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.
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Thursday, May 17, 2007
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.
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.
Saturday, May 5, 2007
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 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
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