change it up. Beware of experienced managers.

How to get your agencies to play nicely together, (its called accountability.) Cut your spend, not your throat. Dont replace, repair. Think Brand Direct Save By Going Social. Learn From challenger brands. 1) The top dog is involved. Intimately. 2) The advertising conversation and the business conversation are the same conversation. 3) The work is seen as the ultimate weapon for conquering the competition. 4) The brand is seen as a precious asset and the ultimate defensive fortification against copycats and commoditisers. 5) The VISION of the top dog drives the advertising. 6) The vision of the agency and the vision of the client are complimentary and synergistic. 7) Decisions get made in meetings, not just in between. Ambition is your friend. Mostly. And so it goes Hunting with a fishing pole? The power of negative thinking. The key frustrations Process. Worry Sessions. Objection Sessions Self-Firing How a boss gets honest feedback. See like an optimizer. A Guide to Business Cursing. Cursing is a shortcut. No, seriously, I swear. 1) 2) 3) 4) 5)

Fuck With Something. Fuck it. Write Shit. Name the enemy. Get your people drunk with power. Begin with the end in mind. Have fewer people to please. We are digital pioneers. Kill Overthink Dead. Fast Fail to Succeed. Deal with Interruption. Manage Distraction. Choose! Craft your questions. Excavate your people theory. Keep a tight eye on rewards and punishments. Celebrate the Messenger. Real Artists Ship. Steve Jobs Dont be better. Be different. Make clutter your friend. Bias Toward Action. Its a mobile future. Think in tribes. Tribes Youll Meet In A Digital World. Ideas That Speed Things Up. Positioning.

The Blue Ocean. My Blue Ocean Strategy Brand Direct (or Brand Response) Marketing The Enemy The Competition The Only Influential Steve Jobs, and the one that got away. What comes first, belief or behavior? Learn from Television Preachers. Learn from Squidoo. Learn from Wikipedia. Think Brand Response. Focus on Results. Computers and Cowspots. The Direct Model The Judy Wrap. Retail Model. Sales Model. Engagement Model. Engagement is your business. Take the word brief seriously. The Best Way to Improve a Solution Is To Improve the Problem. Lines are for crossing.

Good Work is sophisticated. Great work is simple. The One Perspective That Drives Everything. The Charming Party Crashers. Sins of Omission. The Optimizers. The Incrementalists vs. The Optimizers A psychological imagination. Testophobia? How to be an Optimizer. Use Your Strength. Know What Not To Do. Dont Fix The Sauna: The Crunch Fitness Story. Dont follow marketing best practices. Invest them. 7 Habits of Highly Affected People. The Simplest Brief How do you do what you do? Bonfire of the Clichs. How do I get my management to support change? My Banners Dont Work. Remember, theyre not ads, theyre lures. First, attract the eye. Let them know where theyre going. Create custom landing pages. Ride A Powerful Phrase. Now Thats A Big Idea! 1) 2) 3) 4)

Big Ideas Are Powerwashers. Market To A Mindset, Not A Demographic. Buzz was the center of the advertising strategy. The Introverts Guide to Success in a Social World. Most marketing people are extroverts. Whats so intimidating? B.S. Its just a fad! But, its all about What I ate for breakfast this morning and friends I dont even know along with some friends I wish I could avoid! 5) But, I cant take on one more thing! 6) Its all about a networking personality that I cant stand or at least I dont have. 7) Its about ideas. 8) Its about prioritization. 9) In short, PR comes first. 10) Its about all the stakeholders in your company, not just the marketing department. 11) Get a baseline. 12) Locate the influencers. 13) Enhance your outfrastructure. 14) Visit your brand neighborhood. 15) Its OK just to watch. 16) Keep it alive/ relevant. 17) Remember, that adjusting to the social world isnt just about or even primarily about social media. 18) Its about engagement Can you love to listen? Growing Oak Trees From Tomato Seeds. Hire Born Communications Strategists Match Words and Pictures. Game Changing Isnt Game Winning. 1) 2) 3) 4)

Ask. Win the War of the Inbox. Understanding WhatdaF#@K People Are Saying @ Speed. The No Asshole Rule. Am I digital yet?

 A note on how to use this book. This is a book on how to think, lead, and act like a successful digital marketer. Its not a book of digital tips or best practices. On principle, were not going to tell you a bunch of stuff that you could learn better from a Google search. You wouldnt respect us for it, and we wouldnt serve you well by feeding you the results of a bunch of searches that are, by definition, already outdated. Our job is to help you know what to search, but your job is to seek out whats current. And that changes every day in a digital world. Well do our best to teach you to be a Master Googlist. Its a skill that will stand you in good stead. And well feed you a tasty meal, while we teach you to fish. A quick note on the use of the singular pronoun. This book was written down by me, Mark DiMassimo. My co-author, Eric Yaverbaums impact has been felt on every page. He has shared in many of the stories of my career and has influenced every word here. Hes been a key collaborator for over 15 years. Our partner, Lee Goldstein, has taught and informed us both and we cant even be us without him anymore. But I am the guy whose job it has been to write it all down. In fact, Im the guy who couldnt not write it down. So when I screw up herein, I am the I. When I get it right, we did good.

 Congratulations, youre hired. Youre going to help this place go digital because were good at a lot of things, but we dont have a clue. Youre the first digital expert weve had around here. So, dont worry too much over the people who come by just to get a look at you. Youre exotic. By the way, Big Jimmy is under pressure from the board on this stuff. Between you and me, he hates it. Thinks this digital stuff is a bunch of A- student crap, to be honest. But hes got to show the board he tried. So I give you six months at the outside. My advice to you: He likes results and he likes money. Youd better find a way to show him the money from this digital stuff -- and sooner rather than later. Good luck! God, how I wish it could start that way every time! I mean, with honesty. The whole awful situation laid out plainly so that you can see it as it is, right from the beginning. Instead of the typical situation. Wherein all the same truths apply. But no one bothers to tell you until your exit interview. With the ink still drying on your employment papers. Your file fresh and neat. Lacking nothing but that one more sheet the pink one to close the book on this whole misguided situation. These are the fast truths. Almost no one feels like a digital expert. Ive been working on this stuff intensely, obsessively since before it became a big thing. I worked on interactive Kiosks for Ford before there was a commercial Internet. Ive led blue chip and successful challenger and brilliant start-up businesses to successfully compete in the digital world. Ive helped blue chip giants like Comcast and Citi go digital. And there are many days and moments when I dont feel like an expert.

You get a room full of digital experts together, and if theyre in a confessional mood, theyll all tell you they dont feel like experts. If you give them a few drinks, theyll tell you they often feel like frauds. So, welcome to the Confederacy of Frauds! And then there are the companies. They are mostly too polite, or too distracted, or too invested in letting you hang yourself with your own power cord to tell you how it really is. Instead, theyll tell you how excited and committed and ready everyone is. Its the thing to say. And it might tempt you to think youre moving in for the long run. You think that cubical is bought and paid for. Actually, its rented by someone else and youre just squatting. Security could come by any time to chuck your ass out. Thats the truth. Feels good to tell the truth, doesnt it? So, what if you are the boss? What if the retrograde organization that you work for is your own small business? And what if the Neanderthal of a boss you work for is you? Well then, honesty is going to be even more important. So tell yourself the truth. Tell yourself the truth about how much you really want to do this, or not? Admit your feelings of inadequacy. Try not to judge yourself too harshly. Dont fire yourself before you even begin. After all, you started your own business so you wouldnt have to work for assholes like you. Still, you have places to go and people to see. You want, you need, you deserve better results. That is, after all, the promise of going digital. And youre going to have those results @speed. So, lets go!

 Why does everything take so much longer than I think its going to take? We need GO lessons. All of us. We are taught what it should be, but were not taught what to do about it. This book corrects that gap in education. While this book is written with digitalization and digital marketing in mind given the experience and focus of the authors -- the principles are universal and can be employed in un-sticking and better managing almost anything at speed. Jason Fried, founder of 37 Signals, the little firm behind revolutionary products like Ruby on Rails open source programming language and BaseCamp, writes in his wonderful book REWORK, Start making something. He quotes director Stanley Kubricks advice to aspiring filmmakers: Get hold of a camera and some film and make a movie of any kind at all. Kubrick knew that when youre new at something you need to start creating. The most important thing is to begin. So get a camera, hit Record, and start shooting. Talk about it. Do it. Dont look back. When I started my agency, I reached out to someone I had been working with to gage his interest in being my partner. At the time, he said he was intrigued, but was just not ready to make the leap. I would have liked to start my business with a partner, to share the weight and to make the growing easier. But, I knew that partnership was like marriage, challenging even with the best match, so I decided to make a start as a

sole proprietor. The first year felt like a decade an exhilarating decade, and exciting decade, but also a stressful, challenging, dread-inducing decade during which I was either earning or losing roughly $70,000 per month with zero cushion for error. After all of this, my friend declared himself ready and admitted, I didnt think you would really do it. I had always thought that people who talk about things dont do them and people who do things dont talk about them. Obviously, I was wrong. He proposed hed join the business now with something like half of the equity. The idea that people who talk about things dont do them struck me as absurd. If I had to choose a clich, I would have chosen the one about snoozing and losing. I told my friend that the year I had invested and the risk I had taken to establish the agency had great value and that there was no way I could pretend otherwise and treat the situation as I might have a year earlier. We decided to remain friends and I continued on my own. Its coming! There are so many excuses. So many shades of red and yellow light. You need to see these for what they are. Or youre going to take Wait for an answer. Lets face it, we never get all the facts. Speed chess masters. Champion poker players. Genius stock traders. And anyone who runs a business, a marketing campaign or a brand they all have one thing in common. They make better decisions with nothing like all the facts. In other words they need to gaze into the same cloudy ambiguity that everyone else sees, and they need to choose a better path. And they do! You will too. In order to do this well, youll need to understand a bit about the irrational biases and the distortions and limitations that the human mind -- yes, even yours brings to the table. You need to be able to see these things so that you can plan against them in yourself, and so that you can address, correct or exploit them in others.

 If I dont see it, it doesnt exist. Intel founder, tech genius and billionaire Andy Grove titled his book, Only the Paranoid Survive. Since we cant see everything, the truth is that we make decisions based on our biases. Most of us dont question our biases, they are just the way we are. Grove developed a set of biases that propelled him to the top of the digital world. Where did he get them? Nazi Germany. To my mind, the reason Groves paranoia worked so well is that most people have the opposite bias. Blessed with good enough childhoods and with normally limited imaginations that protect them from the anxiety of seeing all the possibilities, most people deal with what they think they know. Pearl Harbor. Nine-eleven. Sputnik. AIDS. Black Friday. Our tendency is to deal with things when we have to, rather than at the optimal time. Our tendency is to be surprised. Its good to know what you can about what competitors are doing. Like Starbucks looked at high-end coffee shops and then McDonalds came along The competition is always coming, but you just dont know where its coming from. Thats the kind of paranoia that drives you to innovate, to stay ahead. Market Categories are bullshit. We cant see the world as static. Conceptual boxes can be helpful as long as we realize we have invented them ourselves to help us understand things. The moment we forget that we can uninvent them, were stuck.

There is a tendency to view market categories as a given. We think were in the server hardware category. Or the fitness club category. Or the E-commerce category. Like Blackberry (Research In Motion) was in the smartphone category and Apple was in the personal computer category. Oops. Or Starbucks was in the coffee shop category and McDonalds was in the QSR Quick Service Restaurant or Fast Food category. If categories tell us which competitors to ignore and which competitors to track, than category thinking is dangerous. You wont see them coming! If category thinking limits your imagination about how to expand and grow your brand and business, then category thinking can be deadly. David Gardner of the The Motley Fool talks about top dogs and first movers. A first mover is a company with a new technology or system that completely changes an industry, disrupts the existing categories and creates a new one. Ebay in digital auctions. Amazon in online retailing. NetFlix in digital streaming of movies and TV shows. Better to be one of these, or follow one of these, then be the disturbee. For more inspiration, read about an industry that ruled the world: When I was growing up, my Dad was an electrical engineer, working on his PhD and developing silicon chip technology. I fondly remember his slide rules and his easy comfort with calculating based on these pre- digital computers. The slide rule category was once a thriving global category and the 1960s represented this two hundred year old industrys peek. Curiously, even as digital computing was coming up, slide rule makers were enjoying a robust market. But all of that ended abruptly in 1974 when HP introduced the first inexpensive scientific calculator. Today only one Japanese company continues to manufacture slide rules. The last slide-rule manufacturer. Keuffel & Esser Corporation, a company founded in 1867 in Manhattan is a good example. In 1962, the company introduced its DECILON slide rule into the booming marketing and on the strength of this line was able to go public on NASDAQ in 1965. But by 1982, the firm was forced

to declare chapter 11 bankruptcy. This same year, AZON corp buys ownership of K&E Trademarks and K&E is no more.1 ARISTO had over a century of slide rule production, but was forced to close in 1978.2 Sphere Research Corporation of British Columbia, Canada, runs a web page devoted to fans and collectors of slide rules. In these company archives, you can find very detailed info about the rules and models they made, the company and its history. Some rule makers were in business almost 100 years, and their histories and products are fascinating. Some major makers still survive today, but without any help from slide rules, as their businesses are now quite different. In the 1960's, the industry was at its most sophisticated, and there were large slide rule manufacturers all over the world, each with their unique styles and features. This industry and technology survives today mainly in the form of slide charts, and the hearts of collectors. The Best Place I Ever Worked. My earliest memories involve shops. My grandparents beauty salon. My paternal grandfathers clothes factory. My fathers laboratory. Thomas Edisons workshop, just a short walk from that beauty salon in Menlo Park, then and now part of Edison, New Jersey. I remember the statuettes lined up all the awards my Grandfather had won for his hairdressing so that they could be noted or admired by patrons on the way down into the salon proper. My grandfather was the old master by then. The awards seemed dusty and old to me. Something about the salon seemed forlorn. Old ladies flying down from Canada to have their hair done by the one man in the world who they trusted to do it right. It was a proud show, but past its prime. Grampa hadnt raised prices in twenty years. He ran a shop, not a business. But where he shone, where he was a true master was in the area of client service. He was famous for
1 All valid! http://www.antiquesurveying.com/K&E%20History.htm 2 Valid http://www.sphere.bc.ca/test/aristo.html

his soft touch, and while this technically referred to the gentle way his fingers controlled the hair and the scissors, never pulling or pinching, this appellation applied equally to his mastery of the entire relationship with his customers. It was beautiful to behold, and I had a front row seat. Sitting on a couple of phone books, my head under a hairdryer, I watched, and when I tired of the hot, dry, tornado, I listened too. The beauty shop was perhaps the original social network. A wonderful place to learn about people. A place where things made sense, where you could care for people, touch people, and make them feel better. From the beginning, I loved the shop, the laboratory, the workplace. I envied people like my grandparents, couples or families who worked together for long hours and basically lived the better part of their lives together in the shop. To have a role to play, to feel useful, to feel part of something, to make ones way in the world as part of something good or great or important what could be better than this? In truth, I always felt a bit awkward without work to do, without a useful role to play. At parties, I was in the band. I visited restaurants and bars much more often to work than as a patron. Work was an escape from the awkwardness of small talk. Work was tourism for me as well. I planted trees for billionaires. I worked the phones in a boiler room telemarketing set-up. I learned an immense amount as the sole Caucasian working in a Chinese restaurant. A workplace provides all of this and more. A social purpose and a social life. Money and meaning. Colleagues and allies. Learning and tests. Challenges and overcoming. Accomplishments and recognition. Great games to play and perhaps master. For as long as I can remember, I have been asking people a single question, What was the best place you ever worked? Typically, I follow this up with, What made it the best? What did you learn from being there? Why do you think more places arent great? What could be done about that?

The best place. What makes a place great? It is chiefly about ideas and culture. Ideas about what matters. Ideas about who we are and what we should be. Ideas about contribution and even heroism. And then it is the game of making those ideas real through action. Very young, I came to see the whole world as a competition, collaboration and evolution of ideas. Catholicism is a religion of ideas. Centuries of incorporating cultures into the Catholic community, of resolving doctrinal disputes, of philosophizing around thorny issues of theology, epistemology and ethics, of resolving seeming conflicts with the discoveries of science, have created a complex and beautiful mosaic of thought. Schooled on all this, some have become subtle dogmatists my mother taught catechism by about fourteen years old, I was ready to admit to myself that I was no longer buying it. I began the search for a belief system that I could believe in. As a young teen, I invited missionaries from several major and minor religions to present their pitches to me in our family living room. I loved to see how they sold their beliefs, through brochures, and slide shows, and question and answer sessions. I loved to think about how their differing answers led to different values. Clearly, these missionaries had found games worth playing. To be frank, some seemed happier than others. Those who were preaching the imminent end of the world seemed to operate out of grim duty. Those who were selling eternal life with ones perfected family seemed to feel they had a jewel to share, and beamed with enthusiasm. I compared and contrasted the pitches. I thought about their advantages and disadvantages. I thought about the way the religions had sprung up with answers to the questions left open by older religions, or with other competitive advantages. I began to see the process of historical development of religions as an evolutionary one, based on a competition of benefits. To me, religions were brands! In college, I extended my exploration of competing belief systems to include philosophical, psychological and political systems. At the heart of all of this turbulence was a relatively unchanging human

being, but all the attempts to capture and codify all human aspirations and values seemed ultimately to fail, at least in the sense that they left open significant whitespace for competition to emerge. I must admit that through all of this, business seemed particularly uninteresting to me. I was in love with ideas, with stories, with figuring out society and perhaps the universe, and I frankly thought of business majors as dutiful, and slightly brain-dead drones. Who could study accounting when the entire world of learning had just been opened up like a fresh oyster? Today, some of my favorite people are accountants, and business geniuses are endlessly fascinating to me. Love what youre selling. If youre selling something, you should love everything about it. You should suck the juice out of the parts that others just throw away. You should devour the rind and make tea from the seeds. Your job is not to seem the most sane, balanced and detached individual in the world. You should be on fire with this thing whatever it is. Hear Steve Jobs talk about Apple technology. Read what Howard Schultz has to say about coffee. You must be entrancing, and the only way to do this is to be yourself entranced. You can bring all the experience you have to the party, but leave your cynicism at the door. Cynicism is a failed attempt to prevent disappointment. It only prevents surprise. You need to see, project, inspire and confidently expect greatness. I was in love with ideas, and that was my window in to brands. All my searching, comparing and contrasting without any plan at all led to the day I started my advertising career, and from the first I was full of opinions, convictions, relevant knowledge and confidence. I was far from finished. I could write, but I couldnt spell. I knew greatness, but I didnt know if I could produce it. On my first day, the client ignored my boss and quizzed me for a half hour on what his strategy should be. He seemed quite comfortable with my answers.

Until my boss took advantage of a pause in the conversation to say, And then youll route this mechanical, right Mark? Mechanical what? I asked, ignorantly. A mechanical was the physical layout of the type and image for an add or other piece to be printed. These have since been replaced by computer-based layouts. But back in the day, a mechanical was the most ubiquitous thing in an agency. And I had never heard of one, and I was nave or confident or foolish enough not to even hide the fact from my new boss or client. My boss only lasted until the end of the month, and the job fell to me to try to take care of a client made more difficult by the precariousness of his company and the near certainty of impending bankruptcy. My ignorance of the old ways was only matched by my impatience with time-honored formalities and inefficiencies. Once, during a full day meeting at the agency with our clients, a small correction was requested on a mechanical. I ran out of the room with the board to an idling paste-up artist. Will you cut and move this s for me? I asked. Sure kid. I was back in the room with the corrected mechanical in under five minutes. Proud of cutting through to results, I laid the correct mechanical on the table. The clients eyes widened. He looked from me to the President of the agency. This is what you charge me eight hours and $600 for?!?! Back then, type needed to be sent out over night to a typesetter. But often corrections could be made by cutting and pasting. Even so, every change was billed as if it had had to be sent out. A neat little racket for the agency. A racket off of which I had just inadvertently blown the lid. Whats the lesson I learned from this? Not the one my colleagues hoped I would. I learned that new technology creates new efficiencies. I learned that the near term limit on this increased productivity is human

rather than technological. I learned that if change was to come, I preferred that it come through me. I would bring the change. Becoming a digital leader. If you would become a digital leader @SPEED, then you too must commit to bring the change. Like me, you will not always be cheered for your technology-enabled disruptions, but you will learn how to make it work for you. You can read this book front to back, or you can search it and dip in to all the places that interest you and ignore the rest. You have the technology! Now, lets go!

Timewasters Quick Reality Check: Lets face it, youre more likely to run out of time trying to get the right things done than fail for doing the wrong things. The average CMO now lasts about eighteen months. Eighteen months! Most ad agencys will tell you that isnt enough time to achieve anything much, certainly not turn a ship and show proof on the charts. The average CEO doesnt last much longer. Marketing director. Brand leader. Business head. COO. President. Founder its no different. This rush to judgment has been widely decried as a lack of wisdom, foresight, cojones, leadership, as a problem of clueless boards, distracted chief executives, a generation of narcissistic and small- minded non-leaders. This is also first class, primo BS. And, as you know, we dont have time for BS. The fact is that all of this reflects competitive realities. If the system evolves faster, then the component organizations must evolve faster, or suffer and die. Thats why no one, not even the founder and sole shareholder of the only company on an island nation, where the CEO is also the Emperor, is immune. The idea that great things cant happen faster needs to be seen right from the beginning for what it is: BS and a waste of precious time. Its old-think. Its what dinosaurs tell each other at dinosaur long-term care facilities. Heres Mark & Erics list of all the ways there are to get Stopped. 1) You get canted. If the first answer isnt, It cant be done, then you havent asked the right question yet. If youre pushing for the right balance of risk and speed, then youre going to get pushback. People are going to say that word, Cant. But cant is a contraction, not a contract. Its a starting point, not an ending. Treat it like a spot sign and totally pause, but not for long. You dont want to ignore a cant anymore than you want to ignore a

stop sign. Because it to carries important information, that you ignore at your own risk. And while stop signs mean stop, cant typically means something else entirely. Perhaps it means dont want to. Or dont know how. Or, I did that before and it didnt work out. Or, I could but I have another problem I need to solve instead. In any case, you need to know. You need to interrogate the Cant until you know what it really means. Often you can help the person help you. You can solve his or her problem and get your problem solved to. If you dont allow yourself to get canted, you will find a solution. Which can keep the project moving forward, until 2) You get decked. You spend six to nine months working on The Emperors New Powerpoint. Oh, its a thing of beauty and the consultants have made sure youve paid good money for the privilege of playing Medici to their work of art. Its full of the sort of ideas that make the little hairs stand up all over your body, of the sort of charts that remind you of an HBS case study, and of the sort of statistics that only someone with a paid subscription to the McKinsey Quarterly can access. Youre impressed. Maybe your boss is impressed too. Then that deck sits on your desk. You try to get the ideas implemented, but they seem to resist. Soon, you grow tired of that thing in your face, a dusty reproach. Who needs the pressure? You put it up on a shelf with the handsome spine facing you. The dust accumulation process continues. Youve gotten decked. Well, youre in good company. Most execs have gotten themselves decked, and many are serial victims. It happens for good reason. You need strategy, after all. You need expertise. You need to know what to do. So you hire experts and they put it together for you, making the most

of PowerPoint, Keynote or whatever. And you get decked. The way around this is pretty simple. You want to do your own thinking, and you want to buy your thinking from as close to the action as possible. So, you want your PR strategy from the person who promotes you. The people on the front lines. When that isnt enough, you dont need to go out and sponsor a study. You meet some people, you read some books, you check out some of the great resources on the web. You talk to some folks. You think. You make your plan. But you dont allow yourself to get decked. Another approach is to integrate your thinkers with your doers. Your doers can be on staff. Thinkers those who can only thing -- are on borrowed time. They are here to solve a defined problem for a defined sum. They theyre gone. So, you get what you need and you dont get decked. 3) You get tailed. You put strategy first. Businesses need strategies - dont get me wrong. But go back not for nine months, but for a couple of seconds and reread the previous sentence. Do you see the order of the words? Businesses. Need. Strategies. In that order. See, business comes first. People will tell you that brands build businesses. People will tell you that months of strategizing must precede any productive work and that you just have to suck up the costs and the time. This is more BS. Its BS that comes out of the structure of storytelling, especially of the sort that builds heroes. So, if you read business biographies, case studies, award show submissions, etc you are going to imbibe a great deal of distortion. The story always seems to go like this: A. Opportunity or Problem. B. Brilliant strategy. C. Execution of brilliant strategy.

