I love tea. I drink gallons of the stuff. Mostly green tea but lately a lot of those girly herbal mixes.

So a couple years back I discovered those electric teapots. Fill it full of water, set it on the base and it cooks your water up. Great invention. Given them away as gifts and have one at home and at the office.

Well, the office teapot gets a LOT of use and it finally died. I took it apart, couldn’t fix it. Realized I had to find a replacement for my favorite appliance. I was at World Market buying other stuff and found one. Clear glass, pretty classy unit, liked the idea of watching the water boil. Purchase made and took it home to make a pot of tea.

All was great till I took it out of the box and opened it. It smelled like swim fins inside. That weird chemical silicone/rubber smell. Not very appetizing and probably not adding a lot of important vitamins and minerals to my diet. I cooked some water. Same smell. Added baking soda, same smell. Added white vinegar (two drops deodorize a skunk!)… Same smell.

Sadly, I realized it was a badly designed product in my kitchen. I grabbed the receipt and put it away till I could make the trip back to World Market to return it. Because it’s out of my way, it was hard to get back to return it, but yesterday I did.

There was some confusion but eventually, some kid came out from the back and said I couldn’t return it because it didn’t have the box.

The box?

The box was fine. It did it’s job. But the product stunk.

I was pretty appalled. The box? What the hell? What does the box have to do with anything? They sold a lousy and possibly toxic product and I’m stuck with it forever because I didn’t bother to bring back the box.

I’ve spent literally hundreds if not thousands of dollars at World Market. I’ve bought furniture, wine, most of the dishes in my house, gifts and food at World Market. Now they’re going to dis me because I didn’t keep a box?

I was pretty disgusted. I just left the toxic teapot on the counter and walked away. My final purchase at World Market.

This is bad policy. And what happens when bad policy meets good communication.

Social Media. Blogs. Web site comments. Word of mouth. Bad JuJu.

We all have that power now.

It kinda reminds me of that 80′s movie Ragtime. The African American guy gets pushed around by the local morons in a fire department and he destroys the place. That was within his power to demand justice. But we dont need to go that far (but a lot of people do, look at that nutjob here in Austin that flew his plane into the IRS).

We have a new equalizer. The Web. When a corporate entity does us wrong, we can take to the Webwaves and tell the world. Corporations are aware of this and do everything they can to negate this. Good corporations allow comments on their web sites about the products they sell (a local Austin company helps this… Baazarvoice.com). That’s a great idea. When you see a company that openly allows their customers to honestly interact, you know you can deal with that company. You know they’ll be honest because everyone is looking.

As for the power we all have (and should use), I’m using it.

I’m blogging. I’ll Tweet. I’ll Facebook. I’ll tell my friends. Maybe I can cost World Market tens of thousands of dollars in lost revenue. Maybe executives in charge of policy will start having bad dreams. Maybe their restaurant meals will come out bad and the waiter will say “Bummer dude, you already tasted it. We can’t sell it to someone else now…”

As a famous ad guy once said, “Great advertising is the fastest way to kill a bad product.”

I did a little research and found the CEO of World Market (the Web means there is no place to hide.) He’s making $800,000.00 a year with a bonus of double if he performs (doesn’t say what kind of performance he has to do though).

I also found a lot of negative press about World Market. Darest I share the links? Oh heck, why not.

http://www.rainforestrelief.org/Campaigns/Outdoor_Furniture/Cost_Plus.html

http://www.city-data.com/forum/cincinnati/549164-decline-fall-world-market.html

http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-Cost-Plus-RVW192382.htm

http://www.bizjournals.com/twincities/stories/2009/01/05/daily55.html

I connected to Barry Feld on Linkedin. He’s the CEO of World Market. You should too. Here’s the link

http://www.linkedin.com/pub/barry-feld/7/500/74a

Or email him at barry.feld@cpwm.com

I’ll tell him about his policies and the fact that they are selling products that nobody tested. Hell, they’ve probably got a dozen containers of the stinky little teapots shipped from some poison spewing factory in China. Something tells me he’s not using one in his office though.

