By David Heitman
President of The Creative Alliance

The days of a company being held hostage to its ad agency media buyers and webmasters are over. We live in a user-generated, client-empowered era—one which has caused marketing firms like ours to adapt. I’m proud to say we have been leading the charge for some time.

We were client-empowering before client empowerment was cool.

Four ways that we are equipping our clients to be as self-sufficient as they want to be are:

1. Easy-to-Use Content Management Systems. Every new website we create enables our clients to edit the content using best-of breed content management tools. Sure we handle the heavy lifting of major design or structural changes, but we’re saving clients thousands of dollars by enabling them to make multiple content adjustments to their sites.

2. Graphics Standards. When we deisgn a new logo, we do so knowing that the new logo must work in a wide variety of situations—from business cards to billboards; television commercials to crop circles. We create a set of guidelines, templates and usage recommendations that allow our clients to produce much of their own marketing communications while keeping the visual brand consistent—a key to brand identity.

3. MarCom Libraries. There is still a role for print. We’ve spoken to that here in this blog a few times. But printing thousands of brochures that become obsolete before the last box of them is opened is untenable. While we continue to produce award-winning print pieces to this day, we also create marketing tool libraries with high-resolution PDF files that a company’s sales and marketing team can download and print on demand. Good for the planet. Good for the bottom line. Edits and updates mean new PDFs, not new print runs.

4. No Media Commissions. While we’re huge fans of AMC-TV’s Mad Men, we don’t have booze carts, don’t chain-smoke in the office, and we don’t charge media commissions. We’re tough media negotiators here at TCA, and our clients pay us for the time it takes to put the best media value together. But they keep the commissions. It enables them to save money or make their ad dollars go farther. If we recommend TV, radio, web or print media, it’s not because we have a finacial interest in it.

While other agencies and advertising trade magazines lament the new client empowerment, we welcome it. It puts the focus squarely on the two parts of our business we like best: Partnering with clients strategically, and then developing and implementing big creative ideas.

By David Heitman
President of The Creative Alliance

The current BMW advertising campaign takes an interesting departure from its traditional “ultimate driving machine” message. It is now selling “joy.” Or as one television commercial puts it, what’s important is “not just what we make, but how it makes you feel.”

Walmart has done a masterful job of evoking a mood that moves saving 10 cents on toilet paper way up the Maslovian scale by asking “What are you saving for?” This transformation and transcendence of low prices into fulfilling a child’s dream is nicely illustrated in their hockey mom webisode: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sS_zalCXaI

With so many products and services eventually turning into commodities, the promise of a new experience or a new feeling is a great way to promote those products and services. It “de-commoditizes” them and holds far greater promise than just having a bigger list of features than the other guys.

It’s easy to get absorbed with promoting features and benefits, but then fail to tell the bigger brand story.

This is where marketers can turn to poetry, drama and narrative for the proper inspiration. Features and benefits need to be sewn together into the fabric of story to really get traction with an audience.

Adidas does it with a tagline: Impossible is Nothing

Apple does it with an ongoing dialog between Mac and PC personified.

Liberty Mutual does it with beautiful pay-it-forward vignettes in their inspiring television commercials.

One of the ways we start the branding or re-branding process with our clients is to create a brand story book. It lifts the conversation above the bullet points and feature sets. Those will come later. We’ve seen this approach work with everyone from tech companies, iced tea bottlers and educational institutions, to non-profits, architects and BBQ restaurants.

Story is universal. Everyone loves a good story.

I’ve seen some of my most tedious presentations immediately rescued by a good story. Storytelling is like blood-doping for communicators.

Every company has a story. It could be the unlikely origin of the company; or perhaps how an organization rose from the ashes of defeat to become a success. Or maybe the story to tell is how a critical moment in the company’s history shaped its character and redefined it forever.

When you stop merely marketing what you sell, and instead tell a story that projects what people will feel or experience, they can plug into your brand story and you’ve gained some valuable mental real estate with your audience.