D. Success, fame, glory. E. Book. This is why we must be iconoclasts. We cant believe these prettied-up stories. We can enjoy them the way we enjoy a sausage, not particularly interested in the process that led to the meal. But when were on the other side of the equation when were making the sausages, we need to face facts. The typical successful process is messy. It doesnt proceed in the logical order of that pretty story. More breakthroughs have come out of a B-C-A-C process than and A-B-C process. But huge amounts of energy, time and confidence are routinely wasted trying to make the sausage factory live up to the fairy tail. Do you have time for that? Ive met quite a few people who thought they did, people who thought that the things were different in their company or their industry. I respectfully disagreed. Some of these people are still my good friends. Some are clients, albeit in other companies and industries. A few are even in my employ. The idea that you have time to make the process conform to some pretty illusion is itself an illusion, and the results will not be pretty. You need to hack the process to get there faster. 4) You get siloed. You think you can separate belief from action. If you think of branding and selling as two different and separate functions of the business, you will create fissures in the customer experience that will be costly. And youll create organizational barriers to closing those gaps that will eat time and morale and alienate the cheetahs you want to recruit and keep. Start with the user experience and integrate all you can right from the beginning. 5) You hesitate and get lost. Dont die on the field with bullets in your belt. Let your voice be heard and your force be felt! It is easier to get forgiveness than permission. It is easier to head off a problem than to correct one after the fact. It is

better to preempt the complaint. To deliver what the boss is about to think about asking for. Too many people think that doing the right thing is the important thing and that a few days or weeks or months makes little difference in the long run. They have the consolation of being right in their own minds. But the way things work in the world is that you need to be there in time or dont bother showing up. Timing truly is everything. 6) You get stoned to death with popcorn. We start the week, the month, the quarter, the year with only the best intentions. Weve got our feet planted firmly on the ground and our heads in high ideals. We have big, important things were working on and a spring in our step. And then the interruptions begin. And the emergencies. Phones ringing. People stopping in. Emails. Text messages. Facebook updates, requests, pokes. Tweets. Complaints. Problems with a pitch or a sale. Unhappy clients. Disgruntled employees. None of these things is a cannon ball. Theyre just popcorn. But when theyre coming down on you like sleet, they can still bury you. The problem gets worse when you dont know youre buried. The digital world accomplished one paradoxical thing. It took an over- communicated, overwhelming world and added many thousands more messages for us to try to ignore, sort, digest and deal with every single day. Just one part of this flow, an estimated 294 billion emails were sent every day in 2010, totaling over 90 trillion emails sent all year year, or 2.8 million emails sent every second. In addition, currently about 4.1 billion text messages are sent each day. 135.2 billion text messages are sent each month and 1.36 trillion text messages sent each year. 7) You buy into the perfect process myth. You put process before content. Teach someone the difference between a process conversation and a content conversation and have that person keep a tab of time spent in your next few meetings. You may find that you are spending much more time on process than on content. This is a huge timewaster.

8) You lead from dissatisfaction. You cant effectively lead toward something that you believe is impossible. In other words, cynical leadership can make the possible impossible. Heres just one way: your team believes you have no faith that the thing youre asking them to do is possible for them. So, they dont try. 9) You scare the hell out of your team. Fear is a powerful motivator, and there is no doubt that some organizations have been driven by fear-based leadership. I wont waste your time with moral arguments. If youre the type that would respond to them, you dont need convincing. This is an interesting world and all kinds of cultures can work, at least for a time. If people want to be exploited in the worst way, they typically wont have any trouble finding a place that will do exactly that. People who are motivated by fear can find cultures to gravitate to. But, if youre thinking about getting things moving or done this way, first look around and make sure youre in that kind of place. Because, if youre not, the fear approach could backfire big time. And you might motivate some of the key members of your team to head for the exits. Plus, beyond a brief jolt, fear tends to interrupt creativity. If getting to your objective requires creative thinking from your team, then you are going to have to make very limited use of fear as a strategy. Personally, I hate the, Weve got to win this or else pep talk some agency heads like to give at the beginning of pitches. First off, its typically not true. Secondly, it makes people act crazy. Maybe some clients want to hire crazy, but if youre not crazy you dont want those clients! Our approach is, lets be ourselves, lets do what we do, and then well win the business were supposed to win. That lets us be cool, like Fonzie. Maybe some of our personalities start to show, and our natural chemistry. Which works well enough for us. 10) You suffer from a bad case of old think. Some of what used to serve as wisdom just doesnt work anymore. Thats why you need to review your beliefs from time to time, and

discard the detritus. Heres an example: Good. Fast. Cheap. Its a start. There is an old saying, beloved by the complacent and the entitled, which goes like this, Good. Fast. Cheap. Choose any two! The idea is that you cant have good, fast and cheap thats impossible. If it is fast and cheap, then it is by definition not good. If it is good and fast, youre going to pay a premium for it. This is frankly bullshit and a giant waste of time. McDonalds doesnt have time for this wisdom. Target doesnt. Walmart wont. NetFlix isnt slowed down by this crap. Apples development cycles dont respect this kind of non-thinking. And you wont either. You dont have time for it. You are building something great, fast and economical! Because thats what it takes to compete today. So this is a book about how to speed up everything AND make it great in the process. 11) You wait for all the facts. Stop that! 12) Youre not ready to do a lot, so you dont do a little. We know we should get into social media, but were not ready to take all that on right now. Are you insane? Whos talking about ALL THAT? Frankly, even Google isnt ready to take on ALL THAT right now. But, does your business rely to some extent on being found? Then you cant put off social media. Social media is the tailwind of SEO, which is Search Engine Optimization. In short, being found. Youve got to get started. If you recruit, then a sensible LinkedIn presence is a start. You should be there. Your company should be there. Your presence there should be updated. You should have people at your company who are active there. You should be on Facebook. If you produce content of any kind, theres a

good chance you should be on Twitter. The important thing is to start. Set a modest, near in goal. And get there. You can build from there. 13) You wonder if your target audience is really online or on social media. We sincerely doubt they arent. The median age on Facebook has been rising fast for years, and it was never very low, for example. But, even if they arent, do they Google? (Which today is like asking if they are sentient beings.) If they do use Google for search, your participation in social media increases the odds that they will find you. Thats why we say that social media is the fuel for SEO Search Engine Optimization. 14) You think your CEO doesnt understand digital media. Are you sure? Last we looked, CEOs were more likely to have iPads and iPhones. They search Google. They have their LinkedIn updated. Check out this unusually informative footnote for useful digital CEO facts:3 If your CEO happens to be one of the rare birds that has so far been left out of the digital revolution, use the facts above to shock him or her out of analogue complacency. In fact, feel free to drop us a line to mark@digobrands.com and well share a presentation that weve
3 CEO engages with social media- the average professional belongs to 3-5 online networks for business use, linkedin, facebook, and twitter are among the top used. Harvard study- 30 key findings on the CEO engages with social media: http://www.jeffbullas.com/2009/12/13/new-harvard-study-30-key-findings-on- how-the-ceo-engages-with-social-media/ With the growth of social media CEOs want to be in the game to get advantages: http://www.jeffbullas.com/2011/09/02/20-stunning-social-media-statistics/ Study- Inc. 500 CEOs aggressively use social media for business. 91% of companies report they use at least one social media tool. http://www.inc.com/news/articles/2009/11/inc500-social-media-usage.html

created to help orient the CEO to the digital revolution. 15) You dont think you have to. Look around. Nearly all of the emergencies were dealing with didnt have to be emergencies. People saw them coming. Many, many other people could have seen them coming if they had only looked. Look. Things arent standing still out there. If your company is in a comfortable position, well that is a rare and wonderful thing. It is also very likely an illusion. If you have the opportunity, seize it. Thats the only way to have a hope of maintaining it. Strengths arent foundations that have set and are unchanging. They are foundations that can only be hardened by being built upon. So, get building! 16) You settle for 9s. Eric and I have a saying, We only do 11s. This is not arrogance. It doesnt mean we love every single idea we come up with. In fact, in practice it means that we reject a very high percentage of our own ideas. Because we dont think good enough if worth doing. Good enough isnt, as Jay Chiat used to say. So, we tell our clients and each other and anyone who will listen that we only do 11s. An 11 on a scale of 1-10. This is an idea that we dont just think is a winner, we know it in our bones. When you think about all the work, time, money, energy and opportunity cost that goes into developing an idea and running an integrated campaign, it becomes hard to understand how anyone can settle for less than 11s. But the truth is, they often do.

After all, its hard enough to find an idea that the agency and client can agree on. Clients are often hesitant to push back for fear that the agency wont be able to come up with anything better. Agencies are hesitant to tell the client its not good enough yet for fear that their own creativity or the clients patience wont last. None of that can survive bad results. The most powerful position in the world is to have higher standards for ourselves than anyone else could have for us. But, of course, this only works if you are able to live up to them. So, dont allow yourself to be canted, decked or tailed. Dont put off small things today because you cant do bigger things. Dont be stopped by where your market category or your target audience is or isnt today. These things are changing. And so are you! Now, lets make those changes systematic Need more convincing? Check out these stories and amazing video link: Over 45 million status updates per day. http://mashable.com/2009/10/21/facebook-sheryl-discussion/ 200 million tweets a day. http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/30/twitter-3200-million- tweets/ http://www.digitalbuzzblog.com/video-infographic-the-world-of-socialmedia-2011-video/ facebook have passed google as most visit website on the internet 11% of the world population has a facebook account there are more FB users (800,000,000) then motor vehicles (750,000,000) 50 % log onto facebook everyday average user spends 700 minutes per month on facebook Every 60 seconds on Facebook there are 510,000 posted comments, 293,000 status updates, 136,000 uploaded photos 30 billion pieces of content are shared each month twitter has 225,000,000 users 150,000,000 tweets a day (thats 1736 per second)

twitter personal record is 8900 tweets per second. Linkedin has 135000000 users thats 15x the population of NYC YouTube has 490,000,000 unique visitors that generates 92,000,000,000 page views each month 3500 photos are uploaded each second on flickr

Systematic How you do things can end up determining what you do. Because only systems can overcome the inertia that causes all things to tend toward mediocrity. On the other hand, the systems that you have can overcome the systems that you ought to have and you can end up where youre going instead of where you want to be. But we dont even have systems, do we? I dont even know the systems I just started here. I dont have systems! Yes, you do. Consider this. If you do what youre about to do, an alien watching you from space would perceive your actions as systematic. In fact, they would look like the playing out of a system perfectly designed to get the results you get. So, if youre not 100% happy with your results and who is? then it will pay to take a look at your system. How do you do what you do? Whats the intention behind your actions. What about the people you manage? How do they start their day? How do they know whats important? How do they keep track of what they do? A system is content, process, order, and documentation. Its all there or it isnt. Where it isnt , you need to fill it in. But a system is also music. If work were a movie, think of systems as the score. Sometimes you dont even notice it, but it drives the action forward, sets the rhythm and has a huge impact on the success of the whole experience. Systems are systems of influence. Remember, were all much more open to influence than we think we are. Let me tell you as an adman, a salesman and a direct marketer that

this fact took my family on a three-week cruise in the Mediterranean this year, that its bought them a nice house in an upscale suburb of New York City and it has prepaid for three college educations. You can bank on it! So, what kind of systems do you need for a digital world? Great question Im glad we asked. Here are our greatest hits: Its Not A Straight Line. The shortest distance between two points is no longer a straight line. Its Google. Practice Googling. Have Google contests with your friends or your kids. I can find that answer in 3-2-1 searches! Soon you will have this experience often: You will ask for something. It could be a piece of information, a recommendation, a resource or just an answer. You will be told it cant be found. Or that it will take a week. And then you will open your web browser and do a Google search or two and youll have it, in .000232 seconds. If you are like me, you will make a dramatic point of this. You dont want Google to be your own secret superpower. You want to spread it in your network so that the power of the hive grows. Because Google is a superpower as surely as any sufficiently advance technology is. Google adds to the human anatomy billions of intelligent tentacles. Use your tentacles! Whats a Resume? Resumes still exist, but why? The information lives on LinkedIn, which is a much richer habitat for our career-related data. If you seek employment or employees. If you recruit or hire or use freelancers or consultants. If you want to know and be known by people in business. If you are to any degree responsible for business development or sales. LinkedIn can still be your secret weapon.

Become a power user. Study and practice it like the violin. Play it like a fine fiddle. You will work with and for better people. And youll dine at better restaurants too. Remember Names. I used to have a lot of trouble with this one. Brilliant at faces, Id somehow left the brain cells responsible for connecting them with names back there in the 70s. They werent coming back. And then, suddenly, there was Facebook. Now I can put names with faces, and soon enough my mobile phone will allow me to search faces and find names. So, while Im no Bill Clinton, I can now have an aid in the form of technology whispering in my ear as I shake hand after hand. Whats more, I can shake hands digitally. I like people. I like connecting with them and knowing how theyre doing. I also like connecting with them in a way that allows me to connect with more people and to do it in less time. Efficiency doesnt rule all my personal relationships. Im not @speed every second of my day. My Moms reaction to this project was to say, Its hard for me to imagine you doing anything @speed. She clearly knows a different Mark, the one who knows how to take a break and be with people. The right brained creative guy who happily loses track of time. Shes never attended a Standing Meeting. She sees the 180 pages three months later, but not the blur of the fingers. Shes never been to a 15-minute Mark & Eric Genius Session! But, before and after that session, she and I might pass messages or pictures back and forth on Facebook for a minute or two. She might connect me to another old family friend. And Im grateful. Dont have Status Meetings, Have Progress meetings. God, I hate the word status. It reminds me of status quo and your job

and mine is to disturb the status quo. Things dont sit. Things dont stand. Events, projects, and competitors are constantly in motion and if were not taking that into account, were losing momentum. Two Tracks, Simultaneously. Youll find this works in most situations. Typically, there is an ideal. It may even be attainable. People may not be clear about how long it will take to get there, but they are enamored of it. Most teams, left to their own devices, will ruminate on this project of getting to the ideal for weeks, months, even years. On the other hand, there is the attainable. The immediate opportunity. The low-hanging fruit. This is not a bitter fruit at all, but typically a quite tasty variety at the peak of ripeness, and within easy reach. Yet people will sit under that tree and plan for next years harvest and let those cherries rot on the vine. Perhaps thats what Newton was doing when the apple fell on his head. Take a quick, hard look at your situation. It is possible that these short- term wins will be a distraction that further delays the other much more important achievement? On the other hand, its also possible that the business can grow fat and strong and successful on meal after meal of low hanging fruit, picked off daily? This is one situation in which, when faced with a choice between two compelling options, the right answer is often Both! But heres the thing, you must manage to move them both forward simultaneously. For the low hanging fruit, you need one kind of planning. For next years harvest, you need another. The first should be driven by a ruthless calculation of time efficiency. You need to create a something that is better than a nothing. And you need to do it in the shortest time and with the least effort possible. You can always improve on it after that. No go! When it comes to planning those future harvests, your team must shift to the other side of the brain. How good can this be? When you get into the stage of planning for implementation, you can go back to the other

style of planning. But, in the conception phase, make sure the team takes the time to get it right. Just make sure that that time is not obstructing progress toward harvesting the low hanging fruit. Find ways to bring this concept of Two Track Planning dramatically to the foreground for your teams. Run the schedules side by side on the same page. Do the same with the plans. Celebrate two-track planning. When you see a plan for just one thing, ask about the other track. This is a simple trick learned from successful entrepreneurs. For the entrepreneur, money never just appears from nowhere to finance the pursuit of your dreams. You must earn it, raise it or pick it yourself. So you get good at paying for tomorrows possibilities with todays opportunities. Whenever people tell me and they do quite often that they have no time to think strategically because they are too busy getting things done, I have some trouble feeling much sympathy. Strategic is the way you approach your job and your opportunities in action every day. Strategic is what you do with that pile of work in front of you. The pressure of living in the real world means youre living in the real world. Since you are working on solutions for people in the real world, this ought to be a strategic advantage. Two Track Planning is one great way to be more successful today and more strategic about your future in a time-starved world. Learn the rules of bully dynamics. Some people are not into peace. These same people will tend to view reasonableness and accommodation as signs of weakness. Dont be the guy who gives his tater tots away on the first day at prison and ends up having to give his tots, milk and virtue away thereafter. Be the guy who eats his own tots the first day, and washes them down with a tonic of self-respect. Getting people going who dont work for you.

Some people might say, Mark, youre a CEO, youve got all the power no wonder you find it easy to get people going. Well, first of all. Im the CEO of DIGO, but Im just the agency at the client organizations whose success my own success depends on. If youve seen MadMen, you have an idea of where the agency stands always one persuasive presentation away from being fired or influential, a vendor or a savior, God or goat. Is it really that dramatic? Often it is. But a lot has changed since the MadMen era. The client and agency both are much less powerful. Modern marketing and technology have empowered the audience. The tribe is in charge now, and they dont report to you! To highlight this change, my title today isnt Chief Executive Officer, its merely Chief. My job as agent for brand-driven growth is to stand with my client at the intersection of the company and the audience. This includes customers, internal stakeholders, prospects, influencers, critics, media, everyone who can affect the success of the brand. Most of these people dont report to the client. Most of them have jobs to do and bosses to please. Seth Godin tells this story in Tribes, his little, seminal book on leadership: In 1984, at the age of twenty-four, I joined a tiny software company called Spinnaker. Based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, we were crazy enough to embrace the audacious goal of inventing the first generation of educational computer games. I was the thirtieth employee. After my summer internship, Spinnaker offered me a job starting a new brand. They wanted me to acquire science fiction stories and turn them into literary adventure games. Byron Priess had already sold us the rights to Fahrenheit 451 and other novels, and I had to acquire others and turn them into products ready for stores nationwide. The problem was that no one worked for me. No secretary, no staff, no programmers.

Spinnaker was busy building dozens of products, and about forty programmers in the Engineering Department were allocated on a rotating basis to various projects. I was lent precisely three programmers. I needed more, a lot more, if I was going to make my Christmas ship date. So I started a newsletter. The newsletter highlighted the work of every person who worked on one of my products. It highlighted their breakthroughs and talked about the new ground we were breaking (music! In a game!). I made photocopies and distributed the newsletter to the interoffice mailbox of every person in the company by then about a hundred people. Twice a week the newsletter went out. Twice a week, I talked about our quest. Twice a week, I chronicled the amazing work of our tiny tribe. The newsletter connected the tribe members. It turned a disparate group of career engineers into a working community. Within a month, six engineers had defected to the tribe, working with me in their spare time. Then it was twenty. Soon, every person in the entire department was either assigned to my project or moonlighting on it. We shipped five products in time for Christmas, and every one went Gold, selling millions of dollars worth of copies and saving the company. Did engineers switch because of the newsletter? Of course not. They switched because of the journey. They wanted to be part of something that mattered. Twenty years later, people on that team still talk about what we built. And I, the twenty-four-year-old with no experience and no staff, got to go on the ride of a lifetime. Is that all I did? Launch a newsletter. Of course not. I did difficult things, pushed obstacles out of the way, lived and breathed the project, and injected it with a soul. Thirty of us slept in the office every night for a month to make the ship date. Tweny-nine highly skilled technical people and me. Everyone had a job to do that month and mine was to help everyone else communicate. Everything I did was for us, not for me. I didnt manage; I led.

(Tribes page 28-30)4 Shine a Light On What You Value. You have heard of the placebo effect (sometimes called the sugar pill effect) in which simply believing one has taken effective medicine will create a real, statistically significant improvement in a wide range of conditions. But you may not have heard of the Hawthorne Effect. The Hawthorne effect is another effect proven through experiments in which subjects improve or modify a behavior that is being measured simply because they are being studied. In short, letting people know they are being studied tends to change, often improve, their performance. Henry A. Landsberger first described the Hawthorne Effect in 1950.5 He had reviewed older research conducted at the Hawthorne Works, a Western Electric factory near Chicago, in the 20s and 30s. Hawthorne Works wanted to know whether its workers would be more productive in higher or lower levels of light. When lighting was lowered, productivity improved. When light was increased, productivity improved again. The only conclusion left was that the special interest and attention being paid to the workers had increased their productivity. This effect was confirmed in subsequent experiments in which other variables, such as office cleanliness and work hours were altered, with the effect confirmed. Expect success. People write books telling us that if we believe it, it will happen. They believe these books will be bestsellers, and we make it happen for them. But, weve all met people who fervently believed they were headed for a certain kind of success modeling, performing, acting, financial, or
4 This is just a footnote.
5http://www.generalsurgerynews.com/ViewArticle.aspx?d=Editorial+Page&d_id=66&i=May+2011&

i_id=730&a_id=17146

whatever and we kind of knew they werent. Belief alone cant guarantee a certain outcome. As John Lennon said, Life is what happens while youre making other plans. But, our beliefs are more influential than we may consciously realize. This too has been proven in experiments. The observer-expectancy effect is another distortion in which the experimenter or observers bias influences the participants in an experiment. In short, people tend to do what the experimenter expects, even when the experimenter wants to be completely objective. This is the origin of the double-blind technique in which neither the experimenter nor the subjects know which test cell they are in. What you can learn from this is that your unconscious expectations - what you truly believe is going to be the result of your leadership - can have a real impact on your team and your project. If you believe things wont go well, youre increasing the chances that things wont go well. So, what can you do about that? Be real with yourself. Get at your true feelings about the project one way or another. Some people write in a journal. Some talk to friends, spouses, partners, coworkers, therapists, or coaches. Others paint pictures, go on long runs, have epiphanies in the shower. The reason you want to know how you feel is that then you can DO something to change your feelings. Maybe you need to shake up the team. Maybe you just need to shake up yourself and see the possibilities afresh. If you can get yourself in a position of true positive expectation, it can make all the difference. For getting in touch with your true feelings about well, everything I recommend Focusing by Eugene T. Gendling6 Give your people high expectations to live up to. And dont allow false (or genuine) humility to keep you from letting your reputation for success be as high as it possibly can be with your people.
6 link to book: http://www.amazon.com/Focusing-Eugene-T- Gendlin/dp/0553278339

This is also more than just a management clich. Its proven social science. The Pygmalian Effect is the finding that the more you expect from people, the better they perform. Feldman & Prohaska (1979) initiated an experiment to study the effect of student expectations of teachers.7 One group was told their teacher was "quite effective," and another group was told their teacher was "incompetent." The effect of these positive and negative expectations were measured in terms of student attitudes toward the teacher, scores on tests, and "nonverbal behavior" of the students toward the teachers. The teacher was experimentally blind to what the students thought about him/her. There were clear differences in all three measures based on a positive or negative expectation. Students with a negative expectation "rated the lesson as being more difficult, less interesting, and less effective." Students with a positive expectation scored 65.8% on the test, and those with a negative expectation scored lower, at 52.2%. In terms of nonverbal behavior, subjects leaned "forward more to good teachers than poor teachers." There was some evidence that students with a positive expectation had better eye contact with the teacher. Change it up. The Novelty Effect, in the context of human performance, is the tendency for performance to initially improve when new technology is instituted, not because of any actual improvement in learning or achievement, but in response to increased interest in the new technology. New technology need not refer specifically to what we typically think of as technology. It could be a new process, a new organizational structure, a new system, product or service offering.

7 http://books.google.com/books?id=hPCB- LqiINwC&pg=PA109&lpg=PA109&dq=feldman+%26+prohaska+1979+study+the+e ffect+of+student+expectaions+of+teachers&source=bl&ots=CFI0TTIJ5H&sig=GP3fR lqQtPDx0HT_CYvKEZazo4s&hl=en&ei=hJPWTpP8NYnPrQe3hKyhDg&sa=X&oi=boo k_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CCwQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q&f=false

In my own industry of advertising agencies, when the old Research Department was replaced by new-thinking Planning Departments In the early 90s, about a decade of positive revolution followed. After that, the impact of the novelty began to peter out. I was left to conclude that it was the cache that accompanied the novelty of planning that had made that decade of change possible. When the novelty wore of, the magic of planning waned as well. Does that mean it wasnt real? To me what it means is that novelty was key element, but not necessarily the totality, of the mystique of planning. Mystique was a key to its effect. Due to plannings mystique, planning recommendations were less likely to be subjected to the typical vetting process which had too often led to uninspiring results from research. Typically inflexible corporate processes were altered and exceptions created in response to the charisma of planning. Of course, changed processes led to different results, and in advertising a novelty can also be the sole cause of uncommon success. Yet, the novelty and therefore the mystique of planning began to wear thin, clients and colleagues began to challenge planners in the same ways they had challenged researchers. Over time, their results began to revert to the mean. What this says is that there is an inherent boost that you can get from just changing things up, whether those changes create long-term process improvements and efficiency or not. It also suggests that there is an optimal level of change that leads to the best performance of a group. Too little change and the group performance slips. Too much change and the stressed-out group also under-performs. The optimal amount of change keeps the group humming at a higher level. How do you know whether youre humming along at the optimal level of change? Not by the noise in the machine, but by its output. But theres good reason to believe that when a team is at the peak of performance, creativity and attainment may be exactly the time to institute some significant change. Todays results are generally the fruits of last years plantings. So the art of leadership is to so time innovations as to disturb the complacent and to comfort the disturbed. Change itself is a powerful change agent, reverberating through the system. When change gets difficult, change something and see what happens.

