Joey Reiman

A little more than 1 million years ago, an artist watched a man battle a mean dinosaur. Returning to his cave, the artist sketched the scene on his wall. “Sportsman In Loincloth Battling Triceratops,” he titled it. Later that evening, over cocktails, his friends saw what was probably the world’s first print ad.

Scholars call the period that followed, world history. I call it advertising in the making. And why not? It makes for great copy. In case you didn’t know it, copywriting was actually invented in 3500 B.C. by the Sumerians. But it didn’t catch on until 1800 B.C., when the first popular type face appeared. It was called Canaanite – a precursor to the popular typeface, Helvetica Bold. Some years later, the world’s first logo appeared – the Star of David, only to be followed by a catchy spin-off – the Christian crucifix. Soon, both logos led to “Thank God for God” bumper stickers and an ongoing competitive campaign that was the inspiration for the Coke-Pepsi challenge. The battle also produced the industry’s first memorable continuing character: the Pope.

Meanwhile, in 500 B.C., over tea at a Chinese restaurant, Confucius said: “Without knowing the force of words, it is impossible to know men.” Presto! The philosophy of creative copywriting was born. Examples of the art can still be found in today’s fortune cookies.

Socrates won “Best of Show” the following spring. The assignment was a toughy: sell “contentment.” His ad read: “Contentment is natural wealth, luxury is artificial poverty.” Socrates’ ink was known by everyone – perhaps to his own admission, the business killed him.

Two hundred years later, the world saw its first blockbuster campaign, created by Alexander the Great. Many of Alex’s peers attributed his successes to excellent reach and frequency.

The next thousand years brought with them a creative drought. Sure, St. Paul and St. Augustine came up with a few memorable tag lines, and Genghis Khan got far with a hard-driving campaign, but no one seemed able to score with the Big Idea. Until 1300 A.D. that is, when a handful of pricey Italian boutiques launched the concept of the Renaissance. The art direction was “Clio” from day one. Print got a boost, too, from a guy named Gutenberg, who opened the world’s first type house.

Then, in 1492, Columbus went international with the biggest idea since the Renaissance-untapped markets. And a decade later Leonardo da Vinci advanced the hottest new business theory to date: “If you don’t have the product, invent it.” It was rumored that da Vinci, Michelangelo and Machiavelli would quit their respective agencies and join forces, but the heavy-hitting trio never got it together. Apparently, the two creatives came to believe that Machiavelli was only out for himself.

In the 1600’s, Shakespeare made long copy respectable; Rembrandt walked away with all the art director awards; and Isaac Newton proved empirically that the oldest copy line in the universe -”What goes up must come down,”-was effective against all target demos.

Halfway around the world, Ben Franklin lit up the industry when he and a bunch of account execs got together in Philadelphia to introduce a shaky new product: the USA. Jefferson did the copywriting on the campaign, and Washington was management supervisor. Its U.S.P. was “In God We Trust.” The only trouble was the logo. Account wanted a turkey. Research said the crucifix had high awareness. Media suggested several symbols, one for each major demographic group. Finally, creative pitched the eagle “because it was bald.” Nobody understood the rationale, but who were they to second-guess genius? Francis Scott Key was brought in to do the music, and the rest is history.

Back in Europe, Napoleon broke his own campaign with one of history’s best-known mnemonics: the Man With His Hand in the Jacket. He hired Beethoven, of Bonn Music, to do the jingle; but, after four submissions, fired the tunesmith, calling him “deaf.” Beethoven turned around and sold his Fifth to Czar Alexander, who used it effectively to trash the French Emperor’s market share.

The battle, however, hardly compared to the clash of Blue versus Gray in the U.S. Civil War. Many considered the mud slinging bad for the industry. Others said it was worth it because the U.S. came out “new and improved.” Indeed a decade later, some of America’s greatest creative work appeared: Bell reached out and touched someone, Edison bought good things to life, and automobiles began to build excitement.

Meanwhile, Marconi claimed that radio was hot; Freud claimed that our ids were hot, and the Wright Brothers forced our industry to double the per diem. Yet even Lenin and FDR, who made revolutionary breakthroughs in the field, couldn’t match the biggest ad blitz of the century” The Third Reich. Armed with a powerful logo, excellent media placement and hard-hitting creative, Hitler’s campaign seemed destined to last a thousand years. There was only one hitch. The strategy-world domination through genocide-turned off the public. And as we all know, if the strategy is wrong, the creative can’t be right.

