What it means to work here.

Every company has a culture, but B.R.A.V.E. marketers actively build culture. They honor, guide and transmit the culture through thoughtful, inventive and dramatic gestures combined with a ritualistic consistency. At DiMassimoGoldstein, we have a lot of ways of doing this. Rituals like our Monday all agency lunches and Thursday night "group therapy." The ringing of the bell to celebrate new business. Our own way of speaking. And various "sacred" documents, that outline our common values and passions. Here's one of them:

WHAT IT MEANS TO WORK HERE: When you work here, you are creating a business that’s planning to grow. We are system creators more than we are system followers. We are system killers and simplifiers even more than we are system creators. • If you’re happy here, you probably relish ambiguity more than a little bit for the opportunity it affords you to invent and create yourself and your environment anew. Here, you may not have a roadmap, and even if you do, it will likely be torn up and redrawn several times. And if you’re really successful here, chances are you will be the one doing the tearing and redrawing. • You’re a big picture thinker and simplifier. You kill clutter and identify the important thing. • If you’re here, you’re building not just a book, reel or website, you’re building a brand and a business reputation that you can be proud to be associated with. You think from the audience’s point of view and you expect to make them FEEL something. You hate to confuse; you love to clarify. You’re not satisfied with clever, you want to connect and persuade. You want to involve. • You want to achieve “it” -- and “it” is such a high standard that it defies permanent definition. • If you’re all about “I” you won’t last here. This is a “we” place. We’re competitive, but we all love great ideas, work and teamwork so much that we easily put aside the competition for collaboration when the comes to make great ideas even better, • If you’re not resilient, you’re not going to make it here. Nothing is easy in business. The best parties won’t be the ones you’re invited to; they’ll be the ones you crash. Your great ideas will die and you’ll need to come right back with better ideas. Ideas nobody asked for. Solutions nobody thought they needed. We’ll take a step back for every two steps forward and sometimes it will seem like the math is working the other way. But you never give up. • Because the bottom line is you love this. You love it like it’s your play and your hobby as well as your work and your salvation. This is not to say that you don’t have a life, but this is probably the most compelling part of it. • You will need to be committed to personal growth because the secret of your current success will not be enough at the next level. You will love challenge, you will be ambitious, and you will believe in your heart as well as your head that great brand building and great advertising makes the client’s brand emerge. • If you’re here, you were chosen with an obsessive-compulsive level of care and then more than likely put through a testing phase matched only by Marine basic training and certain reality TV shows. While no hiring track record is perfect, or can be, our ability to find, hire and develop our kind of people has been our greatest strength. So, if you’re here, there’s a good chance you will thrive.

When Apple Was Over.

Ten years ago...

No one said, "I've got to have 10,000 songs in my pocket." Or, "I need to Google that." There was no Viagra. The three dollar cup of coffee was an obscure phenomenon.

People found their groceries in stores and their mates in bars and no one said, "I think I could do better on the Internet." People got their videos at the corner Blockbuster and they liked it! No one let their fingers do the walking through the Yellow Pages searching for a "Strip Tease Aerobics" class.

• Phone numbers were in a big book that came two ways, yellow or white.
• Directions came from gas station attendants.
• Books could only be bought in book stores or borrowed from libraries.
• Auctions were for the rich.
• Travel agents booked trips.
• Stocks were traded by professionals.
• Doctors knew more than their patients.
• Presidents consulted the CIA, not CNN.

Ten years ago, Apple was over and Google wasn't even a glimmer!

• MTV was a place to watch videos.
• HBO was a place to watch movies.
• No one thought they needed a thirty dollar tube of toothpaste.
• Buzz was for bees.
• Advocacy was for causes.
• Viral was for viruses.
• Branded entertainment was about entertainment, not branding.
• Advertising was advertising, and everything else wasn't.

And ten years ago, the world didn't need a new agency. But we didn't wait to be asked. Our passion for working with the visionaries who were creating the future demanded action, not talk. Through a decade of ad trends, long before the industry started talking about it, we had done it. Because advantage comes from preempting trends, not from following them. And our clients visions deserved the effort.

In decade two, we're speeding up.

No one asked for this.

More Proof Design Is Here To Stay.

"Designing is such a prestigious profession these days that there seems to be more of it than there are things to design."