Two Minutes for Entrepreneurial Leaders

by The Creative Alliance Founder and CEO, T Taylor



This weekend I experienced the Super Bowl media phenomena in south Florida. For two weeks leading up to Super Bowl Sunday, there was more national media coverage, more analysis, and more analysis of the analysis than any other entertainment program in history.

Yes, there was actually a game played on Sunday—for just 60 minutes. It featured some of the world’s most skilled, best-conditioned and highly-paid athletes competing for the distinction of being called the best professional football team on the planet. Mixed throughout the hour-long game were celebrity appearances, performances, and approximately three hours of commercials with a $3 million dollar price tag for 30 seconds. With estimates of up to 150 million viewers, the Super Bowl was also the world’s largest stage for big advertisers.

Who were the advertisers?

Here’s a partial list: 1. Doritos, 2. Hyundai, 3. Coke, 4. Budweiser, 5. Google, 6. E-Trade, 7. Snickers, 8. Motorola, 9. Go-Daddy, 10. Focus on the Family, 11. VW, 12. Dr. Pepper (okay, that’s all I can remember).

What were they trying to sell us?

Honestly: 1. heavily-seasoned corn chips, 2. cheap Korean-made cars, 3. highly-sweetened carbonated drinks, 4. beer, 5. who to use when you search for something, 6. another online way to play the stock market, 7. highly-sweetened chocolate, caramel and peanuts, 8. electronic communication devices, 9. web naming and hosting services, 10. traditional Christian-based communications, 11. German-made cars, 12. yet another highly-sweetened carbonated drink.

Here’s what the advertisers really wanted us to buy…

1. chips from a hip company, 2. an inexpensive car that looks expensive, 3. the drink for everyone young and old, 4. the emotional favorite choice for beer, 5. the name for searching is also your friend, 6. the stock trading service that stands apart because of the funny talking babies, 7. fun, tasty candy bars with energy, 8. way cool electronic stuff, 9. the web naming and hosting company with sexy girls, 10. winner Tim Tebo is a good guy and you can find out why, 11. German cars aren’t stiff like Germans/they are fun and hip, 12. the band Kiss is cool and rebellious—so is this extremely sweetened carbonated drink…

It’s no secret that the advertisers want us to associate with these attributes (and they bet millions we will)—so each message is carefully crafted and designed for us to have certain, emotional connections to their brands. Studies prove that they work, too.

Is there a silver lining to our overly-hyped (and easily-fooled) culture?

Yes, many people simply like Coke because of the taste. Same with Snickers. Hyundais save you money. We like an online stock company because we remember them in a world of media messages. VW’s do have cool colors. And so on.

But here’s the one I like best…

Most businesses have brands with attributes (features and benefits) that are more genuine and actually fit the company, product and/or service. Unlike these giant, consumer-based companies who must create associations to make us think their products/services are fun, cool, memorable and even shocking—most smaller entrepreneurial companies (that make up for 80% of all American businesses), succeed when they deliver on their more authentic brand attributes.

So, even though the (advertiser’s name here) Super Bowl half-time show featuring the rock band, The Who, sang “We won’t get fooled again,” my guess is that we will. We’re key players in this game of advertising, as we want to be hip, cool, fun, loved, and a winner. Associating with things that are perceived that way makes us feel better.

Everywhere you looked on Super Bowl Sunday there were black and gold clad Saints fans, and blue and white dressed Colts fans. Monday it was all black and gold.

by David Heitman

The Who will be performing during halftime at the Super Bowl this weekend, and I have to admit it’s a bit disconcerting (or should I say dis-concert-ing) to see one of the rebel bands of my youth shilling for the Bridgestone Tire corporation at the biggest media spectacle in the world…but I’ll save that for another blog…

So while we’re thinking about The Who, let’s stop and think abut the HU.