Once the air cleared following World War II, the industry discovered its most important weapon since the caveman’s club: Television. Like the bombs that proceeded them, TV ads exploded onto the scene in a battle for our attention. With words like targets, campaign, launch and shoot, you would think we agencies were being run by the military.

Finally in the 1990’s, advertising went from postal to digital making it possible for ads to multiply for our undivided attention. In a short 1 million years, humans evolved from homosapiens into homoconsumens. Though come to think of it, advertising has been around since day one. After all, God created man in his own image.

Joey Reiman is the leading authority on purposeful excellence in business. He is author of Thinking For A Living, CEO of the global marketing consultancy BrightHouse www.thinkbrighthouse.com and teaches purpose and ideation at Goizueta Business School at Emory University. Fast Company named Joey Reiman as one of the 101 people who will change the way we work and live.

Reprinted with permission from Advertising Age – www.adage.com

It’s time for the ad industry to trade in the old model for a new currency: ideas

There was once a famous celebrity hairdresser who got a frantic call from a woman needing her hair styled immediately for an important gala that evening. The hairdresser rushed to the woman’s home, asked for a ribbon, and proceeded to create his masterpiece using only a brush and the ribbon. When the woman’s hair was finished 30 minutes later, she was dazzled beyond belief. “How much do I owe you?” she asked. “$2,000,” he replied. She was stunned: “That’s outrageous. I’m not going to pay $2,000 for a ribbon.” He looked at her coolly, gave the ribbon a tug, and watched his masterpiece instantly unravel into a shaggy mop of unruly curls and locks. “That’s fine,” he said. “The ribbon is free.”

Today, marketing is primarily based on the value of ribbons and not the hairdresser’s talent. Corporations tend to value tangibles like billboards and 30-second spots. But that value is changing this very moment. Today, currency is the idea, but tomorrow, ideas will be the currency. The insanely competitive, invent-it-today, reinvent-it-tomorrow world of business can no longer rely solely on capital, raw materials and technology. That stuff is everywhere. Great thinking is today’s most valuable commodity. That’s why Fortune 500 companies are seeking thinkers whose thoughts motivate, inspire and ignite minds. The Ideation Nation, as Albert Einstein prophesied, will be a place where “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” The ability to create better ideas than the competition is the only sustainable competitive advantage a company can have. The age of the big thinker has finally come—an era where the profits go to the prophets.

It’s time for advertisers to stop selling ribbons. Though the advertising business is considered a creative profession where you’re supposed to think for a living, the industry has lost its way as it continues to look for more ways to create money instead of ideas. Advertising agencies have become an antiquated broker business, selling space to clients with creativity thrown in for free. The result is a marketing world that is ad rich and idea poor. Consumers don’t want to be bombarded with ads—they want to be inspired by ideas that will change their lives. Ads create transactions. Ideas create transformations. Ads reflect our culture, ideas imagine our future. The old model of advertising and branding was to improve public perception. The new model demands companies improve public life. To survive, advertising agencies must start nurturing ideas, not just managing clients. Advertisers should be thinking partners, not execution vendors.

PROPER THINKING

Advertising agencies have always been awarded jobs by pitching ideas—in effect giving their thinking away for free. To become a thinking partner for your clients, you must first start placing value on thinking. Conventional corporate structures discourage employees from thinking properly because they are penalized for incubation, a slow process where ideas percolate. When I was an employee at several large advertising agencies, I was encouraged to work fast, not slow. There’s nothing wrong with speed. But if I spent time thinking instead of writing, I was often the target of jests. If you want to accelerate your thinking, you must slow down. We can always find ways to do it faster. The trick is to find ways to do it better and smarter. Today, ideas are the single most important driver in any modern economy—accounting for more than half of economic growth in America and Britain. Ideas, more than the application of capital or labor, create wealth. Intellectual capital is in fact America’s No. 1 export!

