We’ve been doing dimensional mailers for years. Long before it was hip.

If you don’t know what a dimensional is, it’s simple. Something you send out that has a goodie inside. Not just a flat piece of mail.

The principal is simple and there are a million ways to execute.

One of the old stories about dimensionals came from Time Magazine. For years, they did a direct mail campaign for new subscriptions. They used to put a thin, tiny pencil in the envelope with “TIME” stamped on the side.

They tested it inside and out and always got a bump in response with the pencil, so they kept doing it.
Why did it work? Well, first off that little lump in the envelope got people to actually OPEN the letter. Once they opened it, they got a kick out of the little pencil.

And what’s the best thing to have in your hand if you’re going to fill out a subscription form?

A pencil.

The problem that one of the agency folks told me at a conference once, was that a lot of people used the little pencil to fill out the form. The pencil was so think and light it was really hard to read the subscription card.

So that was the face of big-scale dimensionals back in the early 70’s.

Things have changed quite a bit since then.

You don’t see a lot of dimensionals for inexpensive consumer items. You might see something for expensive cars and such, but the cost of dimensionals keep them to B2B or high end consumer.

I’ve got a LOT of stories about dimensionals because we’ve done so many of them. I’ll start out with one we did a couple years back for a software company here in Austin. They produced technology for running call centers.

Sounds like a big yawn, but we did some cool stuff with it.

We came up with a campaign based around the ides of “Is your call center ready to rock?”

The plan was to send out the dimensional to 200 prospects and invite them to a 40 minute webinar pitch. If they sat through the webinar, we’d send them a goodie.

Well, the creative did the trick. We sent out a box with the “ready to rock” headline on the box. Inside was a printed shirt (compressed into the shape of a guitar), some guitar strings, picks and sales pitch.

If they responded and attended the whole webinar, they would be sent a real electric guitar!

We figured getting a 10% response was pretty good. Afterall, a lot of direct marketers are thrilled to get over .5%.

We dropped the box and waited for the Webinar.

We were shocked. We ended up with 60 attendees out of the original 200. We weren’t prepared. We only had 20 guitars (and yes, they were cheap $60 guitars). I had to scramble to locate another 40 guitars and get the logo’s silkscreened on the front.

So it could be considered a huge success. We got three times our prediction in response. The leads turned out to be good as well, since they were qualified and had spent the time to go through the webinar. Giving a prospect a $60 guitar to sit through a sales pitch that could net in a $100K+ sale is no problem. Client happy. Agency happy. Dimensionals rock.

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Back around 1995, I was working for an agency here in Austin. This was the dawning of the tech boom. We didn’t really know it at the time, but it was really starting to happen. The agency I worked for did a lot of tech work so I was naturally buried in it.

So we got a call from the local paper, the Austin American-Statesman. There is only one daily paper in this town, so they’ve got a bit of a monopoly.

Well, this whole internet thing was starting to wind up. There were no blogs, very few web sites and not a lot to do on the web. This was before most of our tech clients even had Web sites.

Really. Hard to believe eh?

Well, the Statesman was owned by Cox, which is based in Atlanta. They had experimented with a Web site about the city. Don’t remember the name, but it was somewhat successful, and the first site of its kind. It was membership only at the time, meaning you had to pay to get access to the information.

Remember, this was 1995. A million years ago.

And if you wanted to find out what was going on, you opened the newspaper.

The good folks at Cox though, why not use this newfangled internet thing to get information out and sell advertising.

So they decided that Austin was such a hip town that they should throw up a web site here and see if it worked. They even had a potential name.

AustinCyberLimits.com.

Really.

AustinCyberLimits.com

So they wanted to hire some hotshot local agency to brand and market this great new invention. They invited my agency and several agencies to pitch.

This is where it gets fun.

We had a few weeks to prepare for our pitch and we were offered a time to pitch. I chose 10:30 AM. That’s the magic hour. Everyone has had time to get their morning together, their brains are fresh and it’s before lunch. I knew our biggest contender was coming on right after lunch, so I had a plan.

I put together a great pitch. And I followed all my own advice. I made a different noise and I kept the ideas fancy and the layouts rough.

We had all the management of the Statesman as well as several corporate Cox people. Probably over a dozen of them and a handful of us.