No, not a Chinese tribute band to the British rockers. The HU is the key to those marvelous brands that find a way to connect with people when other brands put folks to sleep. Without The HU, ad campaigns miss their mark, direct marketing gets dumped in the trash, and PR is met with a collective media yawn.

The HU stands for: HUmanity, HUmility and HUmor.

You might think of it as the secret ingredient necessary to make marketing stick. Put another way, the HU-factor is the magic element that produces all-important “make-me-care” reactions that advertising, political persuasion and PR must achieve.

The problem, of course, is that virtually every audience knows it is being marketed to. Even if people have requested information about your product or service, their early warning defense mechanisms are fully engaged. Trust and interest will have to be earned the hard way. But the HU-factor goes a long way toward gaining that interest and trust.

Humanity
Unless people can relate to your organization or brand on a human level, it remains a thing incapable of a relationship. Humanity means your product or service evokes feelings, connects with felt needs, addresses self-actualization, identifies with the fears, passions, dreams, and aspirations we all share. Sometimes products and services need to be anthropomorphized. Apple’s commercials where one actor is a PC, the other a Mac is a creative expression of the human element. The human “Mac” is relaxed, confident, stable and virus free compared to his nervous, unstable counterpart, the human representing the PC.

Humility
Consumers and voters expect overstatement, hyperbole and exaggeration. They even expect a substantial amount of deception. Humility is a refreshing and unexpected posture to take with your audience. Understatement, acknowledgement of limitations, and humble language are a welcome relief. A Volkswagen billboard I saw recently leverages this brand humility with exquisite perfection: Next to the picture of the new Beetle, the billboard reads “Zero to 60. Yes.”

Acknowledging that the Beetle is no high-performance sports car with this humble admission vaults the Beetle over its competitors as an accessible, fun, comfortable car to drive.

Humor
Every speaker, preacher, teacher or politician knows how quickly humor can disarm an audience. It’s true of marketing and advertising as well. In fact, advertisers have become so adept at this, that advertising humor is an art and we have all become critics of the form. That’s why so many folks watch the Super Bowl for the commercials—more than the game itself according to recent research. The phenomenon of, not just the Super Bowl commercials themselves, but the buzz that surrounds them before, during and after the game is a testimony to our culture’s love of humor. The lesson? Take yourself too seriously and you’ll lose your audience.

So really it’s pretty simple. A marketing effort’s chances of success can probably be improved with a good dose of the HU-factor. Maybe not all three components in equal parts—a funeral home may want to take it easy on the humor part of the formula. Looked at another way, the HU-factor is a great filter through which to evaluate every new marketing effort before it launches to make sure it connects with people who want to get to know your brand.

Or in the words of The Who’s 1978 chart-topper:

“Tell me, who are you? Who, who, who, who?
‘Cause I really wanna know. Who are you? Who, who, who, who?”

By David Heitman

We’re feeling grateful to have recently landed three new clients who are arguably the thought leaders in their respective fields: an electronic medical records (EMR) innovator; a modular casework manufacturer; and an IT services pioneer. All are poised for dramatic—not merely incremental—revenue growth.

We’ve been inspired by their vision…and just a little intimidated by their genius.

Our work consists in distilling these companies’ innovative leadership into unique messaging capable of gaining traction with their audiences. Beyond having developed superior products and services, they still need to compete for mindshare and brand recognition.

As we do our discovery process with these smart people, we always end up identifying the one indispensable thing they bring to their customers and prospects—the one thing that their industries would be diminished by if our clients did not exist.

Only true market leaders can claim this rarified air, but any company that takes the time to dig deeply into its core values and unique virtues can potentially reach this pinnacle.

One of the ways we jumpstart the conversation that leads to this kind of brand discovery is:

“If your organization did not exist, what would the world be missing?”

The answer to that question is at the heart of a company’s brand. If it can’t be answered, perhaps more work needs to be done defining exactly what the organization really does best.

Another question we ask is:

“What values are you willing to hold at all costs, even if it means losing business?”

