This is an excerpt from a letter to one of my clients.

I’m posting it because I’ve written this memo or presented this argument at least 100 times in my career. So from now on I’ll just link to this blog post.

___________________

 Dear all,

Thank-you for your negative response to my creative recommendations.

I cannot think of a better way to demonstrate why I believe that we MUST always ask our clients to approve each creative brief before we begin work on their projects. If we don’t we’re just playing pin the tail on the donkey. This includes work you do for your agency too.

• As wise Brand Stewards and brilliant Account Directors, we should be checking for more than logic and typos in the creative brief. We should ensure the brief ties back to the advertising plan - which ties back to the marketing plan - which ties back to the business plan.
• As insightful Creative Directors we MUST understand how the ad (campaign), will help the brand manager move the ad plan, the marketing plan and the overall business plan forward - X yards towards the annual or quarterly "goal-line". If we don’t understand that, we are hobbling our ability to help our clients. In plain terms that means – we’re not doing our jobs and are providing inferior value.
• As Agency Directors we must see ourselves as bridge builders. Our (communications) work needs to bridge the intellectual gap between the brand and the customer with practical and emotional constructs that lead to long-term positive brand-biased behavior changes.
• "Faster + Cheaper" propositions break brands.
• "Better", information + education make brands. 

Next steps:

• Lets meet and agree the real objectives, discuss the creative options in the correct context and then choose the option that serves the brand plan best.

As usual,

Frank by name + nature.

Smart doesn’t always look smart, but Smart laughs all the way to the bank.

On my travels I see a lot of stores that really don’t get it.

This one does.

 When I first saw this store I shook my head in dismay. Then I realized what I was looking at. It does a wonderful job of supporting its customer promise: “We Buy – Sell – Trade anything used.”

The storefront also tells me that this is not your average store and that IF you want to enjoy your visit, you had better park all of your retail “best practice” preconceptions – except maybe most of them:

• customers are attracted by and will promote your product variety,
• ditto for great price \ value propositions,
• the bigger / better the store – the bigger the catchment area,
• the more noteworthy the location – the more likely it is to becomes iconic, an urban point of reference, notorious, etc.,
• product variety covers all the seasons and reasons for buying something (used),
• novel items become memory aids that encourage the store to be visited next time something that’s not in the middle of the retail “bell curve” is required,and
• finally this store gets consumer business, supplies other smaller retailers and the film industry.

Very smart.

I love designing communications that are clean and simple – like my own web-site.

And I love working with Sarah Sabatini (AKA The Web Fairy) at 6P Marketing, Winnipeg.

You’re looking at and hopefully enjoying the latest fine tuned iteration of Wehrmann.ca

Another great Sabatini-Wehrmann collaboration.

I walked and talked with Ali today on my morning walk with Charlie. He told me that his passion is running and that he runs about 40 miles a week to stay in shape.

Ali wants to be able to enter any partial or full marathon event he wants to participate in – knowing he’s in shape to do so. He went on to explain that he needs to run more – about 70 miles a week to make the most of his abilities. 

• 40 miles a week ensures he’s in good enough shape to finish.
• 70 miles a week ensures he’ll be able to place.

His passion + his regime reminded me of other oblique performance metrics I’ve encountered on my own journey. For instance:

• while working 35 hours a week allowed me to keep professional pace with my peers,
• it took a lot more effort (50-60 hours a week) to distance myself from the pack and become a leader.
  

Like Ali, a clear vision (seeing yourself in the lead + in great shape) helps you sort out how to get into there.

• Vision – always be ready to compete + place.
• Strategy – own and run a business that gives Ali time to run.
• Tactics – living close to places he can run, wearing the same brand of shoes and clothing all the time to reduce the unknown variables, proper and consistent diet, etc.

All true masters are slaves to routine.

I hear people in advertising using this term all the time to describe the fact that they are able to develop communications that will somehow compliment or support your other existing communication elements. In my years of experience the adjective “integrated” has evolved from a strategy to a tactic in the vast majority of applications.

• In the 70’s and 80’s I worked with ad agencies responsible for the Canadian divisions of American Brands like Levi, Lego, Samsonite, Johnny Walker, Chrysler and John Deere. Our clients expected their Canadian campaigns to be “integrated” with the American campaigns because the majority of the Canadian markets these brands served received a significant share of their TV, radio and magazine advertising (as spill) from the U.S.
  

• Cable TV and Canadian content laws, as well as changes to our tax laws changed the impact of U.S. advertising and reduced the importance of Canadian + U.S. campaign integration.
  

• In the 90’s integration came to mean one of two things to my National + International clients:
  • Are the English and French campaigns integrated?
  • Is the campaign integrated from a broadcast and print point of view?

• In the 00’s it was all about online and offline message integration. By 2003 the emphasis in client meetings had shifted to the point where “offline” ads (TV, radio and print) were there to support the “online” (website and social) communications.
  

• In June 2013 I attended a new global Business to Business product launch for Google where attendees were introduced to the latest definition of integrated communications – according to Google’s partners:
  • For Google’s business partners and their followers a well integrated campaign is online and has three important components:
    1. Owned media: like your website + social pages
    2. Paid media: like Google Adwords or YouTube
    3. Earned media: think online referrals

The marketing funnel rationale looks like this:

1. Start with what you own – your website and your social pages. Keep them fresh and relevant to attract attention and boost your organic search rank.
2. Support your organic search with paid search to expand the size of your marketing funnel by introducing new communities to your products and services.
3. Provide your customers with a superior + memorable product or service experience that they like enough to talk about and share on their social pages. These unsolicited referrals are considered digital gold because they are authentic and have the potential to go viral.
   

So there you have it.