Did I go too far with all this? Well, for one I was bored this morning. Woke up at 7AM on a Sunday morning and had nothing else to do. And I do have a strong sense of justice. We all know when we’ve been dissed and we all want justice. The web is a great place to demand it. It equalizes us all. It gives us all power to be heard.

So next time you get a bad policy tossed into your lap, or have a corporate decision wack you upside the head, make some noise. It’s your right and your responsibility to bring about justice.

Even if it’s for a stupid little $60 Toxic Teapot.

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Yes, for years I’ve been the guy that always said vegans should be shot. I always found it pretty irritating. People would make a big deal about having a label and make everyone around them cook something special at Thanksgiving.

What a pain.

And all too often they were wearing leather shoes.

Then I did a bunch of research on what happens once we stop eating meat.

OK. I was convinced. Then I gave up meat, fish, all dairy etc. And I have to say, it’s been pretty easy:
- It’s easy to order in restaurants. Instead of having to decide which of the delicious meals you can enjoy, you realize that if you’re really lucky, there is ONE thing you can eat. So you order that.
- It’s cheap. No lobster for $25 a pound. A pile of carrots costs a LOT less.
- You eat a lot more.
- You lose weight.
- You get to act snooty at restaurants and ask the waiter if they have any vegan approved meals… While you hide your new leather shoes under the table.

Try it. You might really like it. It’s been three weeks for me so far and I’m not lusting after a big steak yet. We’ll see.

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This is the THIRD time I’ve had to start over in the Ad Biz.

I graduated college in 1981 and was already working in an ad agency. My job was doing layouts, lousy illustrations, specing type, pasting up ads and shooting stats.

And yes, I used some words that some of you have never heard.

Specing type? Stats?

Then Mac came along in 1984 and within a couple years there was a computer on my desk. My felt markers died a slow, painful death and eventually did their final drying death in a trash can.

Wave One.

As an Ad Guy, you no longer had to draw up your ideas. You were free to toss your Lucygraph (look THAT up!) and your felt pens and your press type out forever. Everything you did went through a crude computer but it was a big leap. That meant we all had to learn new skills. But it also meant we could do a lot more work in a lot less time and higher quality.

Then I moved to Austin in 1994 and within a year, had another computer on my desk connected to the Internet. Email landed at my desk. We started building Web sites for big tech companies. Imagine now, if you will, a multimillion dollar technology company without a web site? So now we had to relearn everything because there was a powerful new tool to market with. The Web kicked in the door and you either went with it or you sold real estate.

But our traditional marketing tools still worked and if you were smart, you could combine the Web with your other marketing tools and you could generate decent response numbers.

That was Wave TWO.

Now, Wave THREE.

Everything has changed again. And I admit, I was not really interested in this wave till I jumped in and used and liked the results.

But now I guess I’m one of those overbearing ex-smokers who grouses at a whiff of smoke.

The Third Wave is 99% science and tools. It’s using Twitter, Facebook and all the diagnostics to find your audience and cuddle up next to them in all the places they lurk online. The tools are now so good you can find people who dont think they can be found. And because everyone is now such an exhibitionist, it’s easier and easier to find them.

When I was growing up, the idea of putting every thought, idea, activity and hobby up on a billboard for everyone to see was not even considered. Our thoughts and opinions and fears and joys were ours to keep, share with a few friends or lock away in a diary.

But the current generation is compelled to get instant celebrity with everything that’s ever crossed their minds.

Personally, I think it’s a little weird. But as a marketer, I see how that leaves everyone open to friendly prying by clients.

That’s just how it is kids. You throw your soul to the winds and the angels will sell you shit.

I see it for what it is. A great, powerful marketing tool that has ultimate efficiencies. No point in wasting marketing messages on audiences that will NEVER buy your product. LIke you wouldn’t spend a lot of money advertising shampoo at a bald guys convention. Social media marketing lets you narrowcast your marketing messages to an audience that will care.

But it is a bit sad for us creative types. It means what we do best isn’t as important as it used to be. There is still a need for good creative thinking and messaging, but it’s not the linchpin of success.