The interesting thing about the above quote is that it comes from a 1963 edition of Time Magazine. Yes, back in 1963 some people were already worried that design was getting too popular! Nearly 45 years ago!! The rest of the article follows. The design details may have changed, but the point is still relevant. It's the rare great designer and the rare visionary brand that uses "un-design" to delete the extraneous and give us products that work and are beautiful. You know who they are. Here's what Time had to say in 1963, with a timeless quote from Charles Eames...

"The result is overdesign, bringing more that is really less, heralding improvements that do not improve. Recent examples:
∙BUMPERS. Once there were bumpers to guard the fenders; now the bumpers seem far too delicate to be bumped. Some, in fact, have so many knife-edges and knobs that they act more like can openers than bumpers. As for the friendly push in time of stress, drivers have to be careful that pusher and pushee match up bumper-wise. One solution (by Dodge): bumper guards to guard the bumpers—and the bumpee.
∙DISPOSALS. Though they were meant to provide an easy system for getting rid of garbage, most disposals are such picky eaters that an accompanying list spells out what must be otherwise disposed of. "There you are," says ARCHITECTURAL FORUM Managing Editor Peter Blake, "with a paper bag full of disgusting garbage and find you must go through it piece by piece to get out metals, bottles, plastics, et al."
∙FAUCETS. With rare exceptions, bathroom faucets all used to turn one way—counterclockwise for on, clockwise off—something a man with soap in his eyes could rely on as he groped for the hot water faucet in the shower. Then the designers got the modern impulse to get symmetrical, and devised matching handles that turned in opposite directions, toward or away from each other. No one knows which way is which until he tries it.

Sometimes in the same bathroom the hot turns on in one direction on one fixture, in the opposite direction on another.
∙FOAM-RUBBER CUSHIONS. Neither soft nor comfortable, the new cushions spring disconcertingly back into their original inhospitable form, seem visually as uninviting as a concrete slab with the un-touched-by-human-bottom appearance of an ad in a homemakers' magazine.
∙VENETIAN BLINDS. A centuries-old and efficient design, the Venetian blind has been tampered with by improvers, who have divided it so that top and bottom can be tilted separately (who needs it?), and the adjusting cord run through a snap spring. Result: they jam.
Many of the better designers view the trend with distaste. Concludes Designer Charles Eames: "There is a danger when the better mousetrap is better at catching people than at catching mice. And that's the trap we are finding ourselves in right now."

Time Magazine
April 3, 1963

The Tortoise and the Hare, Circa 2007.

There once was a speedy hare who bragged about how fast he could run. Tired of hearing him boast, Slow and Steady, the tortoise, challenged him to a race. All the animals in the forest gathered to watch.
Hare ran down the road for a while and then paused to rest. He looked back at Slow and Steady and cried out, "How do you expect to win this race when you are walking along at your slow, slow pace?"
Hare stretched himself out alongside the road and fell asleep, thinking, "There is plenty of time to relax." Then his cell phone rang.
It was his sponsor. “Get off your ass, Hare.” Said he, “Surely you are aware that they are making hares faster then we can sponsor them. And, by the way, I think I saw a cheetah in my boss’s office just last week.”
Hare ran back out to the track, nearly running tortoise down as he passed him in a blur.
Slow and Steady walked and walked. He never, ever stopped until…he got an instant message from his sponsor…
“DPLY CONCERNED HERE.” It said. “YR LK OF PRGRSS VIOLATES YR CNTRCT. RUN R WE SUE.”
Tortoise continued in his steady pace, secure in the knowledge that his strategy would work in the end. He hadn’t traveled twenty feet before he was served with his papers by a clever chameleon, who just a moment ago had been a very credible rock.
“Slow and steady wins the race.” Tortoise protested, speaking slowly and steadily.
“I’m sorry,” Pronounced the race organizer, a woodpecker with a determined beak. “Only sponsored animals are permitted on the course.”
Tortoise, though he descended from a long line of successful racers, was forced to find work in the restaurant business. After a painful adjustment, he did finally achieve a modicum of success, as a soup.
Hare crossed the finish line with his cell phone ringing.
“I’m sorry to say this,” said his sponsor, as if he was not sorry to say it at all. “Cheetah is in, you are out.”
“But I won!” Protested Hare.
“Yes,” said his sponsor. “But you are not married to my boss’s sister.
After that, Hare always reminded himself, "Don't brag about your lightning pace, for Well Connected won the race!"