 Beware of experienced managers. When you hire experienced managers, you hire their experience too. They work for you, but they bring everyone and every place theyve ever worked with them. And retraining can be a lot more difficult than training. This is not because they are old dogs and cant learn new tricks. Its more likely to be because they already think they know. How its supposed to work. What its supposed to look like when its done. What good is and isnt. In other words, they are likely to think theyre professionals, and that their professional standards matter more than your company standards. Which, of course, they dont. Not that you cant learn anything from pros. Thats what consultants are for. But if you must hire an experienced manager, make sure youre hiring a refugee who sees your place as the promised land. For real. You want someone who wants to do it your way. Who wants most of all to earn a place in the tribe. Who relishes the opportunity. Otherwise, do all you can to mint your own managers. Bring them up in your system. Make them partners in creating and evolving the way its done here. Help them feel they own it and dont completely discourage them from defending it from pretenders and neophytes. Depending on how fast you grow and how you grow whether organically or through M&A as well you will need to integrate experienced managers into your team. When you do, absolute clarity, especially around measures of performance success will be crucial. The way we do it here must rule. How to get your agencies to play nicely together. (Its called accountability.) Not long ago, the agency was the expert on integration today more than ever that falls on the client. Whichever side of the client/agency

fence you sit on, your ability to help integration work will be a major accelerator. But what do you do? The general agency wants to have all the ideas. The direct agency has its own direction, thank you. And the PR firm wants to talk to you about marketing. Sometime, later in the weekyoure going to have to work out this interactive thing... here is a quick-start list: 1) Seek out the one or two people on your team (title and agency affiliation dont matter) who are truly, thoroughly cross-trained. 2) Agree a process for seeking the best ideas from ALL sources. 3) Define the accountabilities of each agency (include enthusiastically building on the chosen idea as well as results metrics) and 4) Agree your commitments in return (for example, one large client insisted that the top creative director of their agency be their COPYWRITER! In exchange, they promised the agency would never have more than three client contacts). 5) Use the Hawthorne Effect by making a contest or experiment out of it. The more you make the process seem special, the more you arrange for key people to pay special attention, the better people will perform. 6) Set high expectations and dramatize them. Put the Pygmalian Effect to work for you. I formative experience of my career was as a young creative director in an agency of 20-somethings. This was at a time when most agencies were run by people in their 40s, 50s and 60s. The culture of the place was this: If youre here, you are GREAT. We chewed up Madison Avenue and became a hot shop. 7) Schedule and keep regular check-ins. Attention pays dividends by keeping people motivated and moving forward.

 8) Let everyone know in advance that once a decision is made, you expect all the agencies to enthusiastically execute. 9) Review the arrangements at least every six months and make sure you have the right agencies doing the right things. 10) Set rules for the way credit will be shared from the beginning. Agency people care about such things as award shows and youll have to deal with that up front if you want to maximize motivation, which you do! Cut your spend, not your throat. Recessions are good. They drive out complacency, doldrums and waste. They force marketers to look at every element of their spend and ask the ultimate question, "Is this even worth doing, and if so, is it worth doing at this price?" The nipping and tucking eventually leads the brave marketer to a higher set of expectations and a shorter fuse. You reach the limits of efficiencies and the borderlands of hope, and you go back to the fundamentals: a better insight into the audience, a bigger idea, more wired selling. It isn't easy. Sometimes it's downright painful. But it can be extremely satisfying, and rewarding too. And remember, you're never more valuable than you are when times are tough. Because until somebody sells something to someone, there is no economy. Even so, the marketing budget Reaper is enjoying a busy season. So even if youre one of the few not being asked to do more with less this year, youll benefit from these secrets of the super efficient:

Dont replace, repair. Lets face it - it costs less to get new ideas than it does to launch a whole new campaign. Often legacy creative even if its failing miserably in the marketplace -- can be tweaked and transformed into control-beating direct response creative. Think Brand Direct the model of pure brand advertising supporting pure direct marketing breaks down at lower budget levels and isnt the efficient marketers approach at any budget level. Instead, insist that every media dollar drives response while building the brand. Or else. Save By Going Social Launch a whole new channel when my budget is going down!?! Absolutely. Done right, building out your world on the social web could be the most profitable shift you make this year. Dont prioritize buying impressions in social media. Use social for listening first, then to expand and target the reach of your news. Pretty soon, youre in a conversation. Make is a great one! Learn from challenger brands. Apple. Virgin. Southwest. JetBlue. Crunch. Snapple. Groupon. BlueFly. Zappos. The Motley Fool. What do these brands have in common? Theyre challengers, and successful ones at that. Theyve mastered the art of zagging where others have tended to zig. Theyve taken on the goliaths of their industries and come out on top. The truth is, its a challenging world out there, and every marketer these days needs to be a successful challenger or go down. Market leadership doesnt create an exception. Look at Citibank and IBM, for example. By becoming their own best competition, theyve looked like ready challengers, reinvented their businesses and continued to grow. Heres what challengers do differently:

1) The top dog is INVOLVED. Intimately. Some folks think the reason they got degrees and big titles was so that they could independently run their own empire. Some of these people are actually pretty smart. But nine times out of ten, this attitude will do them in. A boss is not a meddler to be avoided. If you were playing chess, you wouldnt leave your Queen in the background and try to fight it out endlessly with your lesser pieces. Or would you? Forget the org chart. Every player on the board is on your team. Use them! If you want to make things happen @speed, you want the least distance between you and your boss. And you want to access the power youre your boss has to smooth situations and to make good tactical decisions into great strategic initiatives. Plus, you want the power to change things that youre not personally responsible for, because changing those things will make all the difference in your ability to create success. So, you bring your boss in as a collaborator and ally. As much as possible, you lead hand in hand. Its the challengers way to use every last person. 2) The advertising conversation and the business conversation are THE SAME CONVERSATION. Dont separate what youre doing from why youre doing it, even for a moment. You never want to be the one saying, But we failed with work that was on the strategy we were given! That is a level of responsibility, but its the wrong level. You want to be responsible for the success of the enterprise. You want the brand and business to reach its full potential. You want to use not just your authority but your influence. Because nothing beats being part of something great and you dont want to leave that to chance. In this context, great advertising is advertising that works for the business and brand. It brings the business strategy to life. It creates the connection that reflects the intentions of the business while both suggesting and fulfilling its promise.

This is where experience meets selling meets branding. 3) The work is seen as the ultimate weapon for conquering the competition. Where is the unfair advantage to be found? You are not in a position to outspend. Youre not going to break the law. Or trying to change it to favor you. But you can pack more power into the product, the packaging, the service, the story, the propaganda. You can be smarter about the technology, the testing strategy, more ingenious and industrious about the optimizations. You can win it in the marketplace of ideas. So, do that. 4) The brand is seen as a precious asset and the ultimate defensive fortification against copycats and commoditisers. Challengers build unique brands and they value them above all else. Customers are intensely loved, but they come and go. Employees are highly valued, but the sort who are attracted to a challenger business can only be held by a great brand. A unique culture and point of view is often the only thing to hold onto in the perfect storm of growth. A brand is armor and a full tank of gas. A brand is everything. And you only need a business to build one! 5) The VISION of the top dog drives the advertising. Steve Jobs met every other week for intensive sessions with Lee Clow, the creative chairman of his advertising agency. In the most successful challenger businesses, the vision for the brand and advertising comes from the top. No question about it. That kind of courage and purity of vision cant be bought. It cant be outsourced. No committee could sustain it. For a business that has its founder to get the full advantage of that fact, the vision must be owned and driven from the top. 6) The vision of the agency and the vision of the client are complimentary and synergistic. The mutual inspiration society should include client and agency, vigorous discussions, sharing inspiration, lots of choices, and plenty of

going back to the well. The most sophisticated team wins. 7) Decisions get made in meetings, not just in between. In big, bloated bureaucracies, meetings only ratify decisions that are made elsewhere. Which is why most people in those places feel that there time is wasted in meetings. Because it is. But you dont have time to waste. So youre not going to protect your own ego or anyone elses by pretending for a second to agree with what you dont. Youre going to have real conversations. In front of whoever is there. And when some people complain about that and they try to negotiate with you to stop the open, inclusive, challenging, passionate dialogue, you are going to say, I understand how you feel. And, no. Absolutely not. Because that would be replacing occasional discomfort with the endless pain of mediocrity and failure. Which you wouldnt tolerate for long youd be gone. So, no! Lets just agree to be respectful to each other, to put the good of the work first, and to say exactly what is on our minds. Ambition is your friend. Mostly. If you want to get things done, ambition is your friend. Mostly. Find out what gives people satisfaction. Learn what ambitions drive them. And then give them the gift of using that knowledge to drive themselves to unanticipated heights. Then ambition will be your friend. On the other hand, if you dont understand what ambitions drive your key people, if they each drive in their own direction and you dont have the key to understand why they dont see eye-to-eye, when their own inner compass points to a different North than your business strategy well, thats when ambition is definitely not your friend. You need to do something about that. Now. And so it goes

So it goes. Thats what Kurt Vonnegut used to write whenever one person or a hundred thousand persons died. So it goes. That what I think whenever an idea dies. So it goes. Most of the great art in the world has been about things going wrong. My beloved psychoanalyst told me that. I checked, and in fact its true. True of literature. True of cinema. Should a philosopher marry? By all means marry! said Socrates. If you get a good wife, youll be happy. If you get a bad one, youll be a philosopher. So it goes. Things go wrong. Ideas die. So it goes. War keeps coming, and recessions. Clients go bankrupt. Credit lines are canceled. Employees have panic attacks, or lose their grandmothers. We launched a wonderful green electricity company and named it JUICE. One of the best names ever. A beautiful identity, and a successful launch. Selling electricity to business is a capital-intensive undertaking. Success required a large credit line, and Lehman Brothers supplied just the line that was needed. The campaign launched and immediately worked like gangbusters. The accounts were rolling in. The future looked bright. Then one day Lehman called and told Juice they had two days to close the line. Lehman and Juice went out of business on the same day. So it goes. Once, when I worked at another agency, the head of new business left 32 boxes of pitch materials on the sidewalk. We all got on the bus and headed to the airport. The next day, in San Francisco, when she realized shed left the work behind, the boxes were gone. Likely, they had been picked up by a trash truck. Who knows? They were never seen again. So it goes. At great cost, the agency reprinted and shipped all the materials in time for the pitch. We came in second. There is nothing worse than coming in second. Coming in second costs as much as winning, but you get as little out of it as coming in last. Its better to not be invited at least in the short run. So, the agency paid for the materials twice, and still didnt win the business. So it goes.

 Hunting with a fishing pole? Too many people are failing for hunting with a fishing pole. Lets say youve gotten this far in life on your fishing skills. But the waters are all fished out and the hunters are bringing home the big dinners now. Do you get advice, read all you can about hunting, find a guide or partner to lead you? Or do you just head off into the woods with your fishing pole and tackle? Of course not. If you are with me to this point, you of course recognize this as absurd. And yet we all do this in some part of our lives, very likely in more than one. The fact is its so hard to keep track of the things we know that its impossible to even learn the names and categories of all the things we dont know. And knowing is just the first step. Accepting is another thing entirely. Knowing what to do about it is a third. If the thing you dont know is a fatal flaw such as not knowing how to judge character and quality in people, then thats going to dog you no matter what you do. You are going to need to address that directly, as quickly and as energetically as you can. Youre going to need to get the best help you can with that, because it will be like driving with the emergency break on it not only slows you down, it also stinks. Work as hard as you can on getting to know what you dont know. If you dont know marketing, find someone to trust. Of course you need to learn and check with other advisors, but you want to try to develop trust and a good relationship with a key advisor. Look for proof, for measures of success that make sense, but delegate real responsibility and authority. Create a real partnership and let it flower. The Power of Negative Thinking. Positive thinking has many promoters, but negative thinking is just as important. Here are some great negative thinking tools to speed up your success:

 The Key Frustrations Process. When can frustration be good? When it spurs you to intelligent action. E-Myth Worldwide teaches something they call the Key Frustrations Process. Its a great way to speed up organizational improvement. You can do it alone, or in groups. But either way, be prepared to feel some frustration. Heres what you do: 1) Write a list of things that are frustrating you in the business. If youre doing this as a group exercise, you can call them out and have someone write them down. One rule: dont make it personal. 2) Pick one of the frustrations to work on. Notice that we often see frustrations as people problems. We either have the wrong person, we think, or we dont have the right person. But this time were going to practice approaching problems differently. 3) Ask, What is the system that is leading to this frustration? Youre going to practice seeing frustrations as systematic. If your system is creating frustration, how is it doing that? For example, if the website visuals are wrong, what is the system that is producing the output of wrong visuals. Get it down. 4) Now, innovate. Come up with ideas for changing the system to achieve a better outcome. 5) Give the new system a try, and tweak to perfection. Worry Sessions. Dale Carnegie suggested setting aside time each day or week for a focused worry session. Use the time to pour out your worries, anxieties and concerns. Get it all out. Let your worst imagination have its way with you. Dig deeper if you like. Ask, What worries me about that? And what worries me about that? And so on. By setting time aside for focused worrying, you achieve at least two things. First, you may actually unearth some problems you might

address or consequences you might avoid with some well-conceived actions. Second, you will have an easier time to convince yourself to worry less when you ought to be focused on other things. Objection Sessions When youre preparing to sell an idea or a complex package of services, its natural to think of all the reasons the buyer should say, Yes. But dont forget to think long and hard about all the reasons the decision maker might say, No. Great sales trainers know that preparing to deal with objections is one of the most important keys to successful selling. The process is simple. Put yourself in the buyers shoes. And brainstorm objections. Then work up ways of answering or solving these problems. Now your ready to sell. Self-Firing Its easy to lose your way in a responsible job. Inertia can take over. You can end up doing the best you can instead of the right things. Consider this: Fire yourself for a day. Then write up the requirements for the job. And then interview yourself for it. See if youve got what it takes. See if you have the passion and commitment. See if youre ready to take the difficult steps that may be required. If you do, and only if you do, then hire yourself back. And start the next day as a new person with a new mission. How a boss gets honest feedback. Fire sycophants. That is, if ridiculing them doesnt work.

Promote critics. Encourage people who give you bad news. Pay attention to the truth tellers. Get bored with the people who only tell you good news. Especially if it is about yourself. Probe for the other side. If everyone seems to be in agreement, let people know you are disgusted. Insist that someone in the room argue the case for the other side. Value the complete picture, the nuanced view. Insist. See like an optimizer. Optimizers have a way of seeing. If I cant get this across to you, then nothing else in this book will get you all the way there. You have to be able to project things forward in your mind. Like a chess master, to think through the next few moves. You have to develop a feel for how things might go. The truth is, we all have this radar. Its just human instinct. But some of us have better access to it than others. This has been scientifically proven. If a threat say a rat or a coyote enters your peripheral vision, your little hairs will stand on end before you even consciously know whats going on. Something in you knew, and reacted. We know. Even when we think we dont. Even when were so invested in the idea that we dont that wed swear to it ten ways to Sunday. We know. We need a way of getting it out. I write a journal. I meditate. I play devils advocate with my partners and ask them to do the same with me. I indulge in focused worry sessions, to make sure Im not missing anything. Project forward, and optimize. A Guide to Business Cursing.

Cursing is a short cut. No, seriously, I swear. Cursing is where the rubber of human psychology meets the road of life. Not the habitual and lazy swearing of the amateur. But the surgical swearing of the pro. We are animals. Physical creatures who eat and fuck and shit and piss. Somehow using words with Latin roots makes us feel better about imbibing, copulating, defecating and urinating. But thats just because somewhere along the way, we bought into the BS that Latin words are somehow more correct. No, theyre just longer. We are bodies. Our psyches are tied up in our bodies, and the metaphors of the body suffuse our thinking. This is a good thing, because it keeps us real. If men didnt have penises, for example, they would more easily convince themselves that they have the power to control everything. The penis says, Remember that you are mortal, and just a man who can not even decide when your own penis will be hard with absolute certainty. Its humbling, and thats good. Fuck With Something. We try so hard to get things right. We work so hard to bring order. Well, fuck order. Dan Wieden, one of the great creative leaders of our industry, founder of Wieden & Kennedy, one of the worlds largest independent ad agencies, has it right. Chaos does this amazing thing that order cant: it engages you. It gets right in your face and with freakish breath issues a challenge. It asks stuff of you order never will. And it shows you stuff, all the weird shit, that order tries to hide. Chaos is the only thing that honestly wants you to grow. The only friend who really helps you be creative. Demands that you be creative. Dan Wieden Stay foolish. Stay hungry. Thats what Steve Jobs often repeated, quoting the philosophy of the Whole Earth Catalog. If it werent for long-time client Nike, would there be a Wieden & Kennedy? Here is an agency with one dominant client for decades, putting work before client relationships. Is that a factor in why the relationship survived? In my mind, absolutely! How else is respect maintained across decades and generations of managers?

 Fuck it. I want to get down into the center of Fuck it, because I really want to understand what Fuck it means. I have a sense that Fuck it means turn off your brain for while and go with your instincts. That it means let go of control and just let it happen. All of this sounds like a fucking clich, I know see, Fuck It is freedom. Fuck it is sunshine and lemonade. Fuck it is cicadas on a late summer night. Sometimes you turn your brain up as far as it will go and you think and work and fight your way to the solution you just know is the right one. And then sometimes you just do what you do and you say, Fuck it. And the wonderful thing is that both ways work! Id love to explain why, but instead Im just going to say, Fuck it. Write Shit. I developed my two-word cure for writers block in my early twenties, when I was first starting out as a copywriter in advertising and direct marketing agencies. I knew that it was an incredibly competitive industry in fact, I had a file full of form rejection letters. Back then, they typically concluded with a phrase such as, Well keep your resume on file and, should a suitable position become available, well be sure to reach out to you. A quarter of a century later, a suitable position still has not opened up! Thats how competitive this business is. I didnt have a portfolio, because I hadnt planned to go into advertising. I hadnt studied advertising or marketing. I was a political science major, a touring musician and a sometimes telemarketer. I had no connections to recommend me.

The Career Development Office at my college, the very artsy, non- conformist Purchase College, had taken me through a series of exercises not unlike the ones youll find in What Color Is My Parachute to this day. I liked to hang out with the artists and organize them. I liked the scientists, thinkers and innovators, and I wanted to connect with them. I loved to write short, persuasive essays. I had organized, promoted and taken bands on the road, performed from the stage, written music and lyrics, bits and stories, and sold advertising specialties over the phone. I was fascinated by psychologies, ideologies, philosophies, and propaganda. At the end of the analysis, they said, If you follow your values, you will be a political or social communicator. Or, perhaps, if you become interested in business, you might enjoy advertising. I was able to connect with a few political professionals working in New York City at the time, which was the middle of the Reagan revolution of the 80s. These Democrats immediately struck me as a miserable lot. In drawing them out a little, over the phone, I quickly drew the conclusion that they were hopelessly conflicted about money. They were angry that that didnt have it. But it was a point of pride with them not to pursue it. Now, you might say, How can you get all that from a phone call. All I can say in response is that for the last two years of college and several months after, I had been working as a telephone salesman, calling on a book of small business accounts, selling imprinted pens and other advertising specialties. One either doesnt last long in the job, or one quickly acquires some survival instincts, the most important of which is to correctly infer a great deal about a prospect from a very short time on the phone. Otherwise, click! So, I figured Id take a shot at this advertising. Not exactly my tribe, I thought, but at least I would be with cheerful people. This nave thought turned out to be true, more or less. I finally started as a $19,000 per year Assistant Account Executive at BBDO Direct in 1986.

The head of the LA office came back to New York for a few months to relieve my first boss, who had been fired, and to mentor me. Lloyd Kieran taught me the principles of account management and client service. Having left his beloved wife back in California, he would meet me on Saturdays to show me the ropes, and even take me out to lunch. In a sea of insanity, this man brought standards and a sturdy manliness. When our clients rejected everything our creative department produced one too many times, I started writing ads myself. I brought the first five ads I ever wrote to Lloyd and said something like, Look what I did. You wrote these? He asked. I just started thinking about the problem, and then, yeah I did. Leave them with me. Lloyd said, Ill give them a read. I didnt hear anything about them for twenty-four hours, and work went on as it had before. Then Lloyd called me into his office. He had a few things on his mind, routine things that needed to be followed up on. He wanted me to make sure I was tough on a particular production person who tended to slack a bit on his follow-through. Dont let him off the hook! Lloyd said though the clenched jaw of an old Marine. I assured him I would do not such thing. Then he told me something generous and surprising. I showed those ads you wrote to [the creative director]. He paused for just long enough to let me squirm a little. And, anyway, she said they werent bad at all for a first effort. Which is what I thought. And he smiled. So, I dont know if youre interested in being a copywriter, but she said shed talk to her creative supervisors to see if they would be open to the idea of having you. I thanked him, and said I wasnt sure what I wanted. I enjoyed being an account guy. I had thought Id write my short stories at night, but had to admit I hadnt written a word after work since Id started. Maybe I should take advantage of this opportunity.

The creative supervisors knew me as an avid young account guy with an unusual enthusiasm for good work, and a bit of a groupie of the creative people who could produce it. They also saw me as a guy whose job it was to tell them what to do. If you want to be a junior copywriter, you can be. Said Eileen Carlson, my first creative supervisor. But you cant tell us what to do anymore. We both laughed. Name the enemy. Business books suck. I wouldnt get out of bed to write a business book. Business books are dry, dull, shallow puddles. They generally take one idea that you could absorb in three minutes or less and they puff it up with Hamburger Helper until it reaches the requisite number of pages to magically transform someone from a typist of e-mails into an Author. The things Ive said are true. At least, I believe they are. But does this mean that, objectively, all business books suck? Of course not! Some transcend the general mediocrity. Some stand out. But heres the thing. Saying they suck is an incredibly useful shortcut. Not necessarily saying it publicly, as Im doing here. Because, frankly, that is more likely to come off as presumptuous than anything. Who am I to announce that business books suck? Where is my great business book?! No, you need to say it in your own head, and in your internal meetings with your team. If youre going to write a business book, dont write a business book! Because business books suck! Start by getting clear on why business books suck. Make a list of the mistaken assumptions that most business book publishers make and determine to improve on them dramatically. If youre starting a restaurant, start out with this: Most restaurants suck. Ideally get more specific. Start with your target audience. Lets say its families. Then its Family Restaurants Suck. Why do they suck? Do they have the wrong idea about families? They think they are all focused on the kids, when in fact its the parents that most need a break? They think that its all about pleasing the kids, when more parents want to manage

the kids better and get healthy food in them? Or is it that they are confused, so that the bar is still filled with decidedly un-family-like types. Perhaps they just think they can say, Were a family restaurant. We have large tables and we have plenty of food. Come on by. Theres no difference there. They think all people want from a restaurant is food and good times. They dont realize that people want more. They want a dream, a club to belong to, a reason to feel smart, a community Apple didnt want to make PCs because PCs were dense, unimaginative boxes. PCs sucked. Apple was better than that. The iPhone wasnt an MP3 players. Because MP3 players sucked. There were search engines when Google launched, but they sucked. You get the idea. Is this just semantics and rhetoric, sound and fury, signifying nothing? On the contrary, this is one of the most important things Ive learned from the world-changing visionary entrepreneurs and leaders Ive known. This is what they do. This is the clarity that they get about what theyre doing and what theyre up against. If youre Ben & Jerry, ice cream companies suck. They suck because they lack imagination, creativity and fun. They suck because they are soulless and commercial. And who wants to suck on something soulless and commercial. If youre Crunch, gyms suck. Crunch isnt a gym but and entertainment destination. So, heres your shortcut: 1) 2) 3) 4) Name the enemy? Determine they suck. Say it often and with conviction. Get clear on what it is about them that sucks. Determine to do anything but imitate their suckiness. Dont just try to be better, determine to be another thing entirely. 5) Rinse and repeat. One reason that this works so well is that your competition will fall into two segments. The first will be the establishment. The second will be all the other upstarts and also rans who are working as hard as they can to out-establishment the establishment. But only dead fish swim with the stream. And sometimes they just dont know they are dead.