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I’m starting to think so.

Here’s a great example. A Marketing VP I’ve known for years called us to help him brand a new company. We met, we got a lot of great ideas and wanted to do a full brand treatment. He loved the idea and offered us about a quarter of what we normally charge.

Huh?

He figured he’d CrowdSource it. Put it out to the world and see what happened. He offered a fraction of what it would cost and got a LOT of great work. I was really impressed. It was cheap and there were some really good ideas.

So is it the death of The Great American Ad Agency?

Consider this too. All the traditional tools us Ad Guys have used the past 30+ years are dead. Direct Mail? Bury it. At least for a lot of products and industries. The cost has always been high but the response numbers keep getting smaller. Telemarketing? Ouch. BIG expense. Little return.

As an experiment, I dove headfirst into Social Media Marketing to see what would happen. We operate HeroBracelets.org out of our office here at The Ad Ranch. So I figured I’d see what could be done.

30% more traffic to HeroBracelets.org in two weeks.

I’m now a believer.

The power of great creative has diminished in importance to the science of plugging your brand into every social media and weaving your way through the web into every possible blog and news site.

It’s tedious, boring and very effective.

What’s happened is that the marketing TOOLS have gotten so good, the creative doesn’t matter as much.

To me, this is the second wave of this process.

The first came in the early 80′s when all of us Art Directors and Designers let our markers dry out as we traded up into having a Mac on our desk. It was a great thing, but it changed the creative output. Now anyone who could use graphics software could produce beautiful (or at least colorful) work. I started to see a lot of design that depended on technical expertise and less on true conceptual thinking.

Pretty, but no substance.

Personally, I’ve always railed against this kind of thinking. That’s why for years I present my ideas as hand drawn roughs. If my lousy drawings on big sheets of paper can move you, then it’s a great idea.

If you have to depend on visual fireworks to make your point, your point is pretty dull. When you combine great visuals, great design and great conceptual thinking and marketing power, you’ve got effective work.

But back to the death of creative.

It’s dying folks. Now monkeys can market well if they grew up wasting their lives on Facebook.

I can prove it. When I look at my response numbers to the HeroBracelets.org Web site, the story is plain as day. Social Media Marketing works.

Some day all we’ll hear in the creative departments of The Great Ad Agencies of The World will be the gnashing of teeth and the angst of trolls.

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We’re feeling pretty good lately.

We called a very cool Austin company and offered to do a total rethink of their marketing. For free. If they liked our ideas, they’d hire us. If not, it would cost nothing.

So we met with them, talked about their business and did our own research. We then went back a week later and presented our ideas.

We nailed it. We totally changed the way they looked at their business. We showed them why their current marketing wasn’t doing what they had hoped it would and completely rebranded them.

And we got a new client.

It was pretty simple. An hour of their time. A bit of ours. Instant connection and a whole new direction. We’ve already started on their campaign and will be testing soon.

It was so much fun, we want to do it again. So now it’s your turn.

Want to give it a shot? The rules are simple. You should be an Austin company (unless you want to foot the bill to get us to your office). We meet for an hour. We come back and show you brilliant ideas. If you agree it’s a better way to sell your business, you hire us. If not, we leave a nice parting gift and go away.

Simple enough, eh?

Call us at the office. 512-266-3697 or email chris@adranch.com. We’ll get started today.

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I’ve been in museums all over the world. I love art museums. Can spend hours, days there and never want to leave. I was an art major in college and spent a LOT of time studying art.

But the majority of my understand and appreciation for art is based in European art of the last few hundred years. That was the center of everything I’d studied. And there is a lot to love and appreciate.

The Renaissance etc, yadda, yadda, so forth and so on.

Now THAT was art. These guys could really paint! That bowl of fruit looks JUST like a bowl of fruit, and actually even better than the REAL bowl of fruit.

And look at that painting of those Dutch guys. They look so wise and dramatic.