Kurt Vonnegut is Dead

Sad. Kurt Vonnegut is dead. I remember how much I identified with him and with his characters, who were little more than quizzical dust particles on a cosmic breeze. In fact, their lives felt like my life – and by that I mean the life of a member of the TV audience – buffeted about through time, moods, and all manner of inanity.

I was born in 1962. The first long-running TV series I remember was the Vietnam War. It was presented as a farce, with mortal consequences. I lived in a working class neighborhood, with an assortment of immigrant and second and third generation Catholics, fighting people, among them a former Hitler Youth, many still working out pathologies from WWII. I knew I would one day have to decide whether to go to war or evade the draft. A monumental, life and death, kill-or-be-killed-or-don’t-kill-and-be-imprisoned-or-exiled-existential decision that I needed to be prepared for by the age of eighteen. I knew I would face this decision alone.

No doubt, this is what made Kurt Vonnegut’s characters and his world so attractive. And the rest of TV too, in the age before the remote. One was transported through time, the object of events, never the subject. No life and death, kill or don’t kill, live or die, right or wrong, character-defining decisions need really be made. In the end we are just the pawns of space-time anyway. We are merely the abused audience for a cosmic joke told for no particular reason by no one in particular.

I fell in love with Kurt Vonnegut in the early 70s. I wanted to be Kurt Vonnegut. My first short stories weren’t much like his, but the protagonist who is little more than a hapless witness to insanity certainly was there.

By 1984, Vonnegut had made a serious attempt at suicide, and my own crippling anxiety had sidetracked my nascent music and writing careers.

Part of the cure involved ceasing to see myself as a Vonnegutean anti-hero. Though I never was forced to make that life and death decision about going to war, due to the elimination of the draft in the early ‘70s, I still needed to face up to what I believed and what I would give my life for. And little by little, I discovered that it did matter, and that people could and did make a difference.

Vonnegut himself was no Billy Pilgrim after all. It takes fierce will and an almost insane commitment to become the kind of writer and figure that Vonnegut was. He was actively, aggressively, assertively himself despite every kind of discouragement the world has to offer and in spite of all enticements too.

C.S. Lewis said, “We read to know we are not alone.” At a time when I felt very much alone, I discovered Vonnegut. Though his world became an anchor that I ultimately cut loose, or at least learned to put in perspective, at one time it was a lifeline.
And through Vonnegut, I fell in love with writing. Short sentences. Little words. Wit in the juxtapositions. He lit a fire in me – a fire to connect. I now use it to pursue a career he would have hated, but that I absolutely love.

So it goes.

Health, Wealth & The Pursuit of Happiness.

Check this out: http://www2.le.ac.uk/ebulletin/news/press-releases/2000-2009/2006/07/nparticle.2006-07-28.2448323827

What we have here is something new. Something potentially important. It's the first ever "global projection of subjective well-being." In other words, it's a worldwide happiness map.

Check out who's happy and who's not.

Now let's get into why. It turns out the factor that correlates most strongly to happiness is HEALTH (.7). Close behind are WEALTH (.6) and access to EDUCATION (.6).

As you'll see, here in North America, we sit in one of the world's great oceans of subjective well-being. In addition, our population is aging as baby boomers begin to reach retirement age. What is emerging is an increased focus on HEALTH and WEALTH.

At DiMassimoGoldstein, we've increased our focus on health (MaxMD and GoSMILE , among others) and wealth (various financial services brands).

We believe that by putting the customer first, by focusing on the customer's satisfaction, we can help our clients give customers what they want so the customer will give the client what the client wants. That's how brands emerge today. Sounds simple, and it can be. But that doesn't make it easy. It takes courage, skill and clarity of mind along with that rare ability -- listening -- to get the corporate and career agendas out of the way, and put the customer in the center.

Then it takes the best of social science and human insight to answer the question, "What does the customer really want?"
And great ingenuity to deliver it across all channels and fundamentally in the product or service itself.

When we do that, we're delivering more happiness to more people. Jeremy Bentham would approve. Mom would also be proud.

Cheers,

Mark

Howard Luck Gossage said...