While this is essentially an ethical question, asking it has enabled us to uncover the foundation of a client’s brand, and position them uniquely within their market space. Whether it’s an unrelenting commitment to the quality of their product or the superiority of their service culture, there is always something that leads to an authentic brand that can be communicated with passion and credibility.

By David Heitman

Seems like self-deprecating humility and yielding to the social media-equipped masses are in vogue these days.

Dominos Pizza, in an effort to capitalize on the social media-driven world of “listenomics,” is running a massive campaign that amounts to a mea culpa for decades of making really bad pizza. They admit the old stuff tasted like “ketchup on cardboard.”

We are now asked to believe that they have listened to their customers, and have built the best pizza ever as a result. The integrated television, radio and web effort includes “focus group” tapes where members complain about the old Domino’s pizza and a website where people are free to write their critiques on a rotating, Twitter-like wall of feedback.

While the effort certainly takes some interesting risks, it seems a bit heavy-handed in its delivery. It’s an effort to control and pre-package user-generated content in such a way that only one conclusion is possible: New Domino’s tastes better than old Domino’s. It’s pretty clear the “focus group” comments were story-boarded and approved long before they were taped.

It’s sort of like watching a movie whose outcome is clear in the first five minutes.

The other thing that makes this well-executed, yet transparently manipulated, effort seem insincere is that in previous commercials we were told by Domino’s that “Quality comes first, custom baking each pizza with carefully selected, skillfully prepared ingredients.”

(What exactly is a “skillfully-prepared ingredient” anyway?)

So does all this mean that in another few years we’ll be asked to believe that Really, Really New Domino’s is way better than that old 2010 New Domono’s?

The lesson here is that when companies try to crassly bend customer feedback—real or orchestrated–and try to leverage user-generated commentary to push their products, it usually falls flat.

Example: Microsoft’s TV commercials showcasing “real” people whose ideas were incorporated into Windows, saying, “Windows 7 was my idea and I’m a PC.”

The over-processed, documentary-style approach doesn’t fool anybody. And besides, do you know anyone who would actually say “I’m a PC”? (especially after Apple’s award-winning campaign of the decade in which the PC is personified by a doofy Bill Gates look-alike.)

Simply stated, the Domino’s and Microsoft commercials fail the authenticity test. Like bloodless zombies, they aren’t human, despite their large numbers.

Should the New Domono’s or Microsoft 7 campaigns prove to be successful, it will largely be the result of frequency paid for with tens of millions of media dollars. If annoying local car dealers, personal injury lawyers and furniture stores are proof of anything, it’s that frequency alone can generate results.

The problem is that mere repeition is incapable of building all-important brand attachment. It just confirms that Domino’s is a coupon-driven commodity with no loyalty, hooked like a junkie on frequency.

By David Heitman

Much like college football’s national championship this week, the new year promises to be a decisive and defining one for most businesses. It will be a year that separates companies still stuck in power-save mode from those that step out and make intelligent, creative, calculated risks.

For this latter group—entrepreneurs and companies poised to grasp market share—the following trends are likely to fuel their positive year ahead:

1) Digital Collaboration and Feedback. The ability to gather inputs from customers, vendors, colleagues and analysts is at an all-time high. Social media technology has enabled this capability for virtually zero infrastructure cost, though it still requires careful management and analysis. An intentional social media strategy will become standard equipment for most successful companies.

2) Enabling Self-Sufficiency. Businesses will make their customers more self-sufficient. Authors will publish more of their own books. Patients will handle more of their own health records. Music lovers will configure more of their own radio stations. And consumers will design more of their own apparel. Trying to hold customers captive will backfire as they instinctively move to open source solutions.

3) Technology-Driven Innovation. Even as the world languished in a year of deep recession, technological innovation steamed forward largely unabated. The convergence of phone/computer/television/camera/PDA/radio will continue to improve the quality of the user experience, getting faster, better and cheaper with each passing day. But this means that companies will need to have a broad, multi-platform communication strategy to be sure they are reaching their audience. Going granular and reaching that “audience of one” on his or her terms—and doing it a million times—will pay big dividends that mass media can no longer deliver.