But this weekend I started on the top floor at the Dallas Museum of Art, a couple floors ABOVE the European paintings. I wandered through amazing artifacts from around the globe. Carved and painted and woven pieces from dozens of cultures. Amazing pieces of beautiful design and vivid imagination.

Then I read a sign about a particular culture from an island in the middle of an ocean. Their belief was that EVERYTHING on the planet had a soul. Every rock, leaf, piece of wood, person, animal, bug etc. And it was their duty to bring that soul in those objects to it’s fullest potential by turning that rock or piece of wood into what it was MEANT to be.

Of course, they were also headhunters and would sanctify a new building by killing someone.

But to them, a piece of wood WANTED to be a shield, or a daggar or a support for a home or a simple decoration. They were doing a sacred duty to elevate that simple wood to it’s fullest potential. It was their duty.

And the pieces they liberated were beautiful. Design and creative thinking that would rival any “trained” artist on earth.

As I walked through the centuries and the cultures, I eventually  wandered into the section for European paintings. My original goal in being there. And I walked around looking at the puffed up embellishment of the portraits. The amazing prowess of delivery for a sugary, essentually SILLY, final product. All very impressive and beautiful to look at, but with no real calories. It suddenly became to me so many beautiful low calorie desserts.

Then it occured to me. Pow. Right in the face. New ephiphany!

This stuff is all commerce. It’s advertising. It’s the same stuff we do in the office all day, except created with analog tools. Everything I saw was created by an artist for a client. It wasn’t created to secure a place in paradise. It wasn’t created because the creator really BELIEVED it was necessary.

Each piece was created to make a rich patron look better than they really did. Each piece was created to go over a fireplace, as decoration, as an ego boost with the final goal being the exchange of money.

So it’s all advertising.

Not that there’s anything wrong with advertising. I do it all day. I think the world needs this kind of communication… But it’s all artificial.

These “primitive” people created pieces that meant everything to themselves and those around them. They’d spend days, weeks, months creating something beautiful for reasons far beyond our imagination. Time didn’t matter to them the way it does to us. For someone to spend years creating an object was fine. For someone living in a jungle seeing nothing but the natural world, creating a supernatural object could change the lives of everyone around.

We’re surrounded by so much crap that we dont think about it any more.

And imagine if you will, how would these people think about what we do all day to produce art, and what that art was accomplishing.

Now, imagine if you will, moving 500 years ahead to see what THOSE commercial artists are producing and why.

So what’s my point? Several actually, and being an Ad Guy, I’ll bullet point them out.

- Next time you go to an art musuem, start in the “primitive” section first. The closer you get to our art, the more you’ll agree it gets sillier and sillier.

- Appreciate WHY a piece of art was created. It’s as important as the finished piece.

- Most art created in the last 500 years is a product that someone made to exchange for food, a bottle of wine and a place to sleep.

- Downtown Dallas is cool.

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So I’m sitting in the airport in Chicago. Stuck here for almost three hours and I hate to admit it, but I don’t mind. I like “waiting”. Its a great time to think and observe. You cant guilt about doing anything else. You’re just stuck, so what else can you do but think and observe.

Airports are great observation points for observing the Human Condition. It’s a target rich environment. You’ve got a constant flow of people walking by. I always try to find a good vantage point and watch the parade. It’s better than a fish tank.

What do you see? Well, if you’re not watching carefully, you just see people. If you’re a trained Ad Guy, you see souls. You see through the shells we walk around in. You see who we ARE.

I’m good at this. You have to be if you want to really understand what motivates people and you have to know what motivates people if you’re going to be an Ad Guy.

I can look at someone for a few seconds and understand them. What do I see? Watch how they carry themselves, how they’re dressed. What decisions did they make this morning. What expression is on their face. What are they carrying. It all ads up.

I’ve learned to look through all that, put the subtle hints together and KNOW that person from across the room.

I think I learned this from a couple good sources. First, the karate thing. I started studying Tae Kwon Do Karate when I was 12. Best thing that ever happened to me. I had good instructors that taught me a lot about what motivates us. I learned to read a person quickly and watch their eyes for their next move. When you are sparring, you have to make instant decisions and react before they know what THEIR next move would be. I was good at this. I could spot an incoming strike and counter it before it got to me. I won a lot of matches because of this.