Howard Luck Gossage said “I think a successful ad man has to have something missing in his character, just like a successful actor does.”
I have a very strong need to please. I have a rather strong tendency to please through the strategy of appreciation. My compulsive curiosity is an aid here. To appreciate, one must first understand. I am driven to do the work of understanding. It isn’t work to me at all.
This need to please is, perhaps, my hole. This, in itself, isn’t a problem. In fact, it’s been the hot poker spurring me on to ad success.
The problem is, I’m spending too much time with partners and employees, followed by clients – I’m understanding, appreciating, and pleasing the wrong people.
What is needed is to repeatedly get me in the room with the target audience. I need to spend most of my time with the people I must please to succeed for the client. I need to orchestrate the same for my people.
I am driven to connect with an audience. The target audience is the missing ingredient. That’s really all there is.
I reject award show judges as my audience. Much as I respect my enlightened competitors, clients and colleagues, I also reject them as my audience.
I require a process of discovering my audience in order to do what I do. It can’t be second hand. I can’t just read someone else’s research. I need to see, hear, touch, feel, converse with them. I need to get to know them. I need to try out my material on them, play a lot of rooms, die out there, and evolve a routine, like a stand-up. Except that my routine is a campaign. That is and always has been the answer for me.
I have no other genius than that. It is the only path for me.
Last night, accepting his Oscar, Forrest Whittaker said that he does what he does to connect with...everybody. I identify with that motivation, with that need. And I know that the way to make it work is to connect with somebody. And so, I think, does he.

B2B or Not2B

I didn't sleep well last night, which is strange. I always sleep well. But, yesterday I was a guest judge at the CEBA Awards, the American Business Media Association's Award Show for B2B Advertising.

The experience was disturbing, provocative, inspiring; in short, the sort of thing that might keep you up at night. Note: I said "the experience" not "the ads."

We judges unanimously agreed that the overwhelming majority of submitted ads had none of these powerful qualities. In fact, most executions had none of the virtues one usually expects of advertising. Virtues like clear communication, distinctive branding, human insight, stopping power, strong writing and design, or anything even as remotely engaging as an idea.

Yes, there was some good work - a few bronze, silver, and gold needles in a tower of moldy hay. The voting completed, all of the judges gathered around ABM's conference room table to ponder the ugly step-sister status of B2B and ask ourselves, "Why?"

Later, I tossed and turned through my rare night of insomnia. There was only one thought that wouldn't let my eyes roll back:

WHAT AN OPPORTUNITY!!!


B2B Advertising can be HEROIC, MOVING, INSPIRING, BUZZY, BRANDED, SMART, IMPACTFUL, ASPIRATIONAL, INVENTIVE, STYLISH, HUMAN, CREATIVE.

Learn From Challenger Brands

Apple. Virgin. Southwest. JetBlue. Crunch. Snapple. Washington Mutual. What do these brands have in common? They're challengers, and successful ones at that.

They've mastered the art of zagging where others have zigged. They've taken on the goliaths of their industries and come out on top. The truth is, it's a challenging world out there, and every marketer these days needs to be a successful challenger or go down.

Market leaders can be challenger brands, too. Look at Citibank and IBM. By becoming their own best competition and continuously reinventing themselves they've continued to innovate and grow.

Here's what challengers do differently:

- The top dog is involved. Intimately. (Bring in your boss as a collaborator and ally. It's the challenger "way.")

- The advertising conversation and the business conversation are the same conversation.

- The work is seen as the ultimate weapon for conquering the competition.

- The brand is seen as a precious asset and the ultimate defensive fortification against copycats and commoditisers.

- The vision of the top dog drives the advertising.

- The vision of the agency and the vision of the client are complimentary and synergistic.

- Decisions get made in meetings, not just in between.

Our Creative Brief

Those of you who have worked with us know how much effort goes into our creative briefing documents. So I thought I’d share our own brand brief here, and invite your comments. It’s a work in progress, as are we all. I love the questions of the creative brief because they seem to me to be the big questions of life. “Why are we advertising? (i.e. Why are we here?) Who are we talking to? What do we know about them that will help? What’s the main thought...” The creative brief is where the rubber meets the road. It’s the end product of everything that comes before and the platform for all that comes after. It so simple, yet potentially so powerful. You don’t ordinarily share a creative brief with the world. But we asked ourselves another of those big questions, “Why not?” And, this time, we couldn’t come with anything that outweighed the value we expect to received.