We did our usual pontification and such and I started throwing up my ideas. I had dozens and dozens of ideas, all along the same line and part of a big campaign. They were simple, pithy, cleaver sayings with simple art. All aimed at building a brand for this new site that everyone in Austin would feel comfortable with, and could see as a place to find anything they need about my town.

Now this is where things got fun.

Right at around 11:30, I put up the last piece of art.

The headline was “More links than Elgin Sausage.”

Everyone laughed and the doors flew open. In came the rest of the agency, all carrying platters of Austin’s best BBQ. We brought in 50 pounds of food. Ribs, brisket, sausage, beans, coleslaw… The works. Everyone was blown away that we’d brought in a lunch feast, all tied to the last piece of creative.

We all dug in and ate like wild animals.

Everyone stuffed themselves.

And because all our ideas were up on the wall, we all talked about our favorites. The clients were all in love with the ideas and all had their imaginations fired up.

Then we cleaned up, packed up and left amid smiles and handshakes.

Well, remember our biggest rival was coming in at 1:00.

They came in and did their best to keep everyone awake. It was a dismal failure. The ideas were flat and the pitch was a yawn. Of course, their ideas weren’t nearly as good as ours, but there was the fact that everyone had a pound of BBQ in their systems and nobody could think of anything but taking a nap.

So I played dirty. I cheated. Yes, it was terrible. I gave the client great ideas and fed them well. A few years later, I talked with one of the clients that was in the meeting. I asked him about the next pitch and how it was. He said he was too full to care, but he thought it was terrible.

Got em.

And yes, we got the account and it was a very successful launch and campaign. We branded it and even talked them out of the original name. I came up with the name that stuck. I called it Austin360.com. It’s still Austin360.com and the idea has popped up in dozens of companies.

So what have we learned here.

1. Always give your pitch in the morning. Not first thing. Let people get their act together and then come in. You’ll get them at their best part of the day. If it’s going long, order in lunch.

2. Never present creative in the afternoon.

3. Present your creative, throw up your ideas, then ask the most vocal person in the room what they think and let them start to talk. If the ideas are good, they’ll say so. If they suck, pitch them the Token Ring Nano-Meter Money-Eater.*

*You’ll have to dig around for THAT story.

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I’ll be writing much more about this as time goes on. But I’ll do something quick for now.

Herobracelets.org.

This is an idea I had back in the 2004 election. I was watching both sides play the war for their own benefit. Then I did some research and found out that military families got $12K as a death benefit when a soldier or Marine was killed in action. So here are the candidates postulating while the guys getting shot at got next to nothing.

It pissed me off. And people do things when they get pissed off.

So I threw up a little web site, found a manufacturer that could make me a small batch of bracelets. And I contacted the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund and pledged to give them $2 for each bracelet we could sell.
I send out a lot of email telling people about the project and within a week, Associated Press wrote about it. We went from 5 bracelets a day 75. Then 150. Then 200. Then every news organization in the country did stories on the project. We got orders for 1,600 bracelets the first day Fox News did a story.

It’s been pretty amazing.

And I’ve got a lot to say about this in the future, but for right now, here’s a simple thought.

If something is pissing you off, you CAN do something about it. You can start a business that can help. I did it. So can you. Get off your butt and do something.

But first click over to www.herobracelets.org

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Some famous ad guy once said “There’s no such thing as safe advertising…” or maybe he was a little hipper and said it as “Safe advertising isn’t”. I wish I knew who it was that said that. I’ve done Web searches and not found anything.

But I firmly believe that. I’ve never seen a truly safe ad campaign actually accomplish anything. Generally, being safe means you’re being dull.

So why do clients play it safe? What are they afraid of?

When clients hire us, they know we don’t play it safe. They know we’ll present ideas they never would haveconsidered, and some of those ideas might scare the hell out of them.

And if they’re smart, they’ll let us use those ideas.

So think back. Think of something you’d consider a very safe ad campaign. Didn’t think you’d remember one.

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This is a huge question. And one that I’ll answer a bunch of different times in different ways.

But for now, I’ll tell one theory that everyone seems to be able to relate to.

Imagine you are in a room full of 10,000 people all trying to sell something. Suddenly, a prospect walks in and everyone starts yelling and screaming for his attention.

You do something very simple. You get up on the table and take off your clothes.