As John Maynard Keynes, put it, A sound banker, alas! is not one who foresees danger and avoids it, but one who, when he is ruined, is ruined in a conventional and orthodox way along with his fellows, so that no one can really blame him. Get your people drunk with power. Theres a simple way to get your people drunk with power. Lead by asking questions. What do you need from me? What can I do to help you succeed? What do you think should be done about that? What do you need to succeed? How would you approach this if you have less money? You can even save time by switching your questions to requests for requests. Just tell me what you want me to do? What else? Terrific! Now go and make it happen. Anything else? Great! Ciao! Of course, the ability to nurture extraordinary client-agency relationships is the lifeblood of our agency. If healthy plants are the essential of the garden, then sunshine must come first, and nutrient-rich soil second. Only then can you have the plant that bears fruit. Begin with the end in mind. We plan to lose our clients. Client-agency relationships will change and ultimately end. We cant change that. But we can have a huge impact on the way they end. Ted Waitt build the company he founded, Gateway computers, with a little help from us, to an $8 billion market cap, before exiting. Doug Levine grew Crunch from an idea to the number one urban gym in America and a multi-media company in just 12 years (we worked together for 6 of them), until he sold for about $100 million. Tom Civitano worked with us for eight years to make The Plaza Hotel number one in the world in its class, before the hotel was sold for $675 million and transformed (for the most part) into high-end condos.

Ed Nicoll and Matt Andreson founded Island ECN and sold it to Reuters five years later for $508 million. Together, with Ed and CMO Andrew Goldman, we were able to catch up to and pass the category leader, Instinet, in spite of their 30-year head start, and become the new category leader. After the sale, Ed became the chairman and CEO of Instinet, and we worked together to build value, speed up the obsolescence of floor trading at the New York Stock Exchange, and ultimately sold for $1.878 billion to NASDAQ. Lee Barba grew Investools from a seven million dollar software company to the top investor education and technology-driven broker over eight years, and sold it to TD Ameritrade for $660 million. Tom Sosnoff founded thinkorswim, built the fastest growing tech-driven broker, merged with Investools and ultimately sold to TD Ameritrade, becoming one of the largest shareholders of the acquiring company. Even during these tough times, DIGO with Ericho Inside continues to grow and thrive due to the network of relationships weve build with dynamic growth leaders and the marketers that make these companies grow. Have all of our relationships ended this way? Of course not. One accounting firm had the best two years of growth when we worked together, but then the partners decided to cut marketing in favor of other priorities. So it goes. Others, Comcast and Progressive insurance, for example, ultimately became huge companies. Its good to have rich friends. One great client, Joseph Park, founder of Kozmo.com, took us on one of the most amazing rides. We designed one of the most famous identities of the dot com boom it even became a fashion badge. We launched all over the country. Our work was famous and effective. And then the financial structure of the company crushed the healthy marketing engine we had built together under its massive weight. Joe went on to graduate from the Harvard Business School, work for Microsoft, launch a company and sell it to Amazon for $60 million, and launch a couple of other companies for Jeff Bezos. Today, hes our client again at BlueFly and Belle & Clive.

Happy beginnings are a given. But happy endings must be earned. Have fewer people to please. We dont look down on our brothers and sisters in large agencies and giant multinational corporations. We feel for them. They have so many people to please, so many to manage, so many to avoid, mollify, satisfy, convince and appease in order to get (whatever it is) to market. And we try to help the best of them out by building an island they can dream about in their cubicles or corner offices. Some of them might even make it here, but in our experience, thats a very small percentage. Something seems to happen to people in big places. Its not just that they must focus the majority of their time and energy on the wrong people. Its that they seem to forget who the right people are. They spend so much time selling in and selling up, that they lose their feel for the people who we ultimately must sell to if we are to succeed. I mean people. The target audience. The consumer. The User. You know, the market in marketing. If youre our kind of client or our kind of person -- thats not you. You want to have your finger on the pulse. You want us to be focused on getting your finger on that pulse. You want us to make it the smartest, most directionally brilliant finger around. Are you on such an island? If youre not on it or building, then get moving quickly, before the piece of rock youre on starts sinking. Be a digital pioneer=. Dont just do digital. Seize the opportunities of the digital age. Test and measure because it costs less to test than to fail to test. Use direct response results to inform not just direct tactics but the brand. Know the user experience of the product, the service, the website, the app, the call, the ad, the online video, the social promotion, or whatever is

the most important thing. Call it UX or user experience design or interacting design or experience, but be all over it. Because there are two kinds of media, those that are currently digital and those that are about to be digital. Integrate them all. Test and improve the mix. Work to report on them all in one paid, owned, earned dashboard. Push the edge of digitalization. Try to humanize and civilize the frontier as well. Approach social from the advertisers perspective, from the public relations professionals perspective, from the digital and direct marketers perspective and from the social promoters perspective, without ever forgetting the members of the social communities we inhabit. Be a pioneer. Attract the next innovation and then next. Stay foolish, and hungry. Youll find it a lot more interesting on the edge. Kill Overthink Dead. Fast. Overthink kills momentum. Stupid momentum kills even faster. You can see why leaders get blocked. Stop that! The answer is beating in your chest and rumbling in your gut right now. Heck, I dont know if all this stuff about listening to your heart or feeling it in your gut is literal or a metaphor. Much has been written by scientists, spiritualists, philosophers and physiologists on this subject. But no one has written the final word. So, heres the @speed word: We started a new project with Tom Sosnoff, the founder of phenomenally successful electronic broker thinkorswim. We have a great kick-off meeting with his whole team of brilliant geeks, genius traders and some of the funniest people in Chicago. Afterward, he writes me this note: Ok, cool. My only words of wisdom - don't over-think this project, don't fuck it up! Thanks!! Now, get to work. Fail to Succeed.

As I write this, my hero Steve Jobs has just died. I never met him, but my life would not have been my life without him. Steve would settle for nothing less than trying to do insanely great things. Early on, lets face it, his ratio of great-to-insane things was quite a bit lower than it has been over the past decade. Why is this? Because while timing isnt the only thing, it is an absolute essential, and learning to predict the right time to attempt an innovation is not an art one learns quickly or easily, if at all. So, why not just have experienced managers and leaders, so we can cut down on the mistakes and failures? Because wed be cutting down on our successes as well. Only through a trial by fire does a Steve Jobs happen. The failures fuel the successes. Napoleon said, in French of course, Audacity! Audacity! Always Audacity! In my own advertising industry, agency founder Leo Burnett said, If we reach for the stars, at least we wont come up with a handful of dirt. Deal with Interruption. Manage Distraction. Choose! I know you think you do. But, if youre like almost everyone, most of your choices are choiceless. You do what you do, which is not anything like 100% of what you think you do. Im not just talking about average Joes and Janes. Im talking about managers and leaders, artists and inventors and CEOS too. Its the human condition. Some have called it the theory-in-action. And its habitual and unconscious. Since our results are largely the outcomes of our choices, your job is to become more aware, and more in control of your choices. Here are the best tools I know of for making better use of your ability to chose @ speed.

Craft your questions. Its not hard to find the smartest person in the room. Just listen for the best questions. Take time and care to develop your questions. Think about whats most important. Youll get better answers. And more importantly, youll get answers you can use. And think about using questions to create engagement in social and digital media. Questions are a great way to engage, and the answers can be surprising and valuable as well. Excavate your people theory. What do you believe about people? What do you think they work for? What motivates them? You have a people theory whether you know it or not. No one could long survive in society without some operating theory of what will work in interactions with other people. When I was in college, I interned at a psychiatric hospital on the acute care ward. People came in at their absolute craziest. Sometimes they were truly stark raving mad. But for the most part, these people were successful more than half of the time in navigating interactions with other people. On the other hand, even the most successful people dont have perfect social records. They misjudge people or themselves. They make mistakes. They too have people theories in action. A leader should be as conscious of his or her people theory as possible. Look for your patterns. Write stuff down. Question your assumptions. Its not easy, but its less painful than expensive mistakes. Keep a tight eye on rewards and punishments.

Its rare for a company to control all the incentives and disincentives for employees. In advertising agencies, you have titles, choice assignments, feared projects, recognition, salary, bonus, equity and other levers you can pull. But industry awards, write-ups in the trades, friends thinking your ad is cool, big offers from other agencies all of these are part of the employees reward system as well, and over these, you can exercise little or no control. Knowing this is the beginning of a strategy. Because if you understand what your employees are working for, then you can understand the limits of your own influence. And act accordingly, saving money, risk and frustration. Celebrate the Messenger. I dont shoot the messenger. Ever. When someone brings up bad news, raises a controversial subject, or just tells the ugly truth in a meeting, I go out of my way to praise the messenger right there and then. I want to make an example of them for everyone else. THIS is what Im looking for. Honesty. Openness. Realness. Challenge. If you dont do this, you will hear less and less of the truth. And then where will you be? Real Artists Ship. Steve Jobs I would say something clever here, but Im on deadline with this book, so Ill just let the masters words stand, and move on. Dont be better. Be different. We try to be good children. We have a report card of As and Bs and one C, and we focus on how to turn that C into a higher grade.

Whats wrong with us? Well, perhaps it starts with that question, Whats wrong with us. A better question is whats different about us? And who can that matter to and how? The stone cold marketing fact is that it works much better to be different than to be better. Would you rather be The Ground Round or Hooters, assuming business success were you key criteria. Lets face it, there are a lot of restaurants offering greasy fries, dark dcor and lots of undercooked beef. But how many mammary-themed family restaurant chains are there? Different is memorable. Different is less expensive. Different is much more effective. The Ground Round went into bankruptcy in 2006, and the surviving franchisees took over from the dead center. But they didnt try to do it different, they just tried to do it better. A 2006 trade journal article lauds their initial success in building locations from 60 to over 80. Today, they stand at about 30 locations. Their commercials promise good tasting food and point out that the atmosphere is never boring. But the boring commercials undermine that claim. Meanwhile Hooters is fast becoming a global legend with nearly a thousand locations. Are they better? Prosperity has allowed them to execute better, yes. But, they only gained that prosperity by being different. And of course, not merely different, but different in a way that uniquely appeals to a target audience worth winning. The money we waste in noble and foolhardy attempts to be better is appalling. First offer a definably different experience. Then get better at being different. Thats what people want. And thats what pays. JetBlue has kept me sitting on the tarmac for a total of 12 hours over just two flights. Yet, they still get a fair percentage of my business. I like the different attitude which has admittedly acquired a bit of a dark side I like the different (leather) seats, the direct TV, and the egalitarian atmosphere of one class of passenger from the front to the back of the plane.

JetBlue isnt better at everything. But they are still wonderfully different. But how long will that last? Recently, I upgraded within a JetBlue flight to seats with a bit more legroom. The seats around me were empty, but when people from the cheaper seats tried to move up, the crew hectored them to go back to their seats. I got to enjoy listening to them talk about idiots like me who would pay for such a thing. I fear JetBlue is bleeding away at their difference with a thousand small cuts. Turn back JetBlue, before its too late. This is a message of love from a true brand advocate. Make clutter your friend. Its mind-numbing, isnt it? All these messages. All these screens flashing us. All these friends and followers. Consider using the following tools to make clutter your friend: Bias Toward Action. Capture, delegate and execute action steps. Im told that Harvey Weinstein has two assistants that follow him everywhere and capture every single action step from every meeting and conversation. Then they go down those lists and check of actions until they are all completed. Every day. Harvey has achieved some miraculous things. A lot of miraculous things. In fact the list of things hes produced on the Internet Movie Database includes 239 titles! And theres a lot of very good stuff here. In fact, youve got to see it so here goes: Kill Bill: Vol. 3 (producer) (announced) 2012 Django Unchained (executive producer, producer) (pre-production) 2012 Halloween III (executive producer) (pre-production)

2012 The Amityville Horror: The Lost Tapes (executive producer) (preproduction) 2011 Project Accessory (TV series) (executive producer) (pre-production) 2012 uwantme2killhim? (executive producer) (filming) 2004-2011 Project Runway (TV series) (executive producer - 101 episodes) Tim Gunn: Behind the Seams of Season 9 (2011) (executive producer) Finale Part Two (2011) (executive producer) Finale Part One (2011) (executive producer) The Finale Challenge (2011) (executive producer) This Is for the Birds (2011) (executive producer) See all 101 episodes 2011 After the Runway (TV series) (executive producer - 4 episodes) Tying Up the Loose Ends (2011) (executive producer) Designers in Stitches (2011) (executive producer) Let's Hear it for the Girls (2011) (executive producer) Project Drama (2011) (executive producer) 2011 My Week with Marilyn (producer) 2011 I Don't Know How She Does It (executive producer) 2011 Spy Kids: All the Time in the World in 4D (executive producer) 2011 Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil (executive producer) 2011 Scream 4 (executive producer) 2011 Mob Wives (TV series) (executive producer) 2010 The Fighter (executive producer) 2010 All Good Things (executive producer) 2010 The King's Speech (executive producer)

2010 Piranha (executive producer) 2010 Shanghai (executive producer) 2010 Hey Watch This (video documentary) (executive producer) 2009-2010 Models of the Runway (TV series) (executive producer - 25 episodes) Second Chances (2010) (executive producer) Should I Stay or Should I Go (2010) (executive producer) To Pick Me or Not to Pick Me (2010) (executive producer) It's a Hairy Situation (2010) (executive producer) Hard to Wear (2010) (executive producer) See all 25 episodes 2009/I Hurricane Season (executive producer) 2009 Nine (producer) 2009 Nowhere Boy (co-executive producer) 2009 The Janky Promoters (executive producer) 2009 Youth in Revolt (executive producer) 2009 Capitalism: A Love Story (documentary) (executive producer) 2009 Halloween II (executive producer) 2009 Inglourious Basterds (executive producer) 2008-2009 The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (TV series) (executive producer - 2 episodes) The Big Bonanza (2009) (executive producer) The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (2008) (executive producer) 2009 Crossing Over (executive producer) 2009 Feast III: The Happy Finish (video) (executive producer)

2008 The Reader (executive producer) 2008 The Nutty Professor (video) (producer) 2008 Pulse 3 (video) (executive producer) 2008 Killshot (executive producer) 2008 Soul Men (executive producer) 2008 The Meerkats (documentary) (executive producer) 2008 Pulse 2: Afterlife (video) (executive producer) 2008 Feast II: Sloppy Seconds (video) (executive producer) 2008 Zack and Miri Make a Porno (executive producer) 2008 The Longshots (executive producer) 2008 Unstable Fables: 3 Pigs & a Baby (executive producer) 2008 Superhero Movie (executive producer) 2008 The Promotion (executive producer) 2008 Rambo (executive producer) 2008 Hell Ride (executive producer) 2008 Fanboys (executive producer) 2007 The Great Debaters (executive producer) 2007 Awake (executive producer) 2007/I The Mist (executive producer) 2007 Rogue (executive producer) 2007 Halloween (executive producer) 2007 The Nanny Diaries (executive producer) 2007 Who's Your Caddy? (executive producer) 2007 Planet Terror (executive producer) 2007 1408 (executive producer)

2007 Death Proof (executive producer) 2007 Sicko (documentary) (executive producer) 2007 The Last Legion (executive producer) 2007 Grindhouse (executive producer) 2006 Factory Girl (executive producer) 2006 Miss Potter (executive producer) 2006 School for Scoundrels (executive producer) 2006 Breaking and Entering (executive producer) 2006/I Pulse (executive producer) 2006 Clerks II (executive producer) 2006 Scary Movie 4 (executive producer) 2006 Project Jay (TV documentary) (executive producer) 2006 Project Catwalk (TV series documentary) (executive producer) 2005/I Derailed (executive producer) 2005 Curandero (executive producer) 2005 Feast (executive producer) 2005 Venom (executive producer) 2005 The Prophecy: Forsaken (video) (executive producer) 2005 Proof (executive producer) 2005 Underclassman (executive producer) 2005 The Brothers Grimm (executive producer) 2005 An Unfinished Life (executive producer) 2005 The Great Raid (executive producer) 2005 Dracula III: Legacy (video) (executive producer) 2005 The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl 3-D (executive producer)

2005 Sin City (executive producer) 2005 Cursed (executive producer) 2004 The Aviator (executive producer) 2004 Chestnut: Hero of Central Park (executive producer) 2004 Shall We Dance (executive producer) 2004 Finding Neverland (executive producer) 2004 Fahrenheit 9/11 (documentary) (executive producer) 2004 Paper Clips (documentary) (executive producer) 2004 Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (executive producer) 2004 Ella Enchanted (executive producer) 2004 Jersey Girl (executive producer) 2004 The I Inside (executive producer) 2004 Mindhunters (co-executive producer) 2003 Cold Mountain (executive producer) 2003 The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (executive producer) 2003 Bad Santa (co-executive producer) 2003 Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (co-producer uncredited) 2003 Scary Movie 3 (executive producer) 2003 Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (executive producer) 2003 Duplex (executive producer) 2003 The Human Stain (executive producer) 2003 My Boss's Daughter (executive producer) 2003 Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over (executive producer) 2003 Ice Bound (TV movie) (executive producer)

2003 Project Greenlight 2 (TV series) (executive producer) 2002 Chicago (executive producer) 2002 Gangs of New York (producer) 2002 Equilibrium (executive producer) 2002 The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (executive producer) 2002 Waking Up in Reno (executive producer) 2002 Below (executive producer) 2002 Darkness (executive producer) 2002 Tokyo Pig (TV series) (executive producer) 2002 Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams (executive producer) 2002 Full Frontal (executive producer) 2002 Halloween: Resurrection (co-executive producer) 2002 Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (executive producer) 2002 Glory Days (TV series) (executive producer - 9 episodes) Clowning Glory (2002) (executive producer) No Guts, No Glory (2002) (executive producer) There Goes the Neighborhood (2002) (executive producer) Everybody Loves Rudy (2002) (executive producer) The Lost Girls (2002) (executive producer) See all 9 episodes 2001-2002 Project Greenlight (TV series) (executive producer - 12 episodes) Episode #1.12 (2002) (executive producer) Tragic Hour (2002) (executive producer) Getting the Footage You Need (2002) (executive producer)

 The Juggling Act of a Director (2002) (executive producer) No Guarantees (2002) (executive producer) See all 12 episodes 2002/I Heaven (executive producer) 2002 Only the Strong Survive (documentary) (executive producer) 2001 Kate & Leopold (executive producer) 2001 The Shipping News (executive producer) 2001/I Iris (executive producer) 2001 The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (executive producer) 2001 Impostor (co-executive producer) 2001 Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (executive producer) 2001 Zu Warriors (executive producer) 2001 The Others (executive producer) 2001 Mimic 2 (video) (executive producer) 2001 Scary Movie 2 (executive producer) 2001 Daddy and Them (executive producer) 2001 Texas Rangers (executive producer) 2001 Spy Kids (executive producer) 2000-2001 Clerks (TV series) (executive producer - 6 episodes) Dante and Randal and Jay and Silent Bob and a Bunch of New Characters and Lando Take Part in a Whole Bunch of Movie Parodies... (2001) (executive producer) Leonardo Is Caught in the Grip of an Outbreak of Randal's Imagination and Patrick Swayze Either Does or Doesn't Work in the New Pet Store (2001) (executive producer)

 Leonardo Leonardo Returns and Dante Has an Important Decision to Make (2001) (executive producer) The Last Episode Ever (2001) (executive producer) The Clipshow Wherein Dante and Randal Are Locked in the Freezer and Remember Some of the Great Moments in Their Lives (2000) (executive producer) See all 6 episodes 2000 Dracula 2000 (executive producer) 2000 Chocolat (executive producer) 2000 Bounce (executive producer) 2000 Malna (producer) 2000 Backstage (documentary) (executive producer) 2000 Highlander: Endgame (executive producer) 2000 Scary Movie (executive producer) 2000 Boys and Girls (executive producer) 2000 Takedown (executive producer) 2000 The Prophecy 3: The Ascent (video) (executive producer) 2000 Reindeer Games (executive producer) 2000 Love's Labour's Lost (executive producer) 2000 Scream 3 (executive producer) 2000 About Adam (executive producer) 2000 The Crow: Salvation (executive producer) 2000 Committed (executive producer) 2000 Down to You (executive producer) 1999 The Yards (executive producer) 1999 Wasteland (TV series) (executive producer)

1999 The Cider House Rules (executive producer) 1999 Music of the Heart (executive producer) 1999 Holy Smoke (executive producer) 1999 Mansfield Park (executive producer) 1999 In Too Deep (executive producer) 1999 Outside Providence (executive producer) 1999 Teaching Mrs. Tingle (executive producer) 1999 My Life So Far (executive producer) 1999 She's All That (executive producer) 1999 Guinevere (executive producer) 1999 Allied Forces (executive producer) 1998 Playing by Heart (executive producer) 1998 Shakespeare in Love (producer) 1998 The Faculty (executive producer) 1998 B. Monkey (co-executive producer) 1998 Talk of Angels (executive producer) 1998 Little Voice (co-executive producer) 1998 Rounders (executive producer) 1998 Heaven (executive producer) 1998 54 (executive producer) 1998 Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (co-executive producer) 1998 The Mighty (executive producer) 1998 Velvet Goldmine (executive producer) 1998 Since You've Been Gone (TV movie) (executive producer) 1998 Ride (executive producer)

1998 Wide Awake (executive producer) 1998 Senseless (executive producer) 1998 Phantoms (executive producer) 1998 A Price Above Rubies (executive producer) 1998 The Prophecy II (video) (executive producer) 1997 Jackie Brown (executive producer) 1997 Scream 2 (executive producer) 1997 Good Will Hunting (executive producer) 1997 The Wings of the Dove (executive producer) 1997 Mimic (co-executive producer) 1997 Cop Land (executive producer) 1997 Air Bud (executive producer) 1997 Robinson Crusoe (executive producer) 1997 Addicted to Love (executive producer) 1997 She's So Lovely (co-executive producer) 1997 Nightwatch (executive producer) 1996/I Scream (executive producer) 1996 I'm Crazy About Iris Blond (executive producer) 1996 Victory (co-executive producer) 1996 Wishful Thinking (executive producer) 1996 The Last of the High Kings (co-executive producer) 1996 The English Patient (executive producer) 1996 The Crow: City of Angels (executive producer) 1996 I Love You, I Love You Not (executive producer) 1996 Emma (executive producer)

1996 The Pallbearer (executive producer) 1996 Flirting with Disaster (executive producer) 1996 Beautiful Girls (executive producer) 1996 Jane Eyre (co-executive producer) 1995 Restoration (co-producer) 1995 The Journey of August King (executive producer) 1995 A Month by the Lake (executive producer) 1995 The Crossing Guard (executive producer) 1995 Smoke (executive producer) 1995 Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead (executive producer) 1995 The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill But Came Down a Mountain (executive producer) 1995 Blue in the Face (executive producer) 1994 Prt--Porter (executive producer) 1994 Pulp Fiction (co-executive producer) 1994 The Road Killers (executive producer) 1994 Mother's Boys (executive producer) 1993 The Advocate (executive producer) 1993 True Romance (executive producer) 1993 The Night We Never Met (executive producer) 1993 Map of the Human Heart (executive producer) 1993 Benefit of the Doubt (executive producer) 1992 Into the West (co-executive producer) 1992 Dust Devil (co-executive producer) 1991 The Pope Must Diet (executive producer)

1990 Crossing the Line (co-executive producer) 1990 Hardware (executive producer) 1990 Strike It Rich (executive producer) 1989 The Lemon Sisters (co-executive producer) 1989 Scandal (co-executive producer) 1986 Playing for Keeps (producer) 1985 Deep End (documentary) (producer) 1982 The Secret Policeman's Other Ball (documentary) (producer) 1981 The Burning (producer) And these are just the movies and television shows hes produced. Not the companies and deals, just the product. This guy is a Producer with a capital P. If you want to have impact, then take a page from Harvey and seek out action steps like a shark. Write them down, and then kill every last one of them like Uma Thurman in Kill Bill. Its a mobile future. The Mobile-Centered world is coming. So start now. The growth of mobile usage will knock you out of your chair. Just think of it. Every stream of communication, commerce, payments, incentives all of it converging on one device that is everywhere the user is! Weve already started to experience the ways that a mobile-centered world can upend successful business models and create entirely new industries with new winners. Read all you can about this. Register at digital@speed.com, and well send you mobile@speed as soon as its ready. Think in tribes.