So, here it is...
Creative Brief
Date: 2/7/07 8:50 PM
Project: DiMassimoGoldstein Brand Campaign, beginning with Credentials.
Brand Mgrs: Mark DiMassimo
Creative Team: TBD

Why are we advertising?
Simple answer: We want clients to choose us.
Big picture answer: We need to stand out from the hundreds of other brand consultancies, design firms and advertising agencies and attract clients to us by demonstrating that we can do for ourselves what they hope we will do for them.
Who are we talking to?
In a word, Clients. Prospects. Consultants. Hires. The press. Our mothers.
What do we know about them that can help?
They are afraid of failure. This fear is realistic. The average tenure of a CMO is 18 months and has been declining for years. They would be smart to go into operations or general management, and many have tried…but what can they do? They’re built to be marketing people. In their own minds, they’re too creative for regular business jobs, but not creative enough join a creative department. They’re extremely social and get a lot of gratification from being part of something. They want to be part of the creative process, they want to inspire it and they want to be inspired by it. That’s fun and feels like being alive. They want to get it right. They know how precarious this can be. They are under unrealistic pressure to show results fast. Everyone seems to have an opinion about what they do. And everyone’s spouse does too. Often the people they work for don’t really understand what they do. People who don’t know what reasonable expectations are. The best of them are translators, from the language of humanity and emotions to the metrics of business and back again. Most look for an agency that can do the same. Chances are, they’ve been burned by a combative relationship with an agency in the past. Their most common complaint: my agency isn’t PROACTIVE in bringing me them ideas and solutions. They’ve been disappointed. They’ve come up empty handed. So, they dot their I’s and cross their T’s. But they can’t help being dreamers.
They admire the Richard Bransons, Ian Schragers, Steven Jobs, Martha Stewarts, Anita Roddicks and Phillipe Starcks; the creative mavericks that make good art good business and make it look so fun. Sometimes when they’re with their agency, brainstorming, noodling creative work or out at a shoot, that’s exactly what they feel.
Turn offs: failure, invisibility, embarrassments. Turn ons: confidence, competence.
What’s the main thought we want them to know and to repeat?
EMERGE!
Most brands fail. Others stagnate. A few emerge as leaders. Emerge!
What are some ways in?
BRAVE MARKETERS – these are the marketers who emerge victorious.
BRAVE has a particular meaning to us. It means they are able to
“Be Real And Visionary Everywhere.” Every time. This makes every single dollar work harder, by making every necessity build both brand and business at once.
Starter creative ideas:
In our conference room, we have mugs. When hot stuff is poured into them a message in heat sensitive ink appears on the lip. It says, “Emerge!” We use a similar technique on our business cards – when held our message appears.
There’s no logo outside our front door, or at least it looks that way from the turn in the hall. Only when you get close to the door does the logo and message emerge, etched in the metal façade.
Our decks use gels to let important information emerge. Our website uses card tricks and levitations. Our mailings use pop-ups and other techniques to represent our promise of brand emergence.
What are some support points?
We’ve worked with more than our fair share of BRAVE MARKETERS. Doug Levine of Crunch. Steven Jobs of Apple. Howard Schultz of Starbucks. Ted Waitt of Gateway. JetBlue. GoSMILE. McKinsey. Island. Citibank. Snapple.
The list is long. We’ve been in a rare position to study this sort of client and we’ve learned a few things…
The striking thing about heroically successful visionary entrepreneurs – the Steve Jobs, Howard Schultzs, Richard Bransons, Ted Waitts, Doug Levines, Martha Stewarts and David Neehlemans of the world – is their ability to combine utter realism with full-strength vision in everything they do. They’re able to “Be Real And Visionary Everywhere.” Every time
Realism and bold vision aren’t’ opposites. Brave marketers see the bigger picture.
BRAVE MARKETERS create an environment in which realism and vision can creatively coexist. Howard Shultz has said, “I spend next to nothing on advertising. I spend my money on training.” Steven Jobs builds innovation teams with their own fierce identities.

When truly invested, nearly everyone wants their organization to emerge as extraordinary, successful, worthy and winning,
Yet, most brands, companies, people, policies and ideas don’t emerge. Instead, they disappear into the clutter. A rare few make it to the next level, then stagnate or decline. Most literally disappear. But some brands consistently outperform. They emerge, from start-up to challenger to thought-leader to icon.
What’s the tone?
Inspiring. Intelligent. Sophisticated. Visionary. Realistic.
What is mandatory?
What’s the shortest path to making a difference with this campaign?
1) The credentials and agency identity elements.
2) The Website
3) The Space
4) The Emergence campaign