The room goes quiet and the prospect looks right at you.

Granted, maybe it’s a disturbing visual, but you won. While the rest of the world all did the same thing, you made a different noise and you got the notice.

The idea of making a different noise, is to me, the heart of good advertising. We’re constantly pummeled by messages. There is advertising everywhere so to get through, you have to really be good.

And if you can’t be really good, throw a lot of money at the problem. They both work pretty well. Enough money can make about any advertising work eventually, but we never have that option.

Traditionally, many Ad Ranch clients have been startup technology companies. They are in a hurry and don’t have a lot of money. So that means we have to be good the first time and move quickly. There isn’t a lot of room for error or guesses. And because our clients often have very solid competition, we have to get to the heart of the offering, decide what the customer needs to know and communicate that offer in a way that will get noticed.

And we usually do it for a fraction of what a soda company would spend on one nights commercials in one city.

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I moved to Austin in 1994 in order to escape LA. I’d grown up in LA and I was getting pretty iffy about the place. I remember walking my first born around the block and seeing a gangster car cruise by and my first thought was, “Where would I duck if I heard shooting.”

While that though might be disturbing, what was really disturbing was that it WASN’T disturbing. It was just a basic, everyday thought.

It was then that I knew it was time to bail on the city of my youth.

Austin is a great town. But don’t move here because of me. Really.

I came here to work as a creative director for an agency. Stayed a couple years and left. I had no real plan when I left. I just left.

I came home and told my wife that I’d quit. There was panic and gnashing of teeth, but within a week I started getting calls for projects. Pretty soon I hired a full time designer to work in the house with me. Then another. Then it was time to find an office.

I looked around for office space and realized I hated office space. But I DID find a cool little lake cabin a few minutes from the house on Lake Travis. It was on a couple acres of land at the back of a quiet cove, covered with huge oaks. We bought the place and turned it into The Ad Ranch.

It’s been a great decision.

It’s a great place to think and it’s nice being off the grid. When we come in each morning, there might be deer by the deck, or ducks or squirrels or any number of goofy creatures doing their thing in front of the big windows. It beats looking over a freeway or parking lot.

Us creative types like this sort of thing.

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This concept came to life some years back when I was working in LA for a large international ad agency. It was a typical big agency. A bunch of wacky creatives squirrled away on one side of the office and suits on the other. The suits went to the client, got bad information, gave it to the creatives who did beautiful comps that will win them design awards and the client picked the one with their favorite color.

Everything missed the mark. It was time consuming, expensive and wasteful.

So I started demanding that I went to client meetings with the suits.

This had two benefits. First, I got to get a real feel for what the client wanted and needed, and second I got to hang out at a major entertainment studio and get a free lunch in a swanky Burbank restaurant every time.

Swanky lunches rock.

But it really started working. Instead of us doing a lot of great ideas and comping up three to tight layouts for the client to pick from, I came back to the next meeting with 30 ideas that I taped to their windows. Big, rough ideas on cheap paper. Not three beautifully produced layouts on expensive black mattboard.

It was a stroke of genius.

Suddenly, we were getting projects done faster, better and cheaper. The client loved the process and the agency was more profitable.

Who woulda thought.

So I’ve been working that way ever since. The Ad Ranch has a box of black mattboard collecting dust in the back. We never use it.

I get the clients in a room and get them thinking and talking about their problem. I pull out all their thoughts and make a lot of notes. Then I go off and do my up-all-night thing and bring in a big pad full of ideas.
In the 20+ years I’ve been presenting creative this way, I’ve only failed to solve the problem once.

I will never forget that.

It was a client in San Jose. Big tech company selling Token Ring Nodes. Nobody knows what a token ring is now, but they were hot stuff back then. So I created a room full of ideas, flew up to San Jose and did my Big Pitch.

It failed miserably.

Nothing worked. Client hated everything. I was in a panic. I was sweating. My life flashed yadda yadda yadda.

So I whipped out my felt pen and started scratching out something that just popped into my head. I thought they’d laugh me out of the room but I didn’t care.

They loved it.

I came up with a monster called the Token Ring Nanometer Money Eater.

I know. It’s sounds idiotic.

