Tag Archives: leadership

Creative job skill: optimistic realism

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To be a great cre­ative, two things are gonna serve you well. One is opti­mism, and the other is realism.

The opti­mism isn’t hard to under­stand. You want to believe some­thing will work. And when you believe it’ll work, more of your heart and soul will go into it. You’ll love your work and it’ll be a lot bet­ter than if you hadn’t believed in it.

But opti­mism has a dark side. It’s called “igno­rance.” It hap­pens when weak peo­ple would rather not real­ize when an idea log­i­cally can’t work. Instead of fac­ing hard facts early, so they can react to them, they linger in folly.

Real­ism has its own demons. Many peo­ple who call them­selves “real­ists” aren’t real­ists at all. Rather, they’re using it to pro­tect them­selves from false expec­ta­tions so they don’t get hurt. It’s unhealthy and maybe even more destruc­tive than opti­mists (who are, at least, nice peo­ple to be around).

What we really need are opti­mistic real­ists: peo­ple who see things clearly, includ­ing the log­i­cal con­se­quences of an action (or inac­tion), and have enough goal-focus to move things forward.

Opti­mism gives real­ism a pur­pose. Real­ism forces opti­mism to bet­ter under­stand how its pur­pose is to be accom­plished. And when they both mature together, and in bal­ance, you don’t see petty neg­a­tiv­ity or vacant hap­pi­ness. Instead, you set the foun­da­tion for world-class cre­ative work.

How to tell if your business matters to people

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Photo cour­tesy of Mihai Andoni (www.idasoft.ro)

A key ques­tion I ask brands is “Why does your busi­ness mat­ter to peo­ple?” This is a val­ues ques­tion that unlocks the mys­tery of why our client started in the first place.

Many busi­ness own­ers strug­gle with this ques­tion. They think they have to be all things to all peo­ple. They think they need the biggest audi­ence for their mes­sage. And then they end up cre­at­ing a mes­sage that’s a mile wide and an inch deep because it neglects the “why.” This often results is cost-focused cus­tomers who are a poor fit for your com­pany, leav­ing you with the fad­ing mem­ory of the excite­ment you had when you first started. But here’s the cool thing: get­ting back to “why” can help you fall back in love with your busi­ness and ben­e­fit from the finan­cial suc­cess that comes with it.

Its starts with a sim­ple task: find out why you mat­ter. It clar­i­fies why peo­ple choose you over the busi­ness down the street that does exactly what you do (or so it seems) by ask­ing “what’s that thing that makes your cus­tomers care if you dis­ap­pear tomorrow?”

Here’s my sug­ges­tion: don’t answer this ques­tion your­self. Instead, find a way to get that infor­ma­tion from your cus­tomers. And make it a lit­tle more per­sonal than a ques­tion­naire. Cus­tomers have to be able to talk about why those things are impor­tant to them, and they need to be able to do it in their own words.

The point is find­ing out how to adver­tise based on what mat­ters to people.

But it’s not just for advertising’s sake. When you’re focus­ing on mak­ing people’s lives bet­ter, it imme­di­ately gives more impor­tance to the work you do. And what’s cooler than watch­ing your employ­ees make your cus­tomers’ lives bet­ter and feel good about the work they’re doing?

Because nobody ever goes into busi­ness just for the money, no mat­ter what they tell you. There’s always a “why” that goes with it, and makes every busi­ness dis­tinct and spe­cial. Find the why and you can con­fi­dently tell the world how your busi­ness makes life a lit­tle better.

Branding is about taking off the mask

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Some peo­ple talk about brand­ing as if it’s a thing you do to look a cer­tain way, like putting on a mask. But brand­ing, if done cor­rectly, is more anal­o­gous to tak­ing vitamins.

A mask changes the way you look. Vit­a­mins help you be who you are, only healthier.

A mask hides the true nature of things. But vit­a­mins don’t cover your blem­ishes. Instead, you’re left to deal with them and their root causes.

Mask­ing seems easy at first. But when peo­ple see a mask, they’re not see­ing the real you. Their expec­ta­tions are based on the mask, instead of real­ity. And when your real self can’t deliver on the mask’s promises, cus­tomers leave. After all, there was really no con­nec­tion keep­ing them with you in the first place.

Let me sum­ma­rize: An apple tree makes apples, because it’s an apple tree. If it tried to pre­tend to be a pear tree, it just wouldn’t be worth the effort, because, no mat­ter how much pear-colored paint it used, its fruit would still be apples.

Brand­ing isn’t about look­ing a cer­tain way. Instead, it’s about being a cer­tain way. Only then do you cul­ti­vate a look and feel that truly rep­re­sents the sub­stance you’re offer­ing to customers…substance that can con­tribute to mak­ing their lives better.

 

Why your advertising is managed differently than operations

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Oper­a­tions is about effi­ciency. Adver­tis­ing is about cre­ativ­ity along a vec­tor of value.

Here’s what I mean. In oper­a­tions, “best prac­tices” are okay. There’s no value in doing things in a more inter­est­ing way, unless is deliv­ers more effi­ciency. The func­tion of man­u­fac­tur­ing a wid­get does not improve sim­ply because it’s a dif­fer­ent way of doing things.

In adver­tis­ing, on the other hand, doing things dif­fer­ently mat­ters. It’s what sets you apart. Com­mu­ni­ca­tion allows you to involve cus­tomers in your story. Of course, you still have to offer value, which is the gift inside the package.

In tech inno­va­tion, it’s called being dif­fer­ent “along a vec­tor of value.”

So if you think your adver­tis­ing tal­ent (ser­vice provider) is using gim­micks, depend­ing solely on ROI mea­sures and is try­ing to make ads that look and sound like ads (which is the very def­i­n­i­tion of “uncre­ative”), then maybe they’d be bet­ter off in oper­a­tions than in creative.

Because these peo­ple are often much bet­ter at imple­ment­ing things that work (intel­li­gently copy­ing things that oth­ers are doing suc­cess­fully) and mea­sur­ing their effec­tive­ness than they are at get­ting to know the audi­ence and cap­tur­ing their imag­i­na­tion with a story about a rel­e­vant truth.

How brand thinking serves ethics

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Brand think­ing helps the adver­tis­ing indus­try look for long-term ben­e­fits for its clients (the adver­tis­ers). Agen­cies and cre­atives who think this way tend to push clients to pro­vide sub­stance to back up their claims.

In other words, those agen­cies pro­vide pres­sure for their clients to be com­pa­nies of integrity (com­pa­nies that are con­sis­tent and trust­wor­thy in an “inte­grated” way).

This has a cleans­ing influ­ence on busi­ness, because it demands an increas­ing level of gen­uine­ness and then shares it with soci­ety, cre­at­ing long-term, earned trust and lead­er­ship. And this is good for con­sumers, and it’s good for the economy.

Covey’s Golden Egg

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Cul­ti­vat­ing your brand is like grow­ing a golden goose. By keep­ing it healthy and work­ing, you get con­sis­tent golden eggs. But if you start neglect­ing the goose and start try­ing to force it to make more eggs, its health can decline.

It seems like we do this a lot with our brand. We stand for some­thing, but then we end up sell­ing out our brand with unwise trans­ac­tions that result in tem­po­rary gain. We run down our goose by try­ing to take more from it than it can give.

We need to make sure we under­stand what it means to brand, and how that pro­vides value to peo­ple. It’s dif­fer­ent for every com­pany. But if we don’t have good the­ory about why our brand works, we’re unlikely to be able to make good deci­sions about how to cul­ti­vate it.