4) Brand Still Rules. Technology changes, but people don’t, and therefore the importance of brand remains. Brands are belief systems, and people will still make choices—for products, services, candidates and policies—based on the credibility and attraction of the brands they encounter.

5) Good Execution of the Details. With more moving parts in the marketing toolbox than ever before, good tactical execution will separate the winners from the losers. This great execution will need to happen even as prices for many products and services are still dropping. The old adage “do more with less” will define the demands of consumers and B2B buyers alike in nearly every category. Only the truly proprietary service or product gets a free pass here.

The new year began with 34 college bowl games, and now the slate of NFL playoffs is set. As every football fan knows, third down efficiency is one of the keys to success for any team—perhaps one of the defining statistics of championship teams. This economy still has most of us in a “third and long” situation, but that’s when we are all at our best. Convert a first down, and you get to keep playing.

The only other alternative is to punt.

by David Heitman

Editors around the country have the perplexing conundrum of choosing which page of their newspapers to run the Tiger Woods story. Sports? Business? Main news? Lifestyle? The gossip column? All of the above?

Tiger—along with the sad story unfolding around him—is the object of convergence. He is relevant as a sports icon, a celebrity, and a brand endorsement machine. This same trend toward convergence is also seen in as unlikely a persona as Ashton Kutcher. An actor of minimal accomplishments, but with 4,000,000+ Twitter followers, he recently made the cover of Fast Company magazine. The cover story describes his savvy ambitions for digital conquest through a convergence of Hollywood movie production, a traditional ad agency, social media, and consumer product sponsorship.

“The program,” says the Fast Company article, “is a collaboration between Katalyst (Kutcher’s production company); Slide, a Web company founded by Max Levchin of PayPal fame; advertising titan Publicis Groupe; and Nestlé, which owns Hot Pockets. It has been a huge hit, with millions of reposts of the videos on Facebook, each one reaching an average of 65 friends.”

The focus of this effort is viral marketing for Hot Pockets—yes, those crusty, over-processed, handheld, food-like pouches as seen on TV. This is viral marketing supersized by Kutcher’s star power and social media engineering at its best.

Tiger’s and Kutcher’s stories point to the larger version of convergence: that of the four great power centers of the American economy: Hollywood, Silicon Valley, Wall Street and Madison Avenue. This grand convergence is made tangible technologically by the increasingly blurred lines between the computer-phone-television-radio.

Yet another form of convergence is taking place in Comcast’s takeover of NBC—the convergence of the means of distribution and the means of content production. (You gotta have something to watch on your converged media device, right?

The ultimate implications of convergence for marketers aren’t entirely clear, but some guidelines are emerging:

1) Think cross-platform with all new marketing initiatives. Before you kick off a campaign or launch a new product, think carefully about whether an iPhone app, social media, billboards, or crop circles are your best media. The combinations are endless.

2) Don’t wait too long to sail the seas of convergence. You won’t get a new multi-platform marketing initiative right the first time, especially with all the new emerging technologies. Better to learn by doing on some lower risk efforts, than wait for the perfect timing and knowledge that may never come.

3) Creativity rules. Creativity of concept and expression are the only real guarantee of getting traction and differentiation.

Gotta go…my Hot Pocket’s almost done warming in my iPod-microwave-radio-lawnmower.

Two Minutes for Entrepreneurial Leaders
by The Creative Alliance Founder and CEO, T Taylor



In 1950, my Dad and some of his buddies enlisted in the U.S. Air Force. These poor kids would escape a hard life in the coalmines of western Pennsylvania to a world of travel, discipline and sacrifice.

I always looked up to my Dad. Like so many young boys growing up in that golden era, Dad was my hero. He told me that real military heroes were the ones that never made it home from war. After 20 years in the service, he had had only achieved the rank of Master Sergeant. But he was always great leader in my eyes.