But it really was a good idea. The only thing a token ring had going for it was it shaved a fraction of a second off a transaction. So my monster made the point pretty well. We did the campaign, it was very successful and they made a lot of money.

If I had walked in with three comps, they woulda sent me packing or picked one and it would have failed. Either way, the best solution wouldn’t have seen the light of day.

With my Wallpaper Sessions, we get to the best idea. If a concept works scratched out on cheap newsprint with a magic marker by someone with pretty rudimentary drawing skills, it’ll kick major marketing butt once it’s made beautiful with the best in modern technology.

So I will keep presenting my creative that way. And maybe other agencies will steal my idea and do the same thing. I know it’s stupid to give away the secret sauce, but what the heck. Maybe you’re a prospective client who’ve just found my ramblings by accident and you realize reviewing creative the old fashioned way is a waste of time and money and you’ll call us to come solve your problems (the phone number, by the way, is 512-266-3697).

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In reality, I’m not really sure. It’s in there somewhere, the hard part is coaxing it out on a dependable basis.

I think the one thing I learned from all my design and art classes is the ability to create, not when I wanted to, but when I had to. This is commerce after all. You don’t get the luxury of doing everything on your personal timeframe. When a client pays you for a solution, you HAVE to create a solution. It’s been the same in every creative endeavor since art was first paid for. When you get a commission, you move.

Same thing in advertising.

What I learned in art school was this:
1. When you get paid for art, it’s a product and you have to deliver. Don’t get too caught up in it. If you are going to make your living creating art, you do your very best, create something worthy of the commerce that prompted it and walk away. Your art is not a precious child you coddle and raise to maturity. Once it’s done, you move on to the next project.
2. Keep a thick skin. I cant tell you how many times in art school we would put our heart and soul into a piece only to put it up in front of the room and watch the whole class spend the next hour telling you what crap it is. And chances are, they were right. But nonetheless, it became a feeding frenzy of “who can rip this clown the furthest”. There was no mercy.

It’s the same in advertising.

So many times a client would tear up great creative and then wonder how you take it so well. I tell them about art school. They don’t seem to understand, but it doesn’t matter.

Remember, it’s commerce. You are creating something to solve a problem. You’re being paid for it and that’s the central issue.
If the ideas don’t work, go do more. They are ideas and there are an infinite number of them in your head. You wont run out. You’ll just get bored.

3. You need to create when you need to create.

Sometimes I get an assignment that seems like there is no good answer. It’s easy to rely on cheap cliché’s (picture of a royal flush with the headline “XYZ Product Co. Your winning hand…”), but you can’t. Not if you’re taking your job seriously.

You need to learn how to get yourself into that place where you can create. There have been a lot of studies on this. Call a your muse or whatever. To me it’s simple physics and chemistry. Over the centuries, artists, writers and the lot have succeeded when they found their muse. For some it was drugs, drink or worse. What that “muse” really is is simple. IT’s getting your brain into a state where it can feel free to create. Not stressed out about deadlines, not dealing with survival. But loosened up a bit and not entirely functional.

I learned many years ago how to do this. That’s why I’ve been able to consistently (for the last 35 years or so) develop creative concepts that solve the problems in front of me and make a good living at it.

How do I do it?

The best way I find is to get tired.
Really.

I’ve found I do my best work late at night, usually the night before the big creative presentation is due. I know it sounds like typical procrastination, but it’s true.

I find that if I have a presentation, no matter how big or important, I like to have a few days or a week to just carry it around in my head. One client referred to it as “shower time,” meaning ideas can come at any time. In the shower, driving, middle of the night etc.

You let those ideas build up for a couple days and the night before the presentation, I sit down with a big pad of paper and, usually somewhere after midnight, I cut loose.

Every major creative presentation I’ve ever had has been solved this way. I take a big felt pen and start scratching out ideas. I might do a hundred of them in a couple hours. Once it starts, you just go till it’s done.

What’s happening is that my brain gets into that state of disarray where connections can happen quickly and unpredictably. Creative is really about connections. Same as humor. Connect two things that don’t seem logical and it can be pretty funny.

That’s where I came to develop my style of creative presentations.

I call it a “Wallpaper Session.”

Which, basically, means I wallpaper your office with ideas. I’ll write about that next.

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If you’re reading this, you have an interest in the ad biz. And chances are, you wish I would get to the point faster. You’re probably totally ADD.

