The Agency Business
A New Era: Phenomenon Rising
There, look in the east. Did you ever see such a glorious sunrise? Sunset will be just as grand.—Linda Goodman
So, I’ve gone and done it.
As you may know, I have spent the past ten years in the agency business, primarily working for large, public companies, with major consulting and agency-type contracts. During that time, I have also managed to maintain my entrepreneurial chops by starting/selling/folding at least three different companies, primarily product-based. My desire in the agency business has always been to create a model that is sorely lacking in the industry today--to treat media consumption like a true consumable, and find ways to combine the best of content creation (digital and television programming, social communities, Web-based ecosystems) with relevant, inspiring, and action-inducing execution.
Phenomenon, Inc. (note the pun on the name) intends to do just that.
Phenomenon will comprise of two propositions: The Business of Creativity, and Creativity For Business. In the former, Phenomenon Entertainment will create, develop and produce original programming content for television and the Internet. Our first two projects are already underway at Showtime (Affluenza) and F/X (Heir Apparent). We have also partnered with supermodel Tyra Banks and television visionary Ken Mok to create a social network for fashion enthusiasts with some revolutionary cross-brand eCommerce capabilities, set to launch in the fall. Unlike agencies, we are keeping major equity stakes in all our content development, and will continue to create and monitor its progress.
The “Creativity for Business” angle will see Phenomenon focusing on retail innovation, information architecture, and consumer loyalty. Our first three clients are testament to this: we’re developing, from scratch, the nationwide loyalty program for one of the country’s top retailers, to be experienced seamlessly in all channels. We also signed a contract, just today, to help re-architect the customer experience (and underlying business revenue model and flow) for an affinity social community with 9.7 million unique visitors a month! And our work to help one of the world’s top fashion designers expand her brand into retail, eCommerce, and the general population is incredibly exciting as well.
I’m launching with five major clients, all selected for very specific reasons. I’m also launching the firm with two distinct divisions. A detailed Web presence is forthcoming, but for now, you can see basic information and our nifty new identity at Phenomenon’s new Web site.
Faith
I have personally hired (and fired) hundreds of employees over the past several years, and this weekend, I had occasion to ruminate about what personal dynamics have best suited all involved in a cultural (be it workplace or personal) ecosystem.
I’m back to bachelorhood for the moment (my wife’s in India,) and I spent Sunday night stocking up on the requisite man-food: things from the frozen meals aisle. I was surprised at the variety of products that have recently found its way into freezer-display, and spent some time making notes on the percentage of healthy (or fad-diet) brands that have made it into circulation.
It was then that I received the call that started this entire process of rumination that I am now in the middle of. A colleague from a former work-life called, one with whom I had at one time, had very severe words, and at first, I wasn’t sure what to say. It was an awkward beginning to a phone call that I soon realized was a veiled plea for help.
The caller in question and I had been at war in a former life, both struggling for power, and I am ashamed to say, mild sabotage of each other’s careers. The caller was in a position much higher than mine, and I ended up getting the short end of the stick. I hadn’t heard from this person in a very long time, and had frankly forgotten about most of our battles.
Anyway, let’s call this person Casey.
It turns out that Casey’s been out of a job for nine months now, and needs some immediate help in finding a job in the marketing industry so that bills can be paid. Several dozen interviews have been had, but none that have led to a final offer. Casey is now desperate, and I seemed to be the only person Casey could trust with this information.
I was flabbergasted.
Why would someone with whom I had had such a contentious past consider me the right person to call with a desperate plea for help? Well, it turns out that regardless of our immature squabbling, Casey has always believed that I could do anything. He told me that one of the reasons we butted heads as much as we did is because he felt like I was the only person in the company who thought just like he did, and that our fights were a result of him feeling threatened. (You have to realize that when this happened, I was 23, and he was 29—we were kids.) And then he said something that really got me thinking: despite all of our squabbles, when it came to getting things done at work, he has never trusted anyone else more.
Of course, my first instinct was that he was blowing smoke up my ass, in order to refer him somewhere else. But then I realized that I actually felt the same way about him. I’ve always thought of Casey as one the smartest people I’ve ever met. I’ve had a million scenarios where I’ve wished for his brain and insight. I realized that I’ve, in fact, missed him.
The agency business is rife with posers. People who can’t cut it, or people who just don’t care. Getting someone who is smart, strategic and creative all at the same time--that’s really hard to find. I’ve done my best work when I have felt that the people I work with have faith in me. Of course, that faith has to be earned. But sometimes, faith, in its purest definition (of belief in something you cannot see, hear or feel,) just is.