The next lesson I had in the human condition was being a bouncer. I was the “doorman” at a very busy disco in Long Beach, CA during the heyday boom of disco in the early 80′s. I was the jerk at the front door with the velvet rope. I decided who got in and who didn’t. And I had to deal with people once they had a problem. The manager put me there because I had a second degree black belt and I owned a suit and I could have good manners. In reality, he put me there because he wanted to watch me beat people up. It wasn’t a really violent place, but once every week or two, there was some sort of problem and we’d have to drag someone out of the place. I was in maybe a dozen genuine brawls in my year and a half there. I was never hurt, except for a broken finger.

But what I learned at the door has been helpful the rest of my life. I would watch people as they walked up and I had to decide in seconds if they were getting in or not. I had to observe everything I could about them and make a snap decision.

You can watch how a person walks. How they carry themselves. I’ve taught my kids to walk into a situation like they OWN the place. If you’re good, people might believe it. Look at their posture. Look at their clothes. Most importantly, look at their face. Who we are is etched into our faces.

Think about it. Some people just look pleasant. Some people look like they are comfortable in their own skin. They look likeable. Most likely, they are. You can spot healthy people. You can spot miserable people. Just pay attention to every detail.

As I sit here in the airport, I observe a woman in her late 30′s. She’s well dressed. Prada purse. Matching suitcases. A lot of papers sticking out of a bag. She sits down a few seats away and starts making phone calls. I learn she’s divorced, two kids, both at the ex’s. Remarried. Sells medical equipment and flew to Chicago to meet with a doctor who didn’t show up. So expensive medical equipment. She’s got a sadness in her face. What conclusions can I make?

She’s worked hard to compete, to excell and to make money. She didn’t do well in her life though. Not 40 and already a broken family. From the number of calls she made, she’s desperate for attention but not really willing to open herself to people or be open to them. She’s a tight, little unhappy knot. It ain’t getting better.

So why is this important to an Ad Guy?

Well, if you’re in this business, you have to sell. You have to sell everything on earth to people you’ll never meet. How the hell do you do that? How do you sell something when you’re not there?

You have to have to have a great deal of empathy. You have to know how people FEEL. When you know how people feel, you can begin to see how they think and start to put yourself in their shoes.

This is a great skill for everyone to have, absolutely important for Ad Guys.

When you can put yourself in THEIR  shoes, you can start to see how they’ll react to your message.

So a lot of my work is in big ticket technology products. That’s what Austin is selling to the world. We don’t make cars or snack foods or toilet paper. We make technology. That means I have to know how technology buyers FEEL. What motivates them to spend a million dollars of their boss’s money on something.

When I do an ad, I have to know what pain he feels and address THAT.

Spouting off about how wonderful WE are does nothing. Who cares. My CIO doesn’t care. He’s a stress case. He’s got a problem to solve. What is he thinking? Chances are, he’s NOT thinking about your product. But maybe sometime in the next few months, he will.

THAT’S how you approach the guy. Get into his head first. What will make him feel good about doing business with you.

But if that doesn’t work… Try the other thing I learned at the disco.

Ask till they give up.

I would watch the human drama unfold every night in the disco. Guys coming looking for women. Women looking for guys who are looking for them. Everyone doing their best mating dance, looking for a little love, or whatever. But they were all there looking for something.

I’d watch them come in and I’d watch them leave. And it wasn’t always the best looking Alpha Males walking out with the women. Often, you’d be surprised to see which guys walked out with a new found friend.

It was the guys that persisted. If even a real dork were to ask every woman in the bar to dance, eventually one will dance with him. He’ll talk, he’ll maybe buy her a drink yadda, yadda, yadda.

It’s persistance and charm. The guys who know how to talk to someone, understand how they feel and not be afraid to talk to everyone till they made a connection were the one’s that made progress.

So what lessons have we learned here?

Observe. Feel. Rince. Repeat.

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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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