As in Attention Deficit Disorder.

Disorder is such a strong word.

It’s a fancy term for short attention span. The ad biz is perfect for ADD types. Think about it. What business can you be in where you can change your business ten times a day. If you work at a plumbing supply manufacturing company, your life is plumbing supplies. Ten hours a day for the rest of your life.

It’s that way in any business. You deal with that businesses problems all day forever.

But in an ad agency, you’ve got a great smorgasboard of problems to solve. You could be working on selling software in the morning, rebranding teddy bears after lunch and pushing beer and lingerie in the afternoon.

Of course, this can be a blessing or a curse.

If you’re the classic short-attention-span-oh-look-something-shiny kinda person, you NEED that kind of wackiness in your life. If not, it’ll drive you nuts and stay in plumbing supplies.

If you need stability and dependability in your life, stay out of the ad biz. It’ll kill you. Ad agencies come and go like prom dresses. Ad people come and go like prom dresses. Nothing is stable or long lasting. Get used to it and you’ll thrive. Change is good.

When I worked in the ad biz in LA (which I did for years till I escaped to Austin), I never knew anyone that worked anywhere for more than two years. Usually 18 months was about it. Get in, get settled, do some good work and get the hell out for a few more dollars or a nicer office. The agency owners knew this and planned on it. Not a lot of big attachments. Not a lot of big commitments. We all just sort of grazed about.

Personally, I’d work for a year or two, then get tired of having a real job and freelance for a while. Sleep in, travel, work late and long when you had to. It was great. You do this for a while and the idea of working in the same place for years seems unfathomable. Then you get tired of making conference calls in your boxers and going days without leaving the house, and you realize it’s time to get a real job again.

When you appreciate someone emptying your trash can in your office, it’s time for a real job.

Of course, it’s the very nature of the business and the people in it that guarantee the survival of the “outside” agency. Meaning, when a company wants to save money by bringing their advertising in-house, things slowly die.

The creative dies. The people die. The ideas die.

Yes, the company saves money but in the long run, they hurt their business.

Companies sell with ideas. Ideas come from nutty people who don’t want to work in boring companies, selling the same crap day in and day out.

I worked in an in-house agency when I first crawled out of school. It was a good experience but not a long lasting one. It was a camping goods company. They imported cheap tents and such from China, threw their labels on it and sold it in big box stores. It was fun in that I got to pay my buddies to ride our motorcycles up to the local mountains to take manly camping pictures with us posing around our tents with axes and such crap. It was a great job for a young and dumb kid right out of school, but it woulda killed me if I’d stayed too long.

Good creatives get bored very quickly. The ideas on which they live need constant stimulation. If a business needs good creative thinking, they have a hard time keeping it within their own walls.

The camping goods company didn’t think they needed good ideas. They just needed boxes with logos and pictures of shock cords and no-see-um screen doors. Maybe they were right, maybe not. But they’re long gone and I’m still here.

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This is it. Copy this down and tape it up on your fridge.

Read it every day and follow it exactly.

First, decide ahead of time what you want to do in an agency. Write, design, concept or client service, then find the best school you can for that line of work. While you’re in school, join a lot of clubs. Get good social skills. You’ll need them. Advertising is a very social business. You are selling for your clients and you have to sell yourself first. If you cant sell yourself, get into law enforcement. If you have a badge and gun, it doesn’t matter if people like you.

Then minor in business. The basic business principals that operate an ad agency are not any different than the principals that run a chicken farm. You’ll need those skills because at some point, you’ll want to start your own agency. Or you’ll have to start your own agency. You can be a great creative, but agencies can be fickle beings and you may get tired of playing by other peoples rules and set off on your own. Starting an agency is simple. You need a card, website, a computer and huevos.

If you don’t have those basic business skills, you’ll make a lot of expensive mistakes for a lot of years. Start out right.

Believe me. This is the best advice you’ll ever get from anyone about getting into the ad biz. If you’re reading this and wanting to get into the biz, you should send me a check for $10K today because I just made your whole future better.

The ten grand is a bargain. Send it to our office right away. The address is 6001 Hudson Bend Road, Austin TX 78732.

I’ll send you a really nice thank you card invite you to Guero’s for beer and tacos some day. It’ll be on me

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