If you need to understand and connect with people quickly, think tribally. Everyone comes from somewhere, and often from multiple somewheres. Those places schools, industries, departments, companies, clubs, states, countries have cultures and languages all their own. So knowing the tribe can be the key to truly understanding the individual. When a Playboy person says sexy thats quite a different thing indeed than when a Victorias Secret person says sexy and it different still than when a Whole Foods person says sexy. Also realize that other people think in tribes. Oh, hes HBS (Harvard Business School). Or, Shes Wharton. Classic P&G marketer. Know that you will be judged by your presumed tribe and make it work for you. Tribes Youll Meet In A Digital World. Direct Marketers, Web 1.0s, Web 2.0s and Born Mobiles. If you want to get Digital@speed, this quick essential guide to the tribes youll meet can serve as you crib sheet. Before Web 1.0 the Dot Com Boom of the late 90s direct marketing was a booming industry. Each era of technology development was accompanied by a marketing boom. Pre: 70s: Mass media era mass marketing boom. 70s: Mainframe and mini-computers direct mail and early database marketing 80s: Personal Computing, 800 numbers direct response marketing boom 90s: Networked Computing web 1.0 dot come boom 2000s: Mobile Computing

The Direct Marketer tribe was booming before Web 1.0. Data geeks, left brain thinkers, behaviorists and pre-Freakonomics behavioral economists, direct marketers viewed the unmeasured, imprecise, cool club of general advertising as the enemy. The big advertising agencies had all the cache while the direct agencies were increasingly paying for it all. Direct marketing was about selling, offering, testing, measuring and declaring controls (winners) based on hard numbers. Then came the Internet and some direct marketers saw that their time had come. But not so soon. Web 1.0 was driven by a new generation with no experience and little interest in the tools of direct marketing. Tech geeks and young entrepreneurs who saw a new world in which experience was a misleading negative and old dogs would be slow to learn new tricks brought a surfing and browsing mentality to ecommerce. Keep the friction low and let them go, do and see what they want to do. If they want to buy, theyll buy. If they want to register, theyll register. Selling was a dirty word, but awareness building was huge. These early dot coms frustrated direct marketers by doing very little to make the most of their customer relationships, but they delighted ad agencies by spending the better part of the hundreds of millions they were able to raise on awareness building advertising campaigns. Of course, some of the most successful firms of that era the rare few bridged the gap between the Direct Marketing Tribe and the Web 1.O tribe. AOL, which bridged the gap, started as a direct marketing membership organization and became a Web 1.0 success. Seth Godin, a direct marketer who became and early digital marketer asXXX at AOL authored a prescient book on direct marketing in a digital world in 1999 called Permission Marketing. The current craze for flash sale sites, for example, is a perfect example of permission marketing at its intrepid best. Permission marketing is the privilege (not the right) of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who actually want to get them. It recognizes the new power of the best consumers to ignore marketing. It realizes that treating people with respect is the best

way to earn their attention. Pay attention is a key phrase here, because permission marketers understand that. Ideas That Speed Things Up. Nothing is more powerful than the right idea at the right time. Here are some of the most useful ideas for moving things forward. Positioning. Popularized by Jack Trout and Al Ries in the 70s, the concept of Positioning revolutionized the brand building and advertising businesses. It has also been broadly misunderstood and the challenges of its application have still not been adequately worked out. The position is the place in the mind that the brand owns. This is highly abstract thinking, delivered in a hardened-reality sort of tone. Whos mind? The mind of the audience. But they are many minds, no? Not for our purposes. For our purposes, we must generalize. There is a mind, and you want to get into it first. Being the first dancing tree isnt enough. You need to be the first dancing tree in the mind of the consumer. If another brand is already the first, well then you cant be. You need to be different, or your just noise. So, you can be the tango tree. Or the ballet tree. Maybe youre the dancing evergreen. It all works very well in a backward-looking explanatory way. And it can be a bit tautological. By definition, the category leader is the one that got into the mind first. Of course, companies have had the tendency to define themselves by categories that they can be first in. Trout & Ries would encourage that, while many others would not. If Apple was the first in the desktop computer category, then IBM became the leader in the PC category. Then Dell and Gateway rose to prominence through the direct channel. Trout & Ries might say that these two companies fought for ownership of the Direct PC position and that Gateway erred when they opened Gateway stores and diluted their positioning, then Dell won.

Im not so sure. Positioning is at its most useful in the supermarket, where all the products are in categories on the shelves and must compete on this somewhat even playing field. What Gateway and Dell showed in PCs and what Enterprise proved in rental cars is that changing the game can create a strategic advantage that builds business to the point where the brand can afford to be positioned. The Blue Ocean is a concept that can help make that happen. The Blue Ocean. Blue Ocean Strategy is the title of a business book by W. Chan Kim and Rene Mauborgne. The book explains how and why business leaders should seek new customers in fresh and uncontested markets rather than compete in old, defined and contested markets. The definition of the world markets is a rather nuanced one here. Lets take our example of Hooters again. Lets say you run a hamburger chain. Youre not McDonalds, so youre not the first and your likely not the leader either. Youre not Burger King (more flexible and accommodating) or Wendys (more substantial). Burger Chains deliver on a known desire for fast, tasty, high calorie to dollar ratio foods in family-friendly environments. So, if youre running one of those too, then youre in a Red Ocean. Its red from the blood from all the competing sharks tearing each other apart, I suppose. To swim out to a blue ocean is not to open a deli, with good prices, a wonderfully comprehensive menu and cheap and cheerful service. You would be smack dab in the middle of another blue ocean if you did that. So what if you kept the burgers, fries and fast, but shifted the family atmosphere to mean not parents and young kids but teens, college students and adults, and what if you added something else cheap and cheerful sexy waitresses with underperforming upper wear? Well, what you would have there is a Blue Ocean Strategy.

Here we have another theory that has been criticized descriptive rather than prescriptive in its value, though at least one company, Nintendo, has claimed to achieve successful product innovations using this model. I personally find the Blue Ocean Strategy process and great shortcut to the thinking that can come to underlay a successful positioning strategy. By charting out the givens of the value propositions within a known category the Red Ocean you have the basis for innovation. You have your Not This. Now, where do you go to know what to change? I say go to customers, not to ask them what they want but to stalk and study them and feed the creative engine. Got to technology to see whats possible now that just wasnt before. Go to creativity and absurdity and consider what most people wont. My Blue Ocean Strategy. Heres why is this whole descriptive vs. prescriptive issue is worth our time here. Because often the Blue Oceans are blue for a reason. Its just possible that nothing much can live there. There are many successful fast-food places, but the food all tastes more or less the same. What about a Shit-Themed Fast Food Restaurant?! Who is serving people who want to eat food that tastes like shit, but who have limited time and money? Now thats a Blue Ocean Strategy too. But Im going to guess its going to fail. Just like most innovations that seemed a lot more likely to succeed at the time. One thing seems clear when you take a broad view of market success. There is a great deal of innovation. And most of it ultimately fails. When something succeeds wildly, it is copied. Which is how you get to be the leader of a category, the first into the mind. That level of success looks like the implementation of a Blue Ocean Strategy as well.

Many rental car companies have failed. Lets try cheaper. Lets try nicer cars. Lets try simpler terms. Enterprise said, Lets try town not airport. Well pick you up and drop you off. This worked really well. Enterprise is a Blue Ocean and Positioning success. A difference that worked. Ultimately, you need to assume a degree of failure and test your way into a difference that works. Then buy an island in a blue ocean and enjoy. Thats my blue ocean strategy. Brand Direct (or Brand Response) Marketing Challenging traditional retail industries with the direct model has been a royal road to riches at least since Sears wrote his first catalogue over a century ago. Of course, every category has its problems to solve. For Sears it was, How do we get it there? The answer was the U.S. Mail service, and the problem was solved so well that the Sears Catalogue sold deliverable houses! For computers, it was, But there are so many choices. The answer was great telemarketers and great phone support. Dell and Gateway thrived. Later, the Internet made things a bit easier. In insurance, the challenge was trusting someone whose hand you couldnt shake. Branding, advertising and savings was the answer. Geico and Progressive cashed in. In eyewear, it was, How can you know how youll look in them? Technology solved that problem with virtual try-ons. Check out EyeFly. Shoes were the limit. You needed to try on shoes. You needed to walk around in them and see how they feel. How are you going to buy that direct? Well, Zappos worked that out. Free shipping both ways took the cost out of trying on the shoes. Advances in fitting took some of the cost

out of free shipping both ways. And outstanding customer service promoted trust in this novel system. Weve learned a lot working for direct model businesses. Weve learned, for example, that unless your budget tends toward infinite, you dont want to divide your advertising into categories of brand and direct. Instead you want brand direct (or brand response) advertising that builds the brand while it sells. If a Starbucks store can build the Starbucks brand while it sells Starbucks coffee, then your advertising in whatever medium can do the same. From a branding point of view, this kind of advertising is about understanding the experience you want the user to have of the brand, and then delivering it. From a direct point of view, its about developing, vetting and testing theories of response. In short, why will people respond to this more than they might to something else. What causes people to engage? Curiosity, doubt, lust, fear, greed, hunger, to prove something to themselves, to complete something that left unresolved, to master something that responds there are so many. Which will work best for this target audience in this medium at this time? Thats the art of direct response creativity. The Enemy We are nice and we dont like the concept of enemies. We love our competition. We hope they learn a lot from our success. But the concept of the Enemy is an incredibly useful shortcut in building a team, a brand and a business. Not just who or what are we for, but who or what are we against. JetBlue was against the idea that everyone on a plane cant experience a little luxury. Crunch was against the idea that the gyms were grim places for certain kinds of people and not for others. Snapple was the alternative to soft drinks from big corporations.

We think midsized growth companies hiring big, bloated agencies is a travesty. If they are formal, slow, expensive, pitch with the A-Team and deliver the B-Team, then were determined to remain the opposite. The Competition The competition is not necessarily the enemy, and its not necessarily the category either. With Doug Levine, we decided that Crunch Fitness was more an entertainment choice than a gym. The competition was bars and TV. Because they didnt see it that way, we were able to advertise cheaply and effectively on the competition. It worked! Southwest competition was driving there! Smart. Their enemy was a lack of freedom to travel. Define your competition the way everyone else in the category does and youre in the category, which is the same is being in the soup. Lost. Define your competition around the choices that your customer or prospect is really making, and youve got the basis of a winning strategy. The Only: In his wonderful book, ZAG! The Number One Strategy of High- Performance Brands, Marty Neumeier suggests that every brand define its only by answering What? How? Who? Why? And When? Heres an example of how this works for Digital@SPEED. WHAT MAKES US THE ONLY? WHAT: The ONLY book and digital resource HOW: with zero patience for anything but successful adaptations to the digital world WHO: for ambitious people in a hurry WHERE: around the world WHY: who want no-nonsense short cuts to success

WHEN: in an era of full-on digital revolution. Influential Steve Jobs, and the one that got away. Marty Staff, our client at Joseph Abboud, told us about a call hed received from Steven Jobs, the CEO of Apple. Martys company had their flagship store in a prime location in New York City, and Steve was looking for the perfect spot for the first New York City Apple Store. And

heres the first interesting thing: Jobs didnt want Joseph Abbouds store, he wanted the store next door. But his design scheme envisioned using half of Joseph Abbouds storefront for his super-amazing Apple Store sign. Jobs decided that this was something that he must have for Apple. If he couldnt get it, then the whole plan wouldnt work for him. It was all or nothing. So the CEO himself gets on the phone to talk to CEO Staff. What ensued was a two-hour sellathon during which Jobs tried everything in his bag of tricks to get Marty to give up the storefront to Apple. He spent a good part of the time on how perfect the new sign would look! At the end of the call, Marty wouldnt and couldnt give up half his valuable storefront, but he came away impressed by Jobs salesmanship and commitment. The man would not give up. He wanted the best for Apple and he would do what he needed to do to get it. Successful salespeople fail more. This is precisely because they pitch more. They push themselves into situations only a great salesperson can close. Thats why real sales professionals scoff at order takers. Anyone can take an order. Selling a difficult prospect is something to take pride in. There are, of course, other ways to think about it. High Probability Selling takes the opposite attitude. The world is full of prospects. So you make sure youre only spending time and breath on people who are definitely in the market for the solution youre selling. Selling at speed which is a core competency you need if youre growing a mid-sized business -- means deciding which approach to take in real time. When, as in the case of the Apple/Joseph Abboud Store, there is only one in the world, youve got to go for it. Turning a low probability sale into a sale is what its all about. You dont need too many of those to be a legend. For the rest, remember that marketing is there to reduce the need for selling. Reduce, not eliminate. Selling will always be essential. But when you have the right people, the right product, and the right offer at the right time, sales pros can focus. And order takers can do their thing too.

What comes first, belief or behavior? A lot of marketers (and a lot of people) think its perfectly obvious: belief comes first. I voted for Soandso because I believe in her policies. Or I buy this because I believe its better. Well, theres reason to turn this whole paradigm on its head. People believe what they do. People are, in fact, more influenced by what they themselves do than they are by what others do, say, show or play. We just dont like to think so. We like to think that we gain information and then make rational decisions in our heads, then delegate the follow up to our bodies. In fact, what our eyes see our hands doing has a great effect. And this effect has been experimentally proven. Learn from Television Preachers. Word of Christ! Send money. I have actually heard a huckster by the name of Robert Tilton say that many times. God I love to watch him. Im endlessly entertained by his tacky sets, his Texas twang, his biblical lessons interrupted by alien-invasion-like attacks of speaking in tongues followed by the inevitable translation of Gods will into a call for more money. It doesnt matter if you dont have it! God will bless you all the more! I heard from a man who was sleeping in his car in the church parking lot! This dear man could not afford a better place to live! He sent in his last $150 dollars! And GOD BLESSED HIM tenfold with a $1500 inheritance!!! He had faith! Send money!! I watch the golden voiced preachers fill churches that grow to the size of stadium arenas. I once traveled to Lynchburg, Virginia just to see Jerry Falwell, who had the demeanor and attire of a chairman of the board, preach at his own church there. Was I appalled by some of what I heard there that day? Absolutely! I counted on it.

But I am in love with the power of storytelling, and I heard some unforgettable stories, albeit with questionable morals, told that day. There was, for example, the story of a family during the Great Depression that had fallen on very hard times. Faithful, churchgoing people. But they were starving. Literally starving. Things got so bad that the father called his family together and said in a weak but firm voice, If I die, do not tell a soul that I starved to death. You say that I fell ill. We cant allow people to believe that God would allow a Christian to starve. Yes, Falwell really told this story. And he followed up to make sure the moral was clear if youre loyal to God, you lie for him. Non-Christians dont need to know the truth about the way God looks after his flock. I wasnt buying, but I was surrounded by 5000 people and a TV audience that were. The Chairman was a masterful storyteller. He was a controversial one as well. The church itself was a state-of-the- art television studio. I coveted the Bosendorfer piano on the alter. The lead-lined pulpit had a bullet hole in it. I was able to put my fingers into the wound. Heavily armed guards acted as ushers at the entrance. This was the center of a battle. Emotions ran high on both sides of the barracades. Such is the power of stories. Learn from Squidoo. Marketing genius Seth Godin founded Squidoo. This in itself is not a guarantee of success. Godin has founded many things, and quite a few of them didnt work out, as he freely admits in his own bio. Id bet on Squidoo. It has more than the spark that Godin brings to everything he does. It operates as the intersection of several trends that put together a compelling engagement model that is also a likely business model. This is rare. On Squidoo, people put up their own lenses. A lens is basically a web page or site, that is the owners view of a situation. You could do a lens about your love of a certain breed of dog. Or you could do one about a kind of chili you live. A recent Lens of the week winner was about a mans childhood memories from the 1940.

Anyone can put up and maintain as many lenses as they want. In this sense, Squidoo is not unlike Wordpress, Flickr and other similar sites. But, theres an added incentive and focus for Squidoo lenses money. When theres interaction and advertising revenue from your Squidoo lenses, Squidoo splits that revenue between Squidoo, charity and you. People who play the game well can make some real money. All of us can learn from the thinking that went into Squidoo. Learn from Wikipedia. People will work hard even when theres no money and little credit involved, if the challenge and subject matter moves them. Thousands of volunteers around the world can keep an encyclopedia up to date and accurate enough to be incredibly useful without a great deal of hierarchy. All of this can be led with a relatively small team paid for by donations, not advertising or commerce. The resulting content can lead search results in many categories and become a cornerstone of the web. Think Brand Response. "Brand Response" was coined by Steve Harrison, the former European Creative Director of OgilvyOne Worldwide. Brand response combines branding and direct response. Here's Steve's thoughts: "All marketing activity should proceed from a brand idea, and that every communication should reinforce the brand idea, while simultaneously driving response."

You can find out more in his book "How to Do Better Creative Work." Focus on Results. This isnt a book about making things happen faster. This is a book optimizing the path to results. You dont want faster fishing, you want more, bigger, better fish sooner. You dont want to see action, you want to enjoy results. You dont want busier farmers, you want a better yield. Nothing lasts forever. Windows of opportunity close. I love working with entrepreneurs, change agents and smart, aggressive senior management to grow world-changing organizations. A fact of life is that these same brilliant brands are too often sold to people who promptly screw them up or at least diminish them significantly. I love the brands I work on, so I typically walk out the door with the entrepreneur Ill stay if theres someone with passion and vision to work with. But, often, I just cant stand to hang around and watch a good thing go bad. Snapple. Crunch. Gateway. Just a few from a much longer list. I wouldnt trade these rides, working hand in hand with some of the greatest entrepreneurs of our time, for anything. It is from them that I learned much of what Im able to share in this book. Computers and Cowspots. Many people made small fortunes in the direct-to-consumer computer boom of the nineties and early 21s century. Unfortunately for many of those people, the small fortunes were made out of much larger fortunes. When we began working with Ted Waitt, founder of Gateway, his company and Michael Dells, founded in the same year, were just two of 7,500 PC direct marketers in a gold rush mentality.

But Ted wasnt just a savvy direct marketer, he was also a brilliant brand builder. He knew the shakeout was coming long before others realized it. While most people would just count their millions and feel brilliant, Ted had a small City to keep employed, so he had to peek around corners and try to see what was coming. Luckily for North Sioux City, South Dakota, Ted saw keenly and knew what to do. Hes the guy who said, We have to stand out in a way that anybody can see. Lets put cow spots on the boxes. What a brilliant, entrepreneurial, brand-driven growth move. Frugal, because Gateway already owned the boxes. They were what we call at DIGO, owned media. We counsel, beg and hector our clients not to miss the media right in front of them the touch-points they own. We used creative hangtags and sewn in labels for Joseph Abboud. We put men running in human-sized hamster wheels in the window of Crunch gyms. In the seatbacks of JetBlue planes, we placed Airplane Yoga and Flying Pilates cards. In the airport terminals, we hung punching bags labeled, Middle Seat and Missed Your Flight? Snapple got messages under their caps, and Vitamin Water used the labels of the bottles to tell a unique and charming story every time. What Ted did was transcend the limitations of the direct marketing tribe. He had a bigger vision. Its been my observation that whats great about human nature is that we can transcend our limitations. Whats perhaps not so great is that most people and companies dont. Marx saw history as proceeding from material conditions in a sort of a follow the money analysis. Its true that business model seems to determine the strengths and the limits of most businesses. But every day, I see history being made by precisely those leaders who are able to transcend those limitations. Of all the limiting factors, the greatest of all is probably YOU. Limitations. We all have them. And one of the greatest sucks on potential is that we dont know what they are. You want to hack into your own system, and see it for what it is. After that, writing yourself some new code gets a lot easier. So heres a tool for looking at the tribe that is your business and your industry. This, by the way, is what

leaders do. Innovation is what defines leaders and sets them apart from followers. So said Steve Jobs. Right again, Steve. Leaders look at their own prejudices and unconscious systems, and they drill in with better questions. Once they have freed their own minds, they use their new knowledge of the problem to open the minds of others. So, the world of followers is a Marxian world. People do as their business models dictate. They follow the money. They follow the system that makes the money flow. Unless and until the money stops flowing, they have predictable strengths and weakness. They are limited by their special relationship to the means of production. Leaders make all of that mechanistic thinking a lie. Leaders challenge the complacency of those who might ride the conveyor belt of life as predictable extensions of the machine. And by doing this, innovative mid-market growth companies are the primary scrubbing bubbles of capitalism. To help you quickly diagnose the situation you find yourself in, theres a list and descriptions of the common business models, all with their own ossified cultures or to an innovator like you, opportunities: The Direct Model In a direct model company, the advertising returns the majority of the operating revenues to the company. The company sells directly through its ads, or perhaps drives leads in this way to a sales force that closes inbound leads. Direct model managers often act is if they cannot accept a dollar of revenue if they cant track its source. Take the dollar! We are currently in the midst of a direct model revolution, which I have called Direct Model Boom 3.O., but you can call it the second digital direct boom. The first direct model revolution consisted of the credit and charge cards, banks, phone services, insurance, cable television, education, entertainment such as Columbia House (and before that the Columbia Record Club), Health & Beauty Aids and Clubs such as the

Erno Laszlo collection which I helped to build back at BBDO Direct in the late 80s. Driven by toll-free 800 numbers, the first powerful corporate databases, and thinkers such as Lester Wunderman, who coined the phrase Direct Marketing and iconic adman David Ogilvy who said, Direct Marketing was always my secret weapon and my first love, and by direct marketers that were so successful at building businesses they were able to build brands and service businesses so large they could not afford not to take advantage of the opportunities direct marketing afforded. American Express, Columbia House, The National Rifle Association, AT&T, local telephone. The Toll-Free 800 number had been invented and available to business for decades, but in the 80s advertisers finally figured out what they were for. While there were many, many fly-by-night propositions, and there always will be transient blips of companies that take advantage of fads or momentary luck without ever building a brand, the first Direct Model revolution spawned some great brands, such as American Express, Comcast and AT&T. I had the good fortune to work on all three. Giant direct marketing agencies grew up around these successes. Led by visionaries with scrappy, bright, capable leutenants, and armies of drone-like followers, direct agencies got no respect in the advertising community. They were simply full of the people who for reasons of ethnicity, public education, lack of connections, average looks or low rent accents were not welcomed at the cool club that was general advertising at the time. Direct agencies and direct marketing revenue powerfully outgrew traditional advertising revenue throughout the 80s (and beyond), so many of the people who were kept out of the big game got a lot richer in the new game. Direct Mail was the workhorse in this boom, and direct mail further turned off people who valued 30-second television spots as the pinnacle of an advertising creative career. Ultimately, these factories turned out forests full of white mail. An agency might send out a million white number 10 standard envelopes a month. Print ads, sometimes run in A/B split tests where the publisher would alternate two or more ads within the same print run of a publication,

were a secondary tactic, and some of these ads carried reply coupons as well as 800 numbers. Direct response television (DRTV) was a growing field as well. I was fortunate to be a young creative leader in the Y&R empire when Lester Wunderman was still the active leader of he eponious direct marketing agency, at the time Wunderman, Cato, Johnson, a Y and R agency. Wunderman was an intense, ingenious and driven competitor. The Judy Wrap. I was able to meet and have lunch with another advertising legend, Tom Messner, co-founder and chief of the juggernaut Messner, Vetere, Berger, McNamee Schmetterer who told me an interesting story. Lester Wunderman and his agency had pioneered DRTV and built subscriptions for Sports Illustrated with hardworking direct response television. After a few years of success, the client was more than happy with the results, but was hungry to test a more creative approach. Messner was able to convince the client to let MSVMs develop one cell of a three-cell test. This was just the opening Messner dreamed of for his relatively new agency. He and his team developed a classic of creative direct storytelling, involving a St. Bernard. Messners spot delivered the most subscriptions and won the test. The next year, Messner got two cells and Wunderman got one. Lester sprung into action, went into his office and came out an innovation in direct marketing, The Judy Wrap. Like the Bolcheviks who waited for the revolution to be affected, then seized government with a relatively small force, Wunderman cut Messners winning spot from sixty seconds down to about 45, then he shot a five second opening and ten second closing for his spot The Judy Wrap. The spot now opened with a pleasant looking woman, wearing a telephone headset and addressing the camera, Hi, Im Judy, she said, Youre about to see an important message. After this message, Ill be back with a special offer.