Dad wasn’t a General, or a famous athlete or movie star. But his men and everyone I knew respected him for his honesty, hard work, and character. When he wasn’t away
on long military assignments, including Vietnam, he would spend time with me, playing catch and teaching me how things worked.

I was born with a clubfoot, so I had a hard time walking or running. When I tried out
for the High School basketball team, I was the first kid cut, and laughed off the court.
It was devastating. So Dad turned our parking lot into a basketball court and put me on
a strict regimen of practice. He trained with me almost every day, including when we had to shovel off the snow in winter.

Exactly a year later, I made the starting varsity team.

After playing countless hours of basketball together, I was surprised that he never came to any of my High School games—except one. In about the third game left in my senior year, someone pointed him out to me, sitting in the stands. Later, after the game, my coach told me I broke the school record—in assists. Dad said that even though I didn’t score a point, I was a “chip off the old block.” I couldn’t have been prouder than if I had scored 50 points.

I later found out that Dad couldn’t attend my games because he worked a second, night shift as a security guard to pay for my college.

My brothers followed his lead and became Army officers. I became an artist and
worked as an art director for my friend’s new company, called CareerTrack. For the
next 11 years I helped design and produce professional development seminars on communication, management and leadership.

In a nutshell, I learned two things: one, that most seminar trainers teach on what they need to learn themselves; and two, you may remember just one thing on any seminar
you attend—if you’re lucky.

Author Leonard Sweet said recently that there are over 10,000 books on leadership alone. That’s a lot of information and advice. But think about it: what do you remember about leadership? I can only think of one thing: my Dad. And mostly because of what he did, and not necessarily what he said. He always led by example.

His advice was simple. Whenever I had a major problem or faced a crisis in my adult life, I called Dad. “Work on yourself first,” he would always say, “that’s the only thing you can control.” He’s 78 now, but just the other day he said that he didn’t know what to tell me to do—but he knew me, and he had faith in me that I would do the right thing.

Classic Dad material.

Yesterday my youngest son asked me to help him in a difficult situation. I said, “Just
be yourself. You’re a good leader, and I know you’ll do the right thing.”

And I know why he will.

by David Heitman

Clive Thomspon, in a recent column in Wired magazine, said the following:

“Even as a two-man upstart, Google had an audacious goal: ‘to organize the world’s information.’ Tiny Microsoft envisioned ‘a computer on every desk and in every home.’ Facebook aimed to track ‘the social graph’ of the planet, and eBay wanted to create an entirely new global marketplace. Big goals produced big results.”

He goes on to lament the not-so-innovative innovation taking place at many start-ups.

Jim Collins long ago lauded companies that hinged their hopes and treasure on BHAGs (Big Hairy Audacious Goals).

While it seems that the recession has chilled much of that kind of bravado, to lose sight of mind-bending, company-focusing, brand-enhancing ambition is the wrong way to proceed.

Every company, every non-profit, every insititution thrives best when it’s focused on delivering the absolute best of something, and refusing to be commoditized.

That “better-than-anyone-else-at-_________” commitment fans the flames of employee loyalty, customer affection and analyst/media interest.

Often referred to as a Unique Selling Proposition (USP), we’ve come to prefer the term Differentiating Value Proposition (DVP). Rather than focus on trying to “sell” people, we find more substance in the idea of delivering a unique value in a unique way to a unique audience.

That kind of focus allows any organization to be first in its category or, as Trout and Ries would advise, to create a new category to be first in.

We’ve been blessed over the years with attracting and retaining clients that desire to become and have the capacity to actually be the best within their respective categories. Often our work entails helping company leaders put a finer point on their DVP, (the greatest compliment we ever get is “Hmmm. You’re making us really think about this one…”) and then creatively marketing that differentiation in ways that resonate with their audience.

But before we can be very useful, it all starts with the client’s commitment to be the best and reach some ambitious goals.