I recently realized that one of the people closest to me in my life has very little faith in me, and my capacity to do anything. It is debilitating in some ways to feel that, especially when it comes from someone who you had counted on being a smart and dependable partner. We are at our best when we have cheerleaders; we are inspired, motivated, and committed. Faith is also something that takes a lot of time to rebuild, if it ever existed in the first place. It’s also easy for all of us to blame a lack of faith on specific incidents, or issues; but the truth is, intrinsic belief in something requires a special bond between people—and sometimes that’s there, and sometimes, it’s not.
Casey and I felt closer to each other in 45 minutes of a conversation than we have ever felt in 4 years of working together. And so, perhaps it is not that faith doesn’t exist; sometimes, faith may be just latent, and our ability to recognize people for their true natures requires a significant event, time, or both.
And so tonight, as I browse the fluorescent aisles loaded with pre-packaged meals that promise the best tastes on the planet, I wish the following for all of us: that we find work and life among people who have faith, respect and tolerance for us, even with all our idiosyncrasies; that our commitment to a job is also a commitment to the people we work with. And most of all, that we all get Sunday-night calls in grocery aisles that could just maybe restore stolen pieces of self.
On Losing a Pitch
I lost a pitch today.
It’s the first competitive, RFP-based pitch that I’ve lost in 6 years and 2 months. It’s the first overall pitch I’ve lost in 2 years and 6 months. Interesting numbers, if you think about it. Reversed, in my reversal of fortune.
Those of you who’ve worked with me know have some idea of why this has hit me so hard. For one, I hate losing. For another, I put more into pitches than most other firms put into entire projects or campaigns. I eat, sleep, breathe and dream about the client. I find ways to do interesting research. I call in special resources who have specific talent that will help the specific client. For this particular client, I spent eighteen hours non-stop in a hotel room in Las Vegas on December 24th, while my wife had to go out by herself. Because of the holidays and a lack of people available for the pitch, I personally came out of design retirement and helped with the mockups. To meet deadlines, and to still acommodate the enormous amount of work I wanted done as part of the pitch, I enlisted production resources in our Ukranian offices so that people were working 24 hours a day.
When I lose something like this, I take it personally. It feels like really horrible rejection from a girl that didn’t see the best parts of all you have to offer. It’s momentarily debilitating.
And for all that work, I got the rejection by email. Of course, you always know. It’s when your phone calls, which were previously picked up on first ring, are caller-id-ignored. It’s when there are awkward silences in the phone calls leading up to the final rejection. It’s when one client says that they’re still making their decision, but it’s really another client’s call. I understand, though. Noone really likes to give bad news. Noone likes making that phone call. It’s easier to craft a well-written email, and let the rejection sink-in that way.
Curiously, my winning competitior is a “small, boutique firm” that’s in the same remote city that the deciding VP is moving to his new location from. Originally, I was tempted to dismiss the loss as a loss to a prior friendship or relationship. But that’s too easy, and that’s shirking from my own failure.
I realized today that I take my work very, very personally. It wasn’t as evident to me before, but as I sit here, astonishingly depressed in my bed, I understand what makes me good at my job also makes me vulnerable to getting irrationally hurt. I wear my work-heart on my sleeve, and this time, no amount of creativity, conversations, and pre-work was good enough to win.
I was beaten, and it sucks.
What’s Your Name Worth?
I’ve spent the past few days naming a client’s business. They’re a high-end retailer in a very competitive category, and I’ve been driving myself batty crafting nomenclature for the business as well as for their services and product lines that fit with an overall value proposition to a very specific audience segment: style-conscious, upscale shoppers of a particular gender. (If you think I’m being vague, you’d be, um, right.)
It got me pondering about the nature of the naming business. Which, in case, you didn’t know, exists, and is one of the most ridiculously overpriced things you can buy from agencies crafty enough to sell it. My philosophy has always been that if nomenclature is required of a brand strategy project, it shouldn’t count exponentially over the other identity requirements. But I’m in a tiny camp, and the naming business thrives like you wouldn’t believe.
One of the craftiest perpetrators in the naming racket is Landor Associates, the company behind doozies such as Avaya, Avanade, astrium, and of course, the famous renaming of the Philip Morris holding company to, what else but, Altria.