Then the cut down Messner spot played, and Judy came back to close the sale. When the test was deployed in market, Wundermans Judy Wrap spot won handily. A cynical person might view it as a Messner spot with a Wunderman coating. The typical advertising creative person wouldnt have a thing to do with it how unoriginal, You mean he just took the other agencys spot and put a beginning and ending on it that was just a talking head? But what it was, was a stroke of genius, an innovation in direct response television that prefigured the Home Shopping Network (HSN) and QVC. And in this situation, it was Checkmate. Messner Vetere never again did work for Sports Illustrated. Retail Model Retail model companies derive the bulk, of their revenue from purchases at stores. In the retail model, the emphasis is on next day retail sales. The stores represent a very large investment and often a large inventory of owned media. For example, Starbucks sees the experience the customers have in their stores as their primary advertising medium. Starbucks avoided virtually all advertising for years and today only used advertising in non-traditional ways that look more like public relations than traditional advertising. Its difficult to get a retailer to look beyond ideas that drive short-term sales spikes. The data flow in every single day and the nervous system of management is tied to the sales figures. If you want to sell a retailer anything, you need to first figure out how what youre selling ties to increasing next day sales. (Public retailers and comps). An entrepreneur, Jordan Zimmerman, has built one of the countrys largest ad agencies by promising what he calls Brandtailing. Zimmerman defines Brandtailing as the science of driving next day sales without undermining the brand. Zimmerman clearly knows this category and is putting his knowledge to work.

Sales Model Sales model companies derive the bulk of their revenue from a sales force. This could be an employed or freelance, in person, telephone or internet, commissioned or salaried, highly technical or not. In such a company, most of the marketing budget will go toward incentivizing the sales force. A goal of advertising will be to please the sales force, for example. Generating leads may be valued, but closing them in direct marketing fashion may be frowned upon, or worse. Many companies are sales model companies when small. This can lead to a significant crisis as these companies grow. To get to the next level, the company should be advertising, differentiating and building the brand, but this is often threatening to the sales culture of the company. Sales is also an extremely creative yet straightforward business. You cant motivate strategic or innovation teams the way you motivate salespeople. So, the managers of sales model companies often have difficulty transitioning to new roles managing more diverse teams. I had a client once who was charming and handsome and reasonably bright. It took me a while to realize that he walked into every meeting with our agency with exactly the same agenda, which was to sell us whatever it was he wanted to sell us that day. Of course, we had things we needed to sell him too. In order to achieve the things we were charged with achieving for this head of sales and marketing, we needed him to buy a strategy, buy a brand identity, buy some creative work, buy a media plan and at some points we thought we were doing pretty well. Sometimes he came into the meeting and what he wanted to sell us was the idea that he was buying what we were selling. But, the next meeting, his agenda might be to sell us on starting over. Always Be Closing. We thought we were in a conversation! It was a confusing, difficult situation. Over time, it began to dawn on me that his measure of a good meeting was one in which he made his sale, 100%, no compromise.

I reached out to some other folks who had dealt with him why didnt I do that at the beginning of the relationship? and what I heard confirmed my impression. The only thing left to do was to confront him with the disconnect between his management style and the goals that he had set for the team. Based on our experience, I wasnt very optimistic that he would abandon his sell or die approach. I didnt want to embarrass him, so I asked to meet him alone in his office. When the time came to meet, he insisted that another member of his team be in the room for the conversation. Of course, no matter what I tried, he could not be sold on doing the meeting one to one. I had a stern talk with myself before the meeting. I gave myself one rule: do not allow yourself to be sold anything but a real solution. If I was right and he was operating under an inflexible rule to sell or else, we would be two trains heading toward each other on the same track. There would be a collision, but at least the situation would be clear. I made my pitch for a different way of working together. For a moment, he appeared to listen, charming as always. But then he launched into his pitch, which today involved selling me on giving him back a relatively small amount of money which his marketing director had approved for research and which had already been spent. Of course he refused to even engage on the subject that he had agreed the meeting would be about and only wanted to focus on making this sale and gaining my agreement to return this money. Youve agreed to the research in writing and signed the contract. You have approved the expenditure and mailed the check. Youve driven the direction all over the map such that the research vendor has spent every dime and more in trying to please you. I will always be fair. But I am done with being more than fair here. I have nothing more to sell you. The six foot-four former Big Ten quarterback exploded out of his chair, and paced around the tight space of his small office, seemingly in a rage. That is outrageous. That is outrageous! Highway robbery is what it is. He went on like this, leaning in from time to time in an intimidating manner, then resuming his pacing and fuming, he threatened legal

action. The time this took from a few senior guys was more valuable than the small amount of money at issue. I saw this finally for what it was, one last attempt to save the sale through a temper tantrum. There is no doubt this guy was an off the charts successful salesman, but he was an impossibly bad manager. My job is to help my clients succeed. If I could give this client no other advantage, I would give him one final lesson. This was one sale he would have to remember failing to close. I cant say I didnt enjoy it. One of my favorite clients ever was a former investment banker. When we began working together, he had been a CEO for almost a decade, and had been an operator for much longer than that. We achieved amazing things in our partnership and made a lot of people rich in the process. The best piece of advice this great client ever gave me was to avoid working with former investment bankers in their first CEO positions. I have subsequently relearned this lesson through experience. Engagement Model Media companies. Today they are in the business of creating engagement. Typically they will then sell that engagement to advertisers or sponsors. They tend to be very small buyers of advertising because their own media footprint is so much larger than anything they can buy. The Economist is a notable example with a consistent and ambitious advertising campaign. The Economist has also become a very powerful global media brand that is able to charge a premium for content in a market where others have not been able to do the same. Coincidence? More like a confluence of high-value target audience, high- quality content, and very smart leadership. Engagement is your business. Study engagement model businesses. If you know media people, get to know them better. When you read your favorite blog or site or paper, read between the lines for what theyre doing to engage you.

Start today. Start right now. Ask yourself what keeps you reading. Should you even be doing this right now? If youve been bad, so much the better! Maybe your plan was to work or exercise or sleep, but instead youre doing this. No doubt at some point earlier in the day youve allowed some irresistible gossip with no redeeming values to divert you from the virtuous path youd laid for yourself. Terrific! How did they do that? What makes those headlines so addictive? Start right there. Right here. What pulls you in? What draws you deeper, holds you longer, keeps you coming back for more? Study, analyze and learn. Because were all in the engagement business now. We can build webs to catch our prospects. We can grow flowers to attract them. We can make sounds that seduce them. Today, the advertiser is a publisher as well, but thats just the beginning of it. We are engaged in conversations, many of them in public. This is not an option, as anyone can start the conversation and they dont need to ask our permission to do it. You will pay your way into other peoples content. But you will also build your own. The later will be essential to the effectiveness of the former. There isnt an answer for how to do this. There are options. And there is what has not yet been created. The important thing is to engage. Yourself. If you dont have a blog, start one. Write a little each day, and post. Get a feel for getting out there with your content. When you do, each day youll learn a little something. Youd discover a new tool. Youll receive feedback. It will either encourage or inform you. Either way, youd be richer for it. Take the word brief seriously. Ernest Hemingway is said to have created the shortest short story ever. Over lunch at the legendary Algonquin Round Table in New York City, Hemingway bet his writer friends he could write a compelling tale in

only six words. His lunch mates happily bet $10 each that he couldnt do it. Hemingway scribbled six words on a napkin, then passed it around. Each writer read the napkin and immediately conceded Hemingway had won. The six words: For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn. At DIGO we could say, Well get you to a better place and well get you there quicker. But we say, Higher standards. Shorter runways. So lets not ever make each other guess which part of a brief is the important part. Lets just include the important part. Lets make sure our briefs are simple, compelling and crystal clear. Nothing in an agency is more sacred. From The DIGO Standard. I like to think that its called a brief for a reason. This is not about minimalism or some fetish for curtness. Before a brief can be a tool for getting the right creative work or media thinking out of a team, a brief is a tool for getting thoughts focused. Focused thinking is elegant. An elegant solution is everything that is necessary to solve a problem, and not one thing more. Looking at it from the other directions, you want it as simple as possible, but no simpler. Think problem/solution. Question/answer. Stimulus/response. Just as listening well is essential to communicating effectively, defining the problem is essential to creating a solution. In fact, The Best Way to Improve a Solution Is To Improve the Problem. When I think back to my greatest successes, such as launching the AT&T Universal Card to such success that AT&Ts vaunted telephone operator system was crashed by the demand, its clear that my process starts and ends with a powerful imaginative empathy. I see and feel from the prospects point of view at every step of the process. But then I drill into it again and again with new questions. What if I think of it this way? What if I think about it that way? As a direct marketer trained under the disciplines of the old mail order and A/B split greats how one word changed can create an impact on response of hundreds of percentage points. This gives you a powerful sense of humility while it simultaneously shows you your potential power.

On the marriage of AT&T, at the time the nations long distance phone company, and a credit card, naturally everyone was focused on the way this card brought together two separate worlds phoning and purchasing for the first time. The general advertising was tagged, One World. One Card. My team and I had played extensively with this theme and it was well represented in some of our work, but I still felt there was room for something more powerful. This was an era of annual fees in credit cards, and stiffer competition had led to mailboxes full of credit card offers, many of them with fees waved for a year or more. The AT&T Universal Card would be launched with no annual fee. I pressed to see if AT&T would commit to an unprecedented no annual fee for life promise and they did! The team set off working on this and the following headline came across my desk First Things First. Its Free. Good, but not good enough, I thought, remembering the power that a word or two, more or less, could have. I added two words and an unbeatable control package was born, First Things First. Its Free for Life. So many people wanted the first free for life credit card that The AT& T Universal Card very quickly became one of the most widely held cards in the United States. And AT&T Universal Card Services went on to win a Malcolm Baldridge Award for Quality, the only national business award given by the President of the United States. I will always treasure my front page of the Wall Street Journal that reads, Success Overwhelms AT&T! thinkorswim came out of nowhere to become the cool club of retail stock trading. Appealing to options traders, thinkorswim had relatively few accounts when we met them just a few years ago, but they definitely had a brand. Found Tom Sosnoff, a lover of design and a natural promoter, saw to that. Tom liked to make money, and he realized he needed marketing to grow his business. Not only that, hed sold to Investools, LLC, the phenomenally successful trader education company, and was now the largest stockholder of thinkorswim Group, LLC. While

Tom remained the CEO of the broker, our client Lee Barba was the CEO of thinkorswim Group and of Investools. The merger had been predicated on the marketing potential of the combined entity. But Tom was skeptical of marketing and had blown the previous agency, the venerable Ogilvy, out after a few bad meetings. He wanted successful response advertising that continued to build the quirky and clubby thinkorswim brand. After meeting us, he said, I dont know if Ill like anything you do, but at least youre a real agency, so let me tell you about thinkorswim. Briefed, the first thing we went to work on was a banner campaign. Thinkorswim needed their first display ads more or less immediately or they would fail to seize the huge opportunity created by their higher post-merger profile. We dont believe in Idea Monogamy. In fact, we think its dangerous to fall in love with just one idea. The consumer is always in a position to compare. That was abundantly true even before the Internet. Today, the situation is just sped up and beefed up on search steroids. So, we plan to test. We expect to see a lot of ideas internally. Wed rather see more ideas, real ideas, in very rough shape cocktail napkins will do as early as possible, then a few really finished looking comps. We say, Well flush a polished turd just as fast. Lines are for crossing. I have a two-word cure for writers block: Write Shit. Perhaps you are thinking that this explains a lot well, thanks! If youre going to write the right stuff, you must first get writing. Intentionally writing horrible, awful, inappropriate stuff frees you up faster than anything. I believe in getting it wrong in the conference room so we can get it right in the marketplace. I believe in crossing the lines in our creative development and testing so that we can find out where the lines really are in our results.

Because, you know what? If theres one thing you can predict in direct response testing, its that no one can predict what will happen. I have succeeded by doing everything that can be done to increase the odds not just of success but of outsized, phenomenal, build a fortune success. Higher heights. Shorter runways! So, we cross lines. For thinkorswim, one of the lines was the one that separates attractive, seductive, likeable advertising from blunt, challenging, in-your-face taunting. This was a challenging brand. This was a brand that made you feel like you might not be able to make it in here. That you might not be smart or cool enough. I wanted to test capturing that in a banner, and I wanted to push it over the edge, to see how far we could go before it would break down. So, in our first banner test, we sprinkled a few really, really challenging banners. One even impugned the prospects Cajones. The fact is that this banner remains an unbeatable control over three years later, despite month after month of new challengers being deployed by new owners TD Ameritrade, and through radically differing marketing conditions, and even fairly dramatic shifts in the way the brand was presented. If the target is a bull, try waving a red flag in his face. Thats the kind of thinking that can be worth a fortune. Thinkorswim grew to over 70,000 accounts while we worked together, and they were the most valuable customers in the brokerage industry. Thinkorswim ultimately sold to TD Ameritrade for over $660 million dollars. E-Myth Worldwide is the preeminent coach and trainer to small business, and a very nice company. Founded by Michael Gerber, whose International bestseller, The E-Myth Revisited has become a classic, cited by every generation of business gurus since the late 70s, right up to The Four Hour Workweeks Timothy Ferris as one of the greats. E-

Myth lacked a marketing engine beyond the phenomenally successful book and one of the best consultative sales operations around. With the author aging, and showing some signs of competing with his own company, it became essential to launch a direct channel for lead generation STAT. It was clear to us rather quickly that E-Myth would own the positioning of The Owners Coach. Since E-Myth Worldwide and perhaps a handful of others had launched the coaching industry in the early eighties, the field had mushroomed until there were hundreds, perhaps thousands of competitors. But E-Myth remained uniquely focused on small business and consistent in seeing the owner as the key to both the trouble with and the potential of these enterprises. My business partner Lee Goldstein and I are long-term E-Myth clients, and weve learned so much about business through this incredible, real world, business education. E-Myth views large businesses as small businesses that worked. That perspective is usually a very productive one. In our talks with the E-Myths leaders, it became clear that a successful E-Myth client is one who is able to ultimately take responsibility for creating both the problems and the solutions of the business. An owner who cant see his or her consistently miserable results as the outcome of a consistently miserable system of the owners creation will rarely be able to change it. Typically, this doesnt come up in the invitation, but we decided to test that line in advertising by crossing it. Among a wide range of home page heroes we tested a chiseled plaque that read, You Are The Problem. Of all the heroes we tested, this one led a close race for click-through, but outperformed the next best by more than doubling conversions. What our client had noticed in the business that the best prospects were the ones who were willing to take responsibility turned out to be true in direct marketing. E-Myth has a new lead generation channel!

What kind of brief leads to such solutions? Well, a dynamic brief to be sure. It needs to be an ongoing conversation, not just a piece of paper. An evolving brief that continues to change even after its approved. Every time theres a good reason to do so. This will force you to keep the client engaged in the conversation. Ultimately, better work comes out of better conversations. Dont believe in the magic creative director that will singlehandedly transform the creative output of your shop or account. This person doesnt exist. Typically, the result of this kind of thinking is a kind of brilliance that cant be bought. It will tend to whither and die on the vine. If the geniuses are truly geniuses, they will notice that they are surrounded by frogs, and look for the next opportunity to make a hasty exit. Meanwhile, youve lost time, credibility and money. Probably worst of all, youve lost momentum. No, fortune-changing creativity is not the product of a single mind, any more than it is the product of a committee. Its the result of a community of minds, a culture. The culture includes everyone. If the accounting department uses the wrong word for everything, speaks or writes in bloated sentences with unnecessarily long words, the work will suffer. Perhaps you think Ive gone over the edge. Youre thinking thats not necessarily so. No, I stand by it. If the agencys invoices are not clear, crisp and well designed, if the receptionist tends to blather on, if the literature in the restroom is not vigorous the agencys work will suffer. Advertising works. We think it doesnt, at least not on ourselves. We discount it. We dismiss it. Like the invincible doctor, we think we are always the physician and never the patient. We fool ourselves. We believe our own advertising! Well, were wrong. The first step out of mediocrity (or through it if youre not quite there yet) is to realize that YOU, that we, that all of us, are almost infinitely suggestible. If we play on a better team, we will be better. If we write on a better-designed machine, well have better- designed thoughts. If our briefs are full of the sort of language that would never appear in a self-respecting ad, then the ad is going to suffer. If our briefs look like the products of a vast government bureaucracy, then our work will look like the worst class of propaganda poster, one

that serves one purpose and one purpose only to get bought by someone who had the power to say Yes. Good work is sophisticated. Great work is simple. So, we begin boring in with our simple questions. Why are we doing this? Why are we advertising? What is the problem? What is the opportunity? Who are we talking to? What do we know about them that will help? What single thought might change everything for us? What supports this thought? Can you show me with a bad ad? What are some ways in or other ideas we might consider? We get down to a single thought. We build our ad around that simple, single thought. Ive judged a few award shows. You see a lot of work. You realize what an accomplishment a campaign is. You have to get a lot of things right. Yet, the best campaigns got there by leaving things out. A wonderful discipline, and so very rare. The One Perspective That Drives Everything. There are a lot of decisions to make in building a brand or a business. And there are even more opinions about each of these decisions. Its easy to feel lost and to let that sense of indecision confound and delay you. There are fads, and trends and even moral arguments that seem absolutely imperative, at least in their time. Things change, people get bored*, and you can start to think that there are no eternal verities, that changing fashion is all there is and all there ever will be to advertising. Add to this the fact that different forces drive categories and industries at the various stages of their development. Clearly, there is no one answer, no single set of values, no approach that works best in every situation. Except this. We must do our best in all things to see it from the users point of view.

Communication, experience, expectation, satisfaction, engagement, response, loyalty all the things you care about as a marketer and brand builder are things that happen inside of the prospect or customer. We must do our best in all things to see it from the users point of view. The single quality that distinguishes the most successful writers, art directors, creative directors, designers, brand response problem solvers is an uncanny imaginative empathy for the prospects point of view. The Charming Party Crashers. Bill Jayme, perhaps the greatest junk mail copywriter of all time. Jayme himself didnt like the term direct mail as he saw his mailings as uninvited guests. If youre an uninvited guest, the first thing you say better be riveting. DO YOU CLOSE THE BATHROOM DOOR EVEN WHEN YOURE THE ONLY ONE HOME? This was his classic outer envelope that launched the magazine Psychology Today. THE BO$$$ DAUGHTER How To Keep From Having To Marry Her. In this classic package, Jayme argues that only two routes to business success remain, either learn how to use a computer or marry the bosses daughter. Celebrities COME SEE THEM BARE ALL. FREE. In People Magazine, celebrities really would bare all the details about their lives. "Your outer envelope is the come-on," said Jayme, "the dust jacket on the book, the display window outside the store, the hot pants on the hooker." "When something is free, say it six ways to Sunday," advised Jayme. "For example: 'Free gift comes to you with our compliments gratison the house. It's yours to keep as an outright present without cost or charge not a penny!'"

Dont just tell people. Reassure them. Leave them with not a shred of doubt. Have that kind of empathy for people. Care that much about your audience. When youre talking to someone, and you want to get your message across, if you are even a normally good communicator, you will use a lot of repetition. But writers tend to think that because theyve written it, its been communicated. Repeat, reinforce, explicate let there be no doubt. This is not about doubting your audiences intelligence. Smart audiences are skeptical audiences. Marketers who say FREE often mean anything but and smart people know that. Weve all been trained to look for the gotcha! If there is no gotcha, youre going to have to get that across, as Jayme says, six ways to Sunday. There are moments on the road to success when party crashing is the only way youre going to get to your objective I have made a study of party crashers, since I was a child. Perhaps because I wasnt born into any particularly prosperous party. My parents were and are bright, educated, professional types. But they were very young when I was born and we lived in working class towns. There were always people around who were stupid to the point of being dangerous, or unstable or just plain enraged. Having the courage to launch out into that world every day was a point of pride with me, before I even remember thinking about it. I guess thats what they call street smarts. You learn it of necessity. In fact, as a kid I used to talk my way in and out of trouble, just to see if I could do it. There was no plan, no grand strategy. It was more on the order of a compulsion, like a mouse playing with a cat. I would take one or two or three volatile toughs, wind them up to the point of violence, then wind them back down. Dumb. But good practice Perhaps, as a result of this childhood milieu and of my love of words and pitches and the powerful music of the human voice, Ive made a study my whole life of a class of people I call The Party Crashers. Junk Mail Writers. Telemarketers. Door-to-door salesmen. Missionaries. Peddlers. Beggars.

People who start off with a deficit, yet quickly work their way up to even and ultimately win the advantage at least enough of the time. This is a class of people that many folks have mixed or negative feelings about. They are hard to rebuff, so hard in fact that they seem to have powers that are beyond human. People fear being bewitched by them, perhaps. But theres so much we can learn from them, because these people, uninvited, with no particular prestige, barge into situations and emerge victorious. How long does the telemarketer have to stave off the click and dial tone? How did the best door-to-door salesman get his foot in the door? Who was the most effective Mormon Missionary ever? What were his tricks of the trade? What about those tent preachers and their TV brethren? The boardwalk hawkers, and direct TV gizmo pitchmen? What can we learn from them? Sins of Omission. Some people see our work as edgy. It blows their minds when we show them how the work were known for is the output of a scientific method. It is, in fact, a ruthless process that mimics the natural selection that fuels evolution. In the recent past, communicating was expensive. You had to pay a salesman, pay for paper, postage, printing, produce a TV spot, buy time or space, and every step of the process of developing the material was labor intensive and costly. Direct marketers had to argue for the efficacy of A/B splits. And A/B split is when you test two versions of an ad or mail package or whatever against each other. Half of a mailing list might receive one package, and the other half would receive the other package. If youre on this list, which package you receive will be determined by a random process, so no bias can be introduced. Responses will be counted. If there is a mail in coupon, the coupons will be coded to track which package was received. If a phone number, either different numbers will be used for

each package, or different extensions. This continues today in digital marketing. In any one day, half of the visitors to a homepage might see one message. The other half will see another. Stats will be tallied on the behavior of each and the results analyzed. But theres a huge difference between the testing of today and the testing of yesteryear. Adding a cell to a test in the old direct marketing era was costly. Most marketers tended to favor an incrementalist approach of isolating variables to improve successful pieces. In direct mail the control the mail package that is the champion in delivering response will be run as is and also with a live stamp to see whether the lift in response from the live stamp will more than pay for the added cost. Cost was a significant impediment to testing counterintuitive or edgy hypotheses about what might work better. Many marketers still behave as if testing an additional cell is an incredibly costly and time-consuming decision. Yet, exactly the opposite is the truth. In digital and database marketing, in which search ads, display banners and email are the primary channels, the incremental cost of an additional cell is next to zero. This completely changes the game! Before, marketers were careful to stay within the bounds of their best judgment about what might work. They were incredibly risk-averse. To test something that failed to beat the control could be a disaster. Many influential marketers believed in pitting agencies against each other, giving one cell to each. The agency was thought to be valuable to the extent to which they could use their expertise and creativity to produce, with one shot, a control-busting package. My track record in these shootouts drove my early career in the pre- internet era. I did it with comparatively bold strokes for the time, but it was a very different game.

For example, when I helped create the most successful credit card launch of all time by changing, First things first. Its free. to First things first. Its free for life. This made a huge difference in response, but it could still be within the comfort zone of an incrementalist. It is as if you can see the lines that represent the boundaries of common sense, and in the old times you wanted to make sure that you didnt cross those lines. Today, you can afford to admit let me restate that, you cant afford not to admit that you dont really know where those lines are and neither does anyone else. You need to find those lines by crossing them! So if you think the brand is a challenging brand, try to be too challenging and see how that goes. Theres little cost and a lot of upside. You need a hypothesis to test. For me it always starts in psychology. Some people think in terms of problem/solution, but I find it works well for me to think of desires. How does the person desire to see himself? Desire to feel? What are his aspirations? Whats he afraid of? Winning hypotheses. Options Trading is a challenging form of trading, and thinkorswim was a challenging traders cool club that intimidated even some of its members. We hypothesized that their best prospects would respond best not to a seduction or to a rational argument about whats better about thinkorswim, but to a tough challenge. We suggested that the audience might not have the cojones to trade on thinkorswim and that they might prefer to hide their money under their mattress. We constructed digital banner ads that said just that. And they outperformed everything else we tried. In fact, they have outperformed everything else anyone has tried for over three years. On the strength of this discovery, thinkorswim grew rapidly and chewed up marketshare. Ultimately the company was sold to TD Ameritrade for over $600 million dollars, making our clients very, very rich. Theres a formula for this. Its like our own e=mc squared. Its how a direct agency gets to stay a great agency.

 THE OPTIMIZERS The Incrementalists vs. The Optimizers There are two approaches to business. The first makes people feel as if things are under control. The second is the closest to actually being in control you can ever be in business. The Incrementalists are satisfied to do a little better. The Optimizers are constantly seeking the optimal level of improvement. Incrementalists worry about cannibalizing their core businesses. Optimizers make sure that if someone cannibalizes their core business it is them. Steve Jobs is a prime example. iPhone cannibalized iPod. iPad challenges MacBook. Steve Jobs is an optimizer. As I write this today, iPhone represents 53.7% of the value of Apple (AAPL), according to Trefis. Macintosh is the second most valuable division at 12.2%, which is almost matched by iPad at 11.8%. iPod today represents only 1.7% of Apples value.8 An incrementalist sitting at the helm of Apple just five years ago would have made better computers. Steve Jobs saw computers as consumer products. He was an optimizer. I can tell you that managers sitting at other PC companies who worked on incremental improvements probably were more comfortable, at least for a time. But, then the end came. Someone else cannibalized their business. The end. In the direct marketing business, there have always been two schools of thought. Ed Nash was the CEO of BBDO Direct, the agency that gave me my first job and first opportunity in the business. Ed is the author of many editions of Direct Marketing Strategy-Planning-Execution. Ed talks about the two schools of thought among successful direct
8 http://www.trefis.com/company#/AAPL?from=search

marketers, which he names The Incrementalists and The Fundamentalists. He gives a fair hearing to both, but says that most of his clients are incrementalists who would rather isolate variables and get small incremental gains. Ed opines that the incrementalists are probably right. Theres a sense in which incrementalism can play a role in an optimizers world. For example, we sometimes use multivariate testing technology to test a wide variety of creative, messaging, offer and other variables at once in a digital unit, such as a banner or home page hero. This replicates about five years of old school incremental testing in about a weeks time. This makes sense. Once you know what kind of vehicle will work best for you, then you can tinker with the styling, the appointments, and the options. But under no circumstances does this mean that you should stop developing and testing alternative vehicles to challenge your winning ride. Marketing Evolution has sped up. The Internet is the high radiation event of direct marketing, making it cheap, easy, fast and therefore necessary to test, optimize and iterate at speed. But the context has changed and, as a result of the low cost of iterating. A psychological imagination. Relatively costless testing has freed the psychological imagination. If you can imagine it, you can test it. Your insight into the secret desires, wishes, insecurities and pleasures of your target audience can lead to riches. So, we dont just write to a brief. We dont just create to a campaign. We dont just design to please the eye, or worse, to please the designer. We think. We imagine. We inquire. Ultimately, we develop hypotheses. Heres the hypotheses behind the most successful credit card launch in history. People are getting a lot of credit card offers. Credit card companies are waiving annual fees, for six months or a year, and this is increasing response. If we offer the first Free for Life credit card, people

will feel that this is an opportunity that cant last and that theyd better take advantage of it. Which is a big carrot. Plus, theres no cost. Testophobia? Why do people fail to jump for joy at the thought of testing? I know this feeling, because I dimly remember feeling that way myself. I didnt trust people. I felt that no true art could be dependent on the responses of real people. That testing would only lead to a lowest common denominator pabulum. And I, as the writer and creator, would be not the visionary but the tool. Not an artist, but a hack. Not a writer, but a secretary taking dictation from the masses. Well, it turns out its not like that at all. First off, you learn. You get to test your theories about what moves people and then you get to see if it really did move people. Like a stand up comic at the mic night after night, getting the feel for the crowd, your instincts and timing, your entire performance is educated by feedback. And unlike the feedback of peers, of authorities, of awards show judges, this feedback is one hundred percent relevant. Like the Beatles in front of that Hamburg brothel, playing thirteen hours a day, their drink and dinner money dependent on how many people they could lure into the club, singing for your supper becomes an amazing training experience. A powerful finishing school. And at the end of all your hypothesizing, creating, testing and learning, you begin to feel perhaps some of what the Beatles felt, or what Steve Martin felt. Both went from dismal acts to ultimately facing the problem of not being able to hear themselves over the roar of the crowds. Power. Thats what it is. The power that comes with competence, competence growing into extraordinary competence. Malcolm Gladwell tells us about the 10,000 hours, about research that shows that hours of practice alone determines the difference in virtuosity among concert pianists, and that this same principle applies to other endeavors that can be mastered. Be a master. And let the scientific method, let testing, let audience feedback be your guide.

Resist the siren song of incrementalism. Do not go gently into a sensible hell. The future is coming. Bring it or be brought low by it. Incrementalists work on current products. Optimizers always seek the best mix of existing and new products. Incrementalists decide what to spend by looking at current resources. Optimizers decide what to spend by judging the opportunities and threats and availability of capital. Incrementalists want to make a good thing better. Optimizers see a good thing as a burning bridge, and want to find the larger opportunity. Incrementalists want to test one thing at a time. Optimizers want to learn as much as possible as quickly as possible. Incrementalists want to test independent variables. Optimizers want to test big ideas testable hypotheses and generate large gains. Incrementalists dont want a dollar of revenue if they cant trace its origins. Optimizers want every profitable dollar of revenue. The incrementalist thinks she knows. The category, the market, the competitive set is a given, knowable, seemingly static set of facts. And she thinks that what she knows is more important than what she can imagine. That is, if she really thinks about it at all. More often than not, the incrementalist just dismisses the products of imagination as speculative and not real. Do you have any data to back that up? is a common question. And dont get me wrong - its not a bad question. But, intuition can work wonders. Intuition can free energy to get ahead of problems and opportunities. Bill Bowerman didnt have to study the market to decide whether it was worth his time to develop lighter running shoes. He was a track coach and he knew he wanted them for his team. It was simply a small imaginative leap that led him to think that, hey, maybe other track coaches will want these for their runners too. Maybe more runners will want them. Maybe one day people who arent even runners will want these because theyre light and cool. But thats the kind of company Nike was. When Phil Knight saw the Bo Knows campaign, he decided to pull all advertising and marketing

support from all his existing product lines in order to support what he imagined would be his new big winner. Gutsy. Risky. Totally intuitive. But Phil Knight was an optimizer. Phil Knight wanted the future of Nike to always be bigger than the past. When he and Bowerman entered the sleepy sneaker market at tiny bootstrappers heck Bowerman was pouring the rubber into molds in his own basement! there were already giants. Adidas was one of them. What a change Nike has brought to this category! Did Adidas anticipate it? Did Reebok respect the competitive threat from a small unknown. Or did they pronounce Nike like bike and chuckle a little at the temerity of the little upstart. Today, the Adidas corporate headquarters is right across the street from Nikes headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon. More than a decade ago, Adidas finally threw in the towel and began to take Nike more than seriously. They decided that the quickest way to get back into competition in the category was to get into Nikes draft. To learn from what they do. To recruit their people. To model themselves on the upstart giant. And, or course, to look for opportunities that Nike is now, perhaps, too big to seize. The optimizer is imagination turned up to eleven. Imagining the possibilities. Extrapolating a little knowledge of the present into possible scenarios for the future. The optimizer doesnt have to see it coming to prepare against it. Use Your Strength. My last boss, Richard Kirshenbaum, is one of my heroes. While I am often thoughtful and unfocused as if existing in a dimension without time, Richard is Mr. Next! Just show me what you want me to see. I know what you want. Let me tell you. You dont need to set it up, just show it to me. What do you want me to do? O.K., Ill do that then.

Even when the issue was grave, Richard seemed under self-imposed pressure to solve it very quickly, and when solutions didnt come quickly, he would become quite frustrated. I was, and still am, blown away by his ability to delegate, and to allow himself to be delegated to really by his trust in his people. Those of us who worked for Richard, directly for Richard, felt enormous power. Only those who expected total autonomy were not inspired by the enormous responsibility and authority Richard could delegate. The thing is that he didnt seem to fear confrontation. So if things went off the rails, he had no trouble getting right in there and negotiating his way out of whatever the trouble was. We had a particular client. A broker. We did some terrific work for this broker, and then the client started to micromanage the creative work and suddenly it wasnt so terrific any more. Just do your best with it, Richard told me. My father taught me, He quoted his father, a successful businessman, quite a lot, that there are times when you are in a weak position in business and there are times when you are in a strong position. Right now, were weak. When were in a stronger position, well deal with this. A couple of months later, we won a large account. Richard called the difficult client into his office. We done some good work together in the past, but now we dont like the work were producing together. My name is on it too, so I have to feel good about it. Why dont we just part friends? That was it. Problem solved. God, I loved that man that day. I had never seen anything like that ever in my life. The man had standards. Whats more, the man had balls of steel. Know What Not To Do. Educated managers love best practices. If you were to grill them with questions until all that was left was their essence, you would easily see that their formula for success is to do what other companies do, but to just do all of it better.

This is slow suicide. Do they think that this is what they believe? Probably not. Do they have ideas for doing things differently? Many of them do. But in practice, the many-tentacled monster of excellence strangles the good things they try to do. Its a voracious beast that can never be sated. Because, no matter the size or wealth of your business, you will never have the resources to be better than the competition at everything. Not even close! So, dont try. In fact, see how far you can push your culture and your decisions in the other direction. See how focused you can be about make your points of different as different as possible, while either discontinuing or under-attending to everything else. Crunch competed as entertainment. They needed models on the floor. They didnt necessarily need a working sauna. Dont Fix The Sauna: The Crunch Fitness Story Have a strategy. Otherwise youll waste time fixing problems that shouldnt be fixed, and the fixes could break your business. Client Doug Levine, founder of Crunch brilliantly exemplified this principle. Levine realized that the great threat to the Crunch franchise was the short lifecycle of a "hot" gym. Typically, a new gym that plays its cards right will get hot by attracting a young, sexy, looks-good-in-the- locker-room clientele. Crunch did this better than anyone. So far so good. Next, of course, the now hot gym will work hard to retain those members. This is all too easy. Within a decade or so, the locker room becomes a landscape of horrors. Young, hip, sexy types defect to a new gym brand and anoint it as the cool place to be. The once hot gym ends up playing a losing game, catering to its aging, sagging and shrinking target audience. Levine determined that Crunch would never be a comfortable place to age. As soon as a member started to care as much about whether the sauna actually worked as he or she did about how many models were on

the treadmills, his or her interest in Crunch would begin to wane. After thirty-five, only the hardcore had yet to move on. To most marketers, this would have looked like a problem to be solved. To the genius with a strategy behind the phenomenal success of Crunch Fitness, it was just perfect. Dont follow marketing best practices. Invest them. If you want to run a first class marketing organization, benchmark against the category leader. Right? Wrong. Look at your category and youre likely to see this common landscape: A market- share leader whose marketing is effective and probably conservative; a host of other players who more or less imitate the marketing tactics of the market leader; and then, maybe, one challenger who is the idea leader in the category. Time and the market have proven that these idea leaders frequently become share leaders. Look at Charles Schwab in the brokerage category. Or Southwest and JetBlue among airlines. The idea leader road is not for the faint of heart, but its more like to succeed than shadow marketing the share leader. Besides, its a lot more fun. 7 Habits of Highly Affected People. Great brands are like great individuals. Authentic. Idiosyncratic. Unique. But most brands, like most people, fall into bad habits. And the bad habits cost them dearly. To help you avoid them, here are the Seven Habits of Highly Affected People.

1) Trying to be cool. The coolest clients never brief in cool. They focus on relevance. 2) Falling into The Aspiration Trap. Usually, youre not the target audience. Neither is your Hamptons- dwelling agency head. Remember: Its about the targets aspirations, not yours. 3) Briefing from the Trend Report. Great brands create trends. 4) Management Fads. Quality is not job one! Professional management has buckets of specialized concepts. They dont belong in great advertising, even to professional managers. 5) Believing: You dont get it because youre not the target. Your job is to get it or you shouldnt be signing off. Period. 6) Wishful Thinking. Advertising can be a tool for leadership. More often it is a reflection of corporate denial. Advertise the targets wish, not the companys. 7) Mistake execution for ideas. Its easy to fall in love with something beautiful, novel, funny, poetic, witty or profound. Do fall in love. But first make sure theres a powerful, convincing idea in the middle of all that artistry. If youre in the right sort of place, your job depends on it. Most brands have fallen into one or more of these habits. Thats why great brand change agents will always be busy. The Simplest Brief We had a new client in here recently, who asked us a brilliant question. How do you do what you do? He elaborated, I see all of these bright, strategically sharp solutions. My question is what is the process you go through to get to them? How do you do it? What WORKS? Isnt this the question we should all be asking a lot more than we do? I told him about the work I had done on briefs and briefing early in my career. I had started by choosing the clearest and most effective

campaigns, then found ways to get my hands on the original creative briefs behind them. I summarized my findings: The simplest brief.

I found that the briefs behind the best work were always the simplest. Short words. Short sentences. Good. He said, and shot out the simplest, clearest brief weve ever heard, just two simple sentences. Then he disappeared for five weeks, came back with his team, and they bought everything. Thats the power of a simple brief and a brilliant question. Bonfire of the Clichs. Clichs. Hoary old ideas that wont die. Every category has them, along with marketers to whom they are sweet music and the be all and end all of what works. But what happens when all the old ideas stop working so well? Or when your great idea has been so widely copied that its not YOUR idea any more? Or what if you are just one of those daring marketers who aims for something more than clich results? How do you get people to go along? Try a Ritual Burning of The Clichs. Call your team together, including your agency partner or partners. Ask everyone to bring their best examples of category creative. Together, brainstorm an extensive list of clichs. From free toaster to skinny model, every category has them. Once you have the list, your team may find it very satisfying to actually burn something. It could be the whole pile of clichs or just the worst of the bunch. Keep a fire extinguisher handy. But nothing shows the groups commitment to inventing a better way like a little fire! How do I get my management to support change?

Look at other peoples advertising. Look at other peoples cases. Resistance evaporates when you stop talking about your own category and brand. Be a Firestarter. Creating marketing success is a lot like starting a fire. A generous budget can feel like an endless supply of lighter fluid. As long as you can keep pouring, the fire is going to stay lit. But what happens when your supply gets cut? Well, then it pays to learn a few lessons from the folks who start fires from the marketing equivalent of rubbing two sticks together. The direct marketers. The most successful of these run sophisticated tests in miniature, optimizing message, medium and offer with the least possible budget outlay. Once the winning formula is established, they pour on the fuel, spending as much as they can while still making their allowable. My Banners Don't Work. Not least among the challenges of being a professional marketer is that everyone seems to think they are one! Everyone has an opinion and somehow those opinions seem to morph into certainties. One we hear a lot is, "Banners don't work." "Whose banners?" We ask. Certainly not our client's banners. We see the data every week, and the data doesn't lie. It says they're working just fine, often driving customers to worlds more efficiently than any other medium save search. Here are a few simple guidelines for making your banners work better too: 1) Remember, they're not ads, they're lures. It's not about what you want to say, it's about what you want to seduce people to do. 2) First, attract the eye. There's a reason that stop signs, red lights, eyes, faces and dancing monkeys work. They naturally attract the eye.

 We are genetically programmed to turn to eyes that are looking at us, for example. This instinct saved our great great great great great grandfathers from clubbing death, and you can make it work for you today. It takes creativity to build a successful lure that also reflects your brand. 3) Let them know where they're going. People resist a mystery click. They want a pretty clear idea of where the click will take them. Make sure your call to action is clear and as easy to click on as you can make it. 4) Create custom landing pages. Make sure they deliver on the expectation the banner created. In look, feel and content. Make sure the next step is just as well thought out. We've learned so much from repeated testing. In fact we've performed over ten thousand test over the years. Weve learned a lot, and one thing weve absolutely proved is that banners can work very well indeed! Ride A Powerful Phrase. All brands have trouble. And the truth is, once the trouble takes hold the vast majority never fully emerge. We have a name we developed to define the kind of marketers that tend to emerge victorious. We call them BRAVE. Its an acronym. It means they manage to Be Real And Visionary Everywhere. In short they use every tactical necessity to build the vision. You could say they get the ultimate return on trouble. In the middle of the 19th Century, Brand USA had trouble. Abe Lincoln, a gaunt, ill-dressed, relatively uncultured, obscure, one-term congressman, failed senatorial candidate of a new party from the Midwest, defined it beautifully with his paraphrase from the Bible, A house divided against itself cannot stand. Friends testified that hed spent many long hours searching for a phrase that would be familiar to all of the people, to get across his view of the problem. Hed found one. One that became the center of a campaign that propelled a most unlikely candidate to the Presidency of the United States. He managed to turn all

his obstacles into building blocks of his vision for an America that would complete the process of being born. Thats all he wanted to do, to finish the work he believed the founders had expected would be completed after their time. By the end, he had even used the horrific reality of the Civil War to redefine the core of Brand America. Though the Constitution spoke of forming a more perfect union Lincolns primary object through most of his presidency he ultimately reached back to the Declaration of Independence to affirm that the nation was conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. With that phrase, he transformed US from The American Experiment to The American Dream. Now Thats A Big Idea! BIG ideas are different. They dont so much defy logic, as go beyond it. They challenge the illusion of costless compromise. If you are competing with, or trying to reinvigorate a large organization, you need to be able to green light the big idea. Because nothing speeds things up by solving multiple problems at once like a BIG idea. So, what is a big idea? What does it look like before it becomes a big idea? How can you recognize an opportunity to turn a pragmatic necessity into a big idea? What does it feel like to face a decision on whether or not to green-light one? And how do you know your decision was the right one? Here are some general principles to help you on your journey to answer these questions in action: Howard Schultz certainly made his share of Big Idea decisions while building Starbucks from a tiny company into one of the worlds largest retailers. Called back to the CEO role after an eight year working hiatus as Chairman, Schulz turned to the Big Idea again to help affect a massive transformation of the coffee giant. Schultz begins his book on the turnaround, Onward, with this story of green-lighting a Big Idea.

One Tuesday afternoon in February 2008, Starbucks closed all of its US stores. A note posted on 7,100 locked doors explained the reason: Were taking time to perfect our espresso. Great espresso requires practice. Thats why were dedicating ourselves to honing our craft.

Schultz tells the story of how he came to this costly, risky and unprecedented decision to close all of Starbucks stores simultaneously for training. A decision that started with a problem- how do we retrain our baristas fast? launched the dramatic repositioning of the Starbucks brand in a single day. Here are the lessons to take from Schultzs story: 1) The Big Idea comes out of a very real problem and a pragmatic need. In this case it was ill-trained baristas and the need to re-train them quickly that led to the big idea, which Ill tell you more about shortly. But for now, remember this -- the big idea rises out of the core realities of the business. 2) There is a core product, and its quality matters. In fact, the delivery of this product is an art. Being the authority on this is core to Starbucks reason to exist, and Schultz knows it. 3) Starbucks has a mission, which informs its decisions to inspire the human spirit. In Schultzs deeply held belief system, a well-poured cup of coffee can do that, but a carelessly poured cup cannot. 4) Schultz understands as few leaders do that what great merchants read brand builders can do is raise the mundane to the level of the sublime. Or as Schultz says, we take the ordinaryand give it new life 5) The big idea often comes out of something that at first seems a necessary evil, especially from situations in which the veil of corporate propriety must be lifted and uncomfortable truths exposed. 6) Though he had asked for a training solution, he immediate

evaluated the proposal as a branding statement, a leadership and public relations event. 7) He literally says, Thats a BIG Idea. In the same breath, he acknowledges the outsized risk. This is not a coincidence. The very thing that makes this feels like a great risk an unprecedented degree of openness about a core failing/commitment is what makes this a big idea. 8) Only a leader can green light a big idea. This is the reason they are so rare and so effective. Often, this happens in lonely moments when a leader is overcome by a cocktail of love and commitment to the brand. And its a beautiful thing. Ill give Howard Schultz the last word here hes earned it!
There are moments in our lives when we summon the courage to make choices that go against reason, against common sense and the wise counsel of people we trust. But we lean forward nonetheless because, despite all risks and rational argument, we believe that the path we are choosing is the right and best thing to do. We refuse to be bystanders, even if we do not know exactly where our actions will lead. Ultimately, closing our stores was most powerful in its symbolism. It was a galvanizing even to Starbucks partners the term we use for our employees a stake in the ground that helped reestablish some of the emotional attachment and trust we had squandered during our years of focusing on hyper-growth. A bold move that I stand by today, it sent a message that decisiveness was back at Starbucks.

One thing Ive noticed is that leaders of growing organizations tend to green light more BIG ideas. And they tend to do so for the very reason that the ideas are BIG. In fact, a big idea orientation appears to be an essential of those leaders who would outgrow the competition. What can your brand be radically truthful about? What would you honestly and openly confront in spite of all costs? Big Ideas Are Powerwashers. They make big jobs seem simple. They make the impossible suddenly possible.

You may know the story of the Gordian Knot. Columbus was dining with many Spanish nobles when one of them said: 'Sir Christopher, even if your lordship had not discovered the Indies, there would have been, here in Spain which is a country abundant with great men knowledgeable in cosmography and literature, one who would have started a similar adventure with the same result.' Columbus did not respond to these words but asked for a whole egg to be brought to him. He placed it on the table and said: 'My lords, I will lay a wager with any of you that you are unable to make this egg stand on its end like I will do without any kind of help or aid.' They all tried without success and when the egg returned to Columbus, he tapped it gently on the table breaking it slightly and, with this, the egg stood on its end. All those present were confounded and understood what he meant: that once the feat has been done, anyone knows how to do it. Market To A Mindset, Not A Demographic. DIGOs work for longtime client Crunch Fitness yields many powerful examples of marketing to a mindset rather than a traditional demographic. Crunch Fitness was founded by investment banker turned stand-up comic turned aerobics studio entrepreneur Doug Levine in 1989. At first, it was just one location on St. Marks Place in Manhattans East Village, a tiny basement studio with faulty air conditioning and no locker room. But, from the beginning, Crunch found ways to attract a different sort of crowd from the earnest drones who view exercise as a repetitive grind and live out no pain, no gain existences. In fact, part of Crunchs success lay in alienating just the sort of people who would value the comfort of reliable air conditioning and a nice locker room over an utterly entertaining adventure. Years later, if a sauna was broken, Levine and his managers might delay fixing it for a while. This would encourage the sort of people who werent exactly Crunch to move on to other gyms. Like weeding a garden or pruning a shrub, this only encouraged the phenomenal growth of Crunch from that tiny aerobics studio to 32 state-of-the-art

gyms in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami, Chicago, Washington D.C. and Atlanta and a host of popular Crunch products. Crunch knew its customer. Yes, there were certain demographic realities that must be heeded. Levine had seen too many hot spot gyms head south with the midsections of their aging membership, kept happy and paying year after year with increasingly expensive services and amenities. Ultimately these gyms lost their cool, their profitability and their appeal to the psycho-demographic group that makes up most prospective gym members. Levine knew that, to win, hed have to reduce the lifetime value of a member by shortening that membership lifetime to roughly the prime gym floor and locker room viewing years, and then gently outsourcing the member to home exercise or a less interesting gym. In attracting Crunchs true audience, if Levine and DIGO could simultaneously alienate the not-Crunch audience, the perfect formula would have been invented. So, who was Crunchs true audience? He or she has moved to an urban area for a more exciting life, full of adventure and possibility. After a long day of work, the Cruncher views the gym as an entertainment choice. Do I go to a club, go to the gym or go home and watch TV and go online? So, the competition for Crunch was never seen as other gyms. The competition was other entertainments. And the Cruncher wanted entertainment that was active, adventurous, sexy, and exotic, with a bit of an unpredictable anything-can-happen tint to it. Crunch was in the entertainment business, so the gym was a set, the employees AND members were the cast and the exercise classes, options and events were programming. Crunch took the trouble to cast the best performers in the fitness business. Programming included everything from Hip Hop Aerobics with a live rapper, to Co-Ed Action Wrestling, to Strip Tease Aerobics led by an experience professional. Fitness instructors included drag queens, rappers, dancers, more exotic dancers, actors and professional athletes. Juice discovered Billy Blanks before he became a TV phenom.