But Landor’s greatest hit was a project that’s still snickered about in agency circles. When Hewlett-Packard decided to break-off its instrumentation division into a separate company to compete against arch rival Lucent, they hired Landor to find them a suitably grand name. Using processes momentously titled “Brand Alignment Process”, “BrandAsset Valuator”, “Random Visual Association Methodology,” they finally arrived a naming proposition that would allow the new company to be as strong as human nature—“indomitable and immutable.”
The name that all those lovely-sounding processes, 70 Landor executives, nine months, and $1,000,000 ended up with?
Agilent.
Hmm. Agilent.
If someone had paid me a million dollars, and asked me to create a company name that could compete against Lucent, Agilent sounds like a name I’d joke about. Here’s probably what happened at Landor.
“Hey, they’re ‘Lucent’, like a ‘lucid entity’, so how about we become something similar?”
“Yeah, like what?”
“Aw shucks, dunno, how ‘bout a “clear entity”, like Clearent, or an easily moving thing, like ‘fluid’, so perhaps we should call them Fluent.”
[Chuckling ensues.]
“Or a fast entity, like Fastent. No, no, wait… I have it. An agile entity, like Agilent.
[Loud laughter now.]
“Ha! I’d like to see you sell that baby in.”
“Oh, I bet I could.”
“Let’s bet on it.”
“What’re the stakes?”
“Tell you what Johnny boy. If you can sell Agilent in, I’ll let you name my new baby when Karen delivers in 7 months.”
Sadly, there’s now a little boy who toddles around, with the very Landor-like name of “Buoyant”.
Look, I’m not picking on Landor. I’m just pointing out that the ridiculous notion that you need to pay millions of dollars in fees and additional monies in extensive market research about a name for a major tech company is complete horse-poop. I understand research when your product needs to specifically tap into an ethnic or immigrant market, or if your name happens to be a word that might mean something in a language that’s offensive to people. I understand that, to a certain extent, you need to consider linguistics. And I understand completely that it now very difficult to find truly functional, usable names. Which is why people are now making up words like Jabberwocky, and JamCracker, and joining words together like Blue Nile and Raindance.
And of course, you need a name that doesn’t tread on other trademarks or copyrights. The legal implications of naming are truly frightening, and there are law firms that specialize in making sure you’re locked down and protected. Then of course, you have the added issue of the domain name being available. This was never truer in the US than for Nissan Motors, who decided to sit on their ass until 1996 before trying to register Nissan.com. In a battle they still haven’t won, they’ve been terrorizing Nissan Computer to give up the domain name.
But think about it.
If you were naming the most powerful software company in the world, would you call them Microsoft?
If you were naming a $13 billion environmental protection company, would you call it Waste Management?
If you were creating nomenclature for a country that wanted to change perceptions of being a haven for pedophiles and prostitutes, would you name it Thailand and Bangkok?
If you were naming the most powerful cable channel for teens and young people in the market today, would you call it Music Television?
If you were naming the world’s premier telecommunications company, would you call it AT&T? Wouldn’t you argue about whether the domain name was “guessable”?
My point is not that we should throw away our naming budgets and just come up with stuff without thought or research. All of the legal and cultural implications of names that I mentioned above are real, and need to be addressed. My point is that names, in the end, have very little to do with how brands eventually position themselves. PR, products, quality, imagery, brand associations, emotional context, messaging, and customer experiences have much more to do with the acceptance of a name than the name itself.
So, the next time you’re naming a product or service, spend a little less time arguing about whether everyone’s going to love the name, and a little more time thinking about how to make customers love your company and your service. And use the money you save in investing in better customer experience toolsets, both online and offline. You’ll thank me for it.
An Idea for Agency Staffing
Sunday, July 17, 2005
I was speaking to Dick Thomas, the former CEO of Frankel, at a cocktail party this weekend about the agency model in general, and he said something so obvious, its genius.
Dick suggested that a staffing strategy for superior talent could possibly come from an ilk of lost stars—women and men (primarily women) who had given up their promising careers to become stay-at-home moms. He suggested that the creation of an agency environment that uses these mothers in a part-time fashion while giving them benefits that would truly help them at home and make their lives easier would create a staff of highly motivated, talented, and eager-to-be-stimulated people.
That’s absolutely brilliant.
According to the US Census, there are over 13 million women who are stay-at-home moms in the country. Even if we assume that only 0.25% of them were in marketing, and that 20% of that 0.25% were exceptionally good at what they did, it still gives us 6,500 amazing candidates to choose from. And I’d prefer a pool of 6,500 exceptional, motivated, experienced and interested candidates for part-time work than 100,000 unknown resumes any day.