Crunch became the MTV of gyms, a network that knew what its audience would love and that went all out to invent, recruit, produce and promote it. Buzz was the center of the advertising strategy. This led to several distinctions. Crunch competed in the entertainment category. Simple statement. Huge advantage. So, if you went home to watch TV, we were there. If you went out to a nightclub, youll likely find us on the bar napkins or in the restroom. Later, we branched out to places our target audience would most appreciate entertainment, which included airports and airplanes too. The creative measure was always Is it entertaining, is it buzzy, is it No Judgements, is it Crunch? Doug Levine, one of the worlds great frugal visionaries, was the perfect creative client. Ill only let you produce your best work, Mark. He once told me. Just make my drink fly out of my nose. The work produced was in demand for free and valuable product placement in the hottest shows and movies of the era. Crunch posters appeared in several episodes of the Sopranos, in Meadow Sopranos Columbia University dorm room. Will & Grace built several episodes around a Crunch Gym. Crunch was part of Seinfelds New York as well. Crunch and DIGO would go a long way for out-sized buzz. Naked silhouette showers in San Francisco. Exercisers on human-sized hamster wheels in the front window of the gyms. Full-sized kick boxing arenas in the middle of the exercise floor. A partnership with Jet Blue put punching bags in JFK with slogans such as Middle Seat? and Missed your flight?, inviting hassled passengers to work out their aggressions right there and then. In the seatback on all JetBlue flights were cards presenting Airplane Yoga and Flying Pilates. The first of these was such a success that several arm rests were broken by overzealous passengers. A revision in the first reprinting saved the planes from further damage. Crunch was famous for its huge buzz events. Reality TV inspired one of the greatest. Rick Rockwell had been the prize on the first season of FOXs seminal and excreble Who Wants To Marry A Millionnaire? The

spectacle of a stage packed with women in the eight, nine and ten range on the physical attractiveness scale and in the fractions on self esteem prompted on Crunch member to say, Someone ought to kick that guys ass. Eureka! We proposed a Who Wants To Kick a Millionnaires Ass Contest. This would be a huge event, ostensibly to promote Crunchs new and wildly popular Kick Boxing Aerobics classes, but it would also because a three-ring circus of a buzz event and launch Crunchs website as well. An good example of PR and Advertising integrated with a branded entertainment strategy, DIGO and Crunch asked members to nominate the millionaire most deserving of an ass-kicking. Donald Trump and Bill Gates topped the list. This led to broad and repeated media speculation about who Crunchs Millionaire would be. I was interviewed on Fox News, CNN and broadly in the print media, all of which had a substantial echo online. The agency cast a millionaire and created a print campaign and TV spot that were widely praised and viewed online. Twenty-two year old actress Marni Rosenberg won the contest and the right to kick-box the millionaire. Rick Rockwell agreed to be the millionaire in exchange for a $25,000 donation to his favorite charity and a five minute extension on his fifteen minutes of fame. Before they met in battle in front of a packed house at the huge Lafayette Street Crunch, Marni and Rick were interviewed on the Howard Stern Show. The event was simulcast on E! Television and online as well. The buzz generated millions of visits to the website and many millions of dollars in free media. Forbes named the campaign one of the best of the year. DIGO and Crunch followed up with Smack Your Boss Up and Who wants to be an exercise star? among others, all of which involved the Crunch membership and added to the circus atmosphere around the Crunch brand. DIGO worked with Crunch to develop products too. Umbrellas carried snarky warnings such as Warning: Not to be used as a rectal thermometer. Crunch launched a successful music compilation, Sweating with the Stars. In DIGOs commercial, a man sweats so much while grooving to the tunes that he is electrocuted to death.

The advertising was always aimed at building buzz. Coasters at bars slyly promised, War and Peace on a Beer Coaster: number 1,165,432 in a series of 3,432,156. In one series of commercials, upside down chins, one a cyclops, extol the virtues of a no judgements environment. In another series, a triangle and square and other geometric shapes tell their tales of struggle before finding acceptance and self-esteem at Crunch. In 2003, fourteen years after opening that humble but fascinating aerobics studio, Doug Levine sold what had become the number one fitness brand in fourteen top urban markets for over $150 million dollars to Bally Total Fitness. It proved to be the end of an era but what an era it was! The Introverts Guide to Success in a Social World 1) Most marketing people are extroverts. They love being part of something. They love making connections and using those connections to get things done in the world. So, why an Introverts Guide? In short, because weve found that the words Social Media Social Marketing and Social World seem to intimidate many of these hearty socializers right back into their shells. We aim to rob those concepts of their power to intimidate. We aim to set some marketers free. 2) Whats so intimidating? Back in the early 70s, Alvin Toffler introduced us to the concept of Future Shock. This meant that change was coming so fast people were beginning to react to it as if facing the stages of death. They were getting stuck in denial, anger, and bargaining. In short, they were in shock. This was back in the age of TV, which took thirteen years to amass an audience of fifty million viewers, before the internet, which took four years to do the same, before iPod which did it in three years, and Facebook which grew to 100 million users in just seven months.

The upshot is that its not about future shock anymore it is about past shock. If we wake up, we will have to realize that the world has changed virtually overnight. 3) B.S. Its just a fad! Actually, the connectivity of the Internet, and the increasing complexity of integrated technology universe are facts. That people are increasingly using them is a fact. That they are transforming industries and institutions from mating to elections to decisions about which broker to choose are facts. Ignore them at your own peril but dont lose heart! Denial is a higher level of awareness. 4) But, its all about What I ate for breakfast this morning and friends I dont even know along with some friends I wish I could avoid!. This is what people say who only know it from the outside. In fact, the social media world including online social media and the world of social connections that are analog are increasingly arranged and facilitated online, is a deep, rich, variegated, busy place where lots of crucial things are getting done. 5) But, I cant take on one more thing! Email, done right, solved problems, and made time. The next generation has dropped email. They get more done faster and better in social media and you can too. 6) Its all about a networking personality that I cant stand or at least I dont have. In fact, its not not when leveraged by the best. In fact its about a bunch of things that introverts can love. 7) Its about ideas. The sort of ideas that pros will write about and amateurs (a word that means lovers) will passionately pass on. Social media has surpassed porn and email as the top uses of the internet. This means users are generating an enormous amount of content. Where do you think they will get these ideas from? Much of the buzz comes from professional

content creators, offline and online news media, bloggers- from the pros. So 8) Its about prioritization. Unless your ads are so unusually good that they are spontaneously shared and viewed in an ever-increasing plume of online activity, you will need to reprioritize. The chance that they are is about 1 in 100,000 according to our somewhat unscientific finger to the wind survey. In fact, we have generally found that in general these cases utilize a vigorous PR campaign in support of a viral effort. Since doing so increases the cost of the overall campaign only marginally while increasing the chances for effectiveness greatly, its really a no brainer. 9) In short, PR comes first. PR thinking at least. And PR standards. Measure ideas first in the context of a press release, for example make sure PR integration is a truth rather than a facade at your agency. We tend to remember the great ideas of the past, the ones that did make great press as well as great advertising. But, if we were honest with ourselves, we can admit that many brands were built without the luxury of an advertising world, in which mass market could be bought and repeatedly messaged. That world is over for most advertisers. What was exceptional is now simply necessary. 10 ) Its about all the stakeholders in your company, not just the marketing department Make sure everyone gets involved, because everyone benefits (show the chart with all the stakeholders) 11) Get a baseline. At DIGO we conduct a Social Marketing Audit as the first step in listening to the social volume around your brand. (show charts from social audit deck) This audit can include listening to your competition, too. 12) Locate the Influencers.

Which blogs and forums influence your customers and prospects? Get them on your side. (show a share of voice chart from Social Audit) 13) Enhance your outfrastructure. IBM could not conduct business without the social web. In addition to blogging guidelines for all employees worldwide, their DeveloperWorks social platform is an integral part of the IBM outfrastructure (Show web page) https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/community 14) Visit your brand neighborhood. Dont learn primarily from competitors. Learn from exceptional marketers in adjacent industries and in totally different industries. 15 Its OK just to watch. And learn. 16) Keep it alive / relevant. That means making sure someone in your organization is in charge of your brand in the social world. That social workers are seamlessly integrated into your agency teams and working to get you the leverage that only social media can delver today. 17) Remember, that adjusting to the social world isnt just about or even primarily about social media. Often, the reason to love Twitter isnt because your propects and customers do, but rather because Googles algorithm loves Twitter. And your prospects and customers Google. In fact, theyre Googlemaniacs. But thats the subject for a guide to come 18) Its about engagement. How much precious time will users give you? This depends on how compelling your content is. Do you have ideas that will help them? Time is not a fixed thing, like a concrete sidewalk. Its a ribbon that can be folded and bent. Its a loop that can be warped. Einstein showed how gravity does just that. In business, nothing has more gravity than ideas. Can you love to listen?

Most people dont have the patience to listen efficiently. They feel its a waste of time. To me, getting to the nub of what someone knows, wishes, cares about, or is trying to say is as compelling as the best video game. Its just like a great game, in fact. I dont need a reason to play. No incentive, or external motivation. Listening well is deeply satisfying in and of itself. Helping a person get heard is one of the most valuable skills there is. In part, because its so rare. All the books that have ever been written about negotiation are about great listening. The most important skills of the sales pro are listening skills. Great communication always starts with great listening. You cant hit the targets in a person or an audiences mind if you dont know precisely where they are. If youre talking to an individual or a small group, you can hone in with questions. If youre talking to a large audience, you can do the same. I have many times. You can sense the excitement when people in an audience realize that they may have the chance to be heard from. That they might get a hold of the microphone. A great stand-up comic can play the rhythm of the crowd. He can hear it and feel it, and get it rolling. Like driving a car over bumps at just the right speed to get it hopping higher and higher. Feeding back what the person is saying is essential. Dont just repeat. Show them that youre trying to understand. Use your own words. People hunger for appreciation. Appreciation means true and complete understanding. We all want to be seen, to be heard, to be known. The Bad News Bears were right. Dont assume. When you assume, you make and ass of u and me. When others are present, dont assume that they heard what you think you heard. Make sure, by saying what you think you heard and getting the person to agree or clarify for everyone. Listening in this way is its own reward. And rewarding as it is for you and your team, it is even more rewarding to be listened to in this way.

Nothing clears the path to results faster than trust. When you listen in this way, you create a bond with your client, your prospect, your audience, that results in trust. Growing Oak Trees From Tomato Seeds. You cant. Too much time is wasted in trying to get supposedly talented but unambitous employees motivated. As if you can teach or create motivation inside of another human being. You really cant. You can access it. You can stimulate it. You can build an encouraging, stimulating environment around it. But thats about it. It doesnt matter how convincing you are you cant get a tomato seed to grow into an oak tree. And thats the thing. Ambition isnt a choice, because ambition comes from potential. If you have the potential to be President of the United States, then youre more likely to have that ambition. Because potential wants to be actualized, or rather it tends in that direction. If you have the ability to start a business, write if youre built for it, then very likely youre going to. Because talent wants to be expressed. Potential wants to be achieved. Is this a genetic principle? A physical or chemical principle? A spiritual principle? Another kind of book would pretend to have an answer for you. But this isnt that kind of book. And Im not that kind of author. Ill tell you what I know and Ill tell you what I think. This I believe to be a fact. Hire Born Communications Strategists Some people were born in log cabins. Others were born in hospitals. I was born in an argument. Im lucky. My very young, very smart parents still together and very much in love all these years later were fighting over just about everything. Their marriage was a culture crash, and each felt that the expectations theyd been raised with were the correct ones. My neighborhood was

full of people whod been traumatized. Some were still recovering from WWII our neighbor had been a Nazi Youth, after capture disassembled unexploded bombs for the British, bucking the odds to survive and emigrate to the U.S.A, where he was drafted and sent to Korea - his mood reflected his luck. Others were just angry at their station in life. Working class. Treated like shit. Going nowhere. Many, frankly, were just not very bright. A few were dangerously stupid. Vietnam was the lead of the nightly news. War protest and draft dodging were the burning issues of the day. Long before I ever thought about what I wanted to be when I grew up, I agonized about whether Id grow up. I thought as hard as I could about whether it was right and even possible for me to go to Canada, or whether I should go to Vietnam and probably die. This was a very scary prospect for me as a seven year old. I didnt even like class trips. I cant remember not being aware that what I say and what other people take from what I say are different. In other words, stimulus and response in communication are different. And, which matters? Of course, response. Response is the thing youve communicated. Its the thing theyve taken away. While the only thing we can hope to control is the stimulus. Thats what we say, show or do. Before I began storing memories, I was already storing up strategies for creating understanding. And, I was building up the scars of my failures. It was a communications college of hard knocks, Edison, NJ, was. But I dont remember ever having that easy feeling that everyone understood me and each other. The feeling many folks in many small towns in the middle of America grow up with. No way. Im so grateful for that chaos, because it made me a communicator. When I hire, I look for people who had to live across cultures from a very young age. One woman in my employ is the daughter of a forbidden marriage between a Muslim and a Hindu in India. Another travelled the world with his Architect parents. Army brats. Diplomats kids. Mixed race children. Young immigrants. They all have an advantage in an interview with me. In fact, through the years, Ive hired several from each category. They had their communications awakening very young, and have had thousands and thousands of hours of working out how to create affinity

and understanding when its difficult. People who realize this in their twenties cant compete. Not in real time. Match Words and Pictures. Talking things out can be a time waster. Especially when we imagine that once we agree on the words that all is solved, never suspecting that the pictures in our heads are not the pictures in other peoples heads. One of the most useful things we do with clients is simply to match words and pictures. This simple process is so rare and such an effective shortcut to better communication that I would seriously recommend it to relationship counselors for serious consideration! Once we had a husband and wife client team. Both were brilliant, driven, great-looking and nice. He was a celebrity doctor, she was a brilliant retailer. He had a gift for inventing better products and she had an eye for great design. Both were terrific in front of the camera and in the conference room. Both agreed on most things and the one thing they agreed on most strongly was that they wanted their advertising to be sexy and classy. We knew them, and they knew us, so we knew we saw eye to eye. We wanted the work to be sexy and classy too. We were diligent, so the words sexy and class were in our brief. We did some work that we felt was a ten on the scale of sexy and classy and they bought that work and ran it and it was successful But they didnt really love it. They both felt that it wasnt really sexy and classy enough. So, we brought them in for a key words and pictures session. And the results were mind-blowing! First we brainstorm words that are important to the brand. Everyone gets to write their list of the most important words. Then, each in turn shares their list. All the words get written on its own piece of paper and put up on the wall. Then we talk about the words, we ask about them, we vote on

them. We pull down the redundant ones. We end up with the most important words for the brand. Could be three. Could be five. Theres no hard and fast rule. Of course, sexy and classy were two of the key words for this brand coming out of this exercise. So far, so good. We took a five minute break, during which our brilliant interns spread style, fashion, health and lifestyle magazines all over our tables. When folks returned from the five minute break about ten minutes later, I told them that the were to go through the magazines and cut out pictures that fit the key words that meant to the most to them individually. This is fun stuff, and people are generally very happy to do it. Its like the most creative things we all did in elementary school. Then, we go around the room, and people share their work-picture combinations. And heres the thing. Both of our married clients had classy and sexy pictures, but their pictures were very different. An animated discussion between these two formidable partners erupted. The rest of us respectfully left the room so that they could work out their differences on these essential concepts. When we returned to the room, they were able to speak with one voice and more importantly to agree on one picture of sexy and classy. I cant overstate how much easier things got after that. We had built windows into each others brains. Now, the folks on our team who did sexy and classy pictures had something else in mind as well, but this was less of a surprise, and now we could finally see the disagreement that we had previously just suffered with. On to the next challenge! Game Changing Isnt Game Winning. I love game changers. They drive the world forward. They are the natural force in national selection. They are the good guys of business. And I want them to win. I want them to end up on top.

But, often they dont. Because game changing and game winning dont automatically go together. Think about it this way: Innovation creates a window of opportunity. The window opens with the introduction of the change. It closes when the new way is copied, tweaked, improved and deployed by the competition. What the game changer does between the opening and the closing of that window is everything. If you move quickly to own the change, to own it in the marketplace, to own it in the minds of your target audience, then you make it much more difficult for your much larger and richer competitors to co-opt that innovation. Between the opening and the closing of the window, there is DIGO. Ask. Often the difference between survival and success is simply asking. I met with a creative team. Just a breakfast. I hadnt seen these people in fifteen years, and we had a nice chat to catch up. We talked generally about work we might do together. And then, as the check arrived and they picked it up, one of them said, So what do you have going on that we can work together on right now? Its a simple thing, asking or not asking. But its not an easy thing. Many people think they asked when they did really. Other feel that its better to wait to be asked. Some might say, Selling is asking. Marketing is positioning ones self to be asked. I cant agree. Marketing plus selling is quicker and much more productive. So ask! Teach your people to ask. And more than that. Set asking goals. Define the what and who and when and how many times of asking. Track these statistics. Track your conversion rates. I meet a lot of creative teams. But this one has a retainer from me each and every month. The ask was the beginning of that. Get asking! Win the War of the Inbox.

I continue to be obsessed about email its by far the most significant communications channel I use. And its accelerating, not decelerating, especially as it proliferates across devices as well as other comm channels. Brad Feld, Investor, feld.com The first killer app of the Internet is fast becoming the most important. Lowly E-mail! Its amazing to me to see the Internet generation finally discover direct marketing of course they had to have it beaten into them. Heres just one story of the way it happened. E-commerce marketers with their frictionless webs were doing just fine, thank you. And then, a French company by the name of Vente-Privee invented a little virus that began to replicate and threatened to take them down. Its spawned the whole flash sale site category, and the numbers behind this revolution are impossible to ignore. In the traditional e-commerce model, two percent of visitors to a site might become customers. Only customers register and provide an email address. So, you convert about 2 percent of your unique visitors to your database. Flash sale marketers threw up a wall. If you want to see the great product and values behind this wall, they said, you need to sign up as a member by giving us your name and email address. About two thirds of the visitors say, No way! and leave the site. But the other third give up their information. One percent of the visitors still buy on the first visit. But many more will buy after receiving daily email throughout the year. Back in 1999, when Seth Godin wrote the groundbreaking book, Permission Marketing, he predicted that an increasing percentage of marketing messages would be, anticipated, personal and relevant. It was a radical idea at the time. But today, the battle is on for the inbox. Its a battle for a special relationship with consumers that can be incredibly valuable. Ultimately, its an ideal that is going to be rare. Rare, because the attention for the inbox is finite. It can be grown, but there are limits. Interruption, suggestion and epiphany will continue to be important to marketers and consumers alike. But Inbox Appointment Marketing is the holy grail for those few marketers that can craft compelling offers and keep them coming day after day.

 Understanding WhatdaF#@K People Are Saying @ Speed. Id love to say, Forget the bullshit. Ignore the acronyms. Speak like a human being, and youll get where youre going a lot faster. And there, I did. But, as much as I believe that you should do your best to speak in plain, short words, with evocative detail, and avoid the businessisms that make people seem like poseurs, I know I cant stop there. Because, that only takes care of half the equation, the half where other people understand what the hell it is that you are saying. Now we need to deal with the half where you understand what the hell other people are saying. And that half is more difficult. More tedious. But also potentially more perversely enjoyable. Space. Blue oceans. Scalability. Angel round. A round. B round. IPO. The No Asshole Rule. There is a business book with the clever title of, The No Asshole Rule. This is a rule suggesting that businesses not allow assholes in. I think this is just as dangerous metaphorically as it is physically. The asshole serves an essential function. My No Asshole Rule states that, Any organization without an asshole will tend to bloat. Bloating is not growing. It is an unsightly, and ultimately dangerous condition of carrying too much dead weight. A well-placed asshole can prevent that. No psychopaths. No serial killers. No dangerously dysfunctional people. Just effective, well-functioning assholes. To clear the waste out of the system. Not a company of assholes, unless thats your thing. But a healthy diversity. Different organs doing the job they were meant to do.

Some people love peace. Others enjoy conflict. Some look for similarities, while still others are vigilant in their search for differences. The world needs all kinds. Nice people are nice. But an organization of sheep needs a dog, or it is surely headed for a hostile takeover by a wolf. Am I digital yet? If youve gotten this far, youve not only read an e-book a decidedly un-analog accomplishment but youve also imbibed many of the attitudes youll need to succeed in a digital world. If you find yourself a little more inquisitive, a lot more searching, and at least three beats more impatient then weve done our job. Check out digitalATspeed.com for resources and updates. This e-book is a living document, with arms, legs, root and leaves spreading out into the social world. Would you expect any less? Finally, if youre working on growing something. A mid-market business or a small shop. A career. A reputation. A cause. Or a work of art. In short, if youre building a brand and a community around that brand, then we are here for you. Feel free to reach out. Mark DiMassimo Eric Yaverbaum eric@digitalatspeed.com

mark@digitalatspeed.com

 Mark DiMassimo One part social scientist, two parts creative marketer, DiMassimo is a writer, creative director, entrepreneur, experimenter-in-chief, CEO and founder of DIGO. After studying social sciences at Cornell and Purchase College, telemarketing advertising specialties, taking a band on the road, founding two successful companies and making tongues wag for more than a decade with his work for a whos who list of top direct and integrated Madison Avenue agencies, DiMassimo ate some bad pizza and had an epiphany: Id rather sweep the floors in a great place than rule a mediocre company! The same day, he bought a broom and presented himself for work at a promising agency hed read about in the press. Within a year, he rose to creative director of Kirshenbaum & Bond, building an integrated creative marketing group that, within three years, constituted more than half the agency and had become a multiple Effie Award winner, while helping the agency nearly triple in size. The trust and success hed built with Citibank AAdvantage Card client Leslie Doty while at Kirshenbaum & Bond really paid off later. Leslie took a new position with SunTrust Bank and chose DIGO then DiMassimo Brand Advertising -- in its first year, to oversee the SunTrust bankcards advertising. Marks personal mantra is, Keep using your powers for good. He believes that the power to influence people through media comes with a responsibility to limit harm and to actively promote good. DiMassimo makes passion for an organizations mission a key criterion for selecting clients. DIGO also does extensive pro bono work, including award-winning campaigns, identities and innovations for the Partnership for a Drug-Free America, The American Red Cross, the National Mental Health Association, and Dr. Mehmet Ozs HealthCorps, among others. DiMassimo is also co-founder of Tappening, which promotes healthy and economical tap water and which has been credited with reversing a two-decades- long upward trend in bottled water sales. He serves on the board of Rare Conservation, and on both the Advisory Board and Creative Review Committee of the Partnership for a Drug-Free America. DiMassimo is featured in the best-selling Leadership Secrets of the Worlds Most Successful CEOs, by Eric Yaverbaum. He is co-author of Inside the Minds: INNOVATION and Branding as an Advertising Strategy and is featured in the newly released Passion Brands, by Kate Newlin, for which he also wrote the foreword. A familiar face on CNBC, CNN, Bloomberg, and Fox, DiMassimo is often quoted in the media. Mark lives in Rye, New York and is the happy husband of Jill and the devoted father of three boys.

Eric Yaverbaum Eric Yaverbaum co-founded Jericho Communications in 1985, the 11th ranked PR firm in the country to work for and served as its president for 21 years before their highly touted and successful merger in 2005. Yaverbaum now runs New York City agency hot shop Ericho Communications (www.erichopr.com). He brings 31 years of experience to the practice of public relations and has earned a reputation for his unique expertise in strategic media relations, crisis communications, and media training. Eric has amassed extensive experience in counseling a wide range of clients in corporate, consumer, retail, technology and professional services markets and building brands such as Sony, Progressive Insurance,TCBY, Mrs. Fields, Subway Sandwiches, IKEA Home Furnishings, Dominos Pizza, H&M and American Express, among many others. He also is a frequent talk show guest on national and regional television and radio programs, including CBS This Morning, The Today Show, CNN, and Fox News, where he has appeared weekly since October of 2008. Yaverbaum wrote the best-selling book Ill Get Back to You (McGraw Hill 1998). He is also the author of the first and second editions of Public Relations For Dummies (Wiley Books) which is required reading in marketing classes at 57 universities in the United States. His third book, Leadership Secrets of the Worlds Most Successful CEOs (Dearborn) sold over one million copies and has been translated into 13 languages. His fifth book Everything Leadership (Adams) came out in May 2008 and he co-authored his sixth book with his daughter Cole, LIFES LITTLE COLLEGE ADMISSIONS INSIGHTS: Top Tips From The Most Acclaimed Guidance Counselors, (Morgan James 2009). His last book 60 Second Solutions Management came out this past December (D&C 2011). Yaverbaum currently serves as associate publisher of the four highest circulated business publications in the country, LI&Business (http://liandbusiness.com/magazine/october-2011), fb and Business (http://fbandbusiness.com/magazine/october-2011), Tweeting&Business (http://tweetingandbusiness.com/magazine/october-2011) and The Big G&Business (http://thebiggandbusiness.com/magazine/october-2011) with a combined circulation of just under 14 million readers. Eric was an active member of the highly selective Young Presidents Organization for over a decade, where he was the Chapter Chairman in NYC. His widely acclaimed Walk A Mile in My Shoes campaign helped push increased spending on stem cell research through the house and led to his being named one of the heroes of public relations industry by industry bible, PR Week in 2005. His current agency partnered with long time business partner DIGO to create a brand for tap water called Tappening (www.tappening.com). The company was launched to provide education to the general public about the consumption of bottled water and the detrimental causes it brings to our environment. Good Morning America proclaimed their water bottles one of the hottest products for 2008.