Globalization and technology are creating demand for bigger ideas. This, in turn, causes corporate nervous breakdowns – that is, companies torn between fulfilling a vision and just surviving in business. This corporate nervousness has created a marketplace in waiting—waiting to pay large sums for big ideas—because ideas put markets in motion. Never before has the world been more willing to pay for thinking. Ideas have become the difference between winners and losers. No longer is an idea’s value determined by what the market will bear. The more profitable way of thinking is that an idea’s value is determined by what it brings to the marketplace.

So can an idea be worth a million dollars? Of course, any number of multi-million dollar companies and products has been built on a single idea. New, vital, raw, hot, bracing, challenging, paradigm-shattering ideas. Intellectual capital is the new currency. So how much is your idea worth? Whatever you think it is. How can you start thinking for a living? First you need passion. Passion for your work is the single most important factor in creating. Your drive will take you places unimagined, unthinkable and unprecedented. If you are willing to die for your cause, the effect will be revolutionary. You also need perseverance and courage. If you don’t ask for the price, you won’t get it. I sold my first idea for $30,000, the next for $75,000, the next for $450,000 and now each costs over a million.

PATIENCE

And you need patience. In the advertising age, speed was rewarded. In the idea age, it is patience that will be heralded. Incubation is where ideas surface. The old Italian saying applies, “Impara l’arte, e mettila da parte,” Learn the craft and then set it aside. The five last bastions of thinking are the john, the car, the shower gym and the church. It is time to abandon the old model of advertising and evolve. Darwin has paid a visit to our industry and in its present state it’s as dead as a dodo bird. It is time to stop going to outposts like Scottsdale, Arizona, where advertising junkies convene in what looks more like support groups to discuss the future of advertising. Instead, they need to jettison the cargo of the past and build the ideas of the future.

Change is never easy. It requires all of us to unlearn so much and learn so much more. Should you take the leap of faith be assured that you will run into interference. Cynics, skeptics and the old guard will try to make you into Stepford Managers—people who keep the status quo and never achieve status. In the words of Albert Einstein, “The greatest ideas are often met with violent opposition from mediocre minds.”

Thinking is not a core competency in American business. That is why more consultancies that think for a living will grow and prosper. The Thinker will be tomorrow’s most sought after profession. So, the next time someone asks you for an idea, ask him or her how much? If they are taken aback by the price, remember the hairdresser. After all, giving ideas away just doesn’t cut it.

Joey Reiman is the leading authority on purposeful excellence in business. He is author of Thinking For A Living, CEO of the global marketing consultancy BrightHouse www.thinkbrighthouse.com and teaches purpose and ideation at Goizueta Business School at Emory University. Fast Company named Joey Reiman as one of the 101 people who will change the way we work and live.

Reprinted with permission from Advertising Age

‘The fruits are in the roots’. This is a key concept in the M.B.A. course I teach at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School. In class, we explore the soulfulness of organizations — how to discover it, harness it and profit from it.

President Obama’s inaugural address is a primer on this subject as well as an important lesson for marketers who believe our industry could do better. The president believes that going back to our fundamental truths — our soul — is indeed what propelled our nation to greatness.

“America has carried on not simply because of the skill or vision of those in high office, but because We the People have remained faithful to the ideals of our forbearers, and true to our founding documents.”

It is no different for a business. The remarkable power found in the roots of our country can also be found in every organization. In these once-fertile grounds where the seeds of companies and brands first sprouted, lies their ethos: their core sentiment and true purpose.

Too often organizations lose their way from what made them great in the first place. It’s easy to do so in a business environment demanding daily operational excellence with little regard, if any, to a concept I call “soulful excellence”– that which defines and measures an organization’s purpose, authenticity and vitality.

Today most CEOs are focused on the next quarter, not the next quarter century. There are few 100-year managers. But there is a costly price associated with leaving your company’s past behind and cutting off your company from its roots. Organizations that distance themselves from the past will not have a future. Conversely, there are rich rewards for those that reconnect with their company’s origin. According to “Firms of Endearment” authors Rajendra S. Sisoda, David B. Wolfe and Jagdish N. Sheth, purpose-driven, soulfully excellent organizations produced an outstanding return of 1,025% in the past 10 years compared to only 122% for the S&P 500.

Soulfully excellent brands such as Pepperidge Farm’s Goldfish, which exist to instill optimism in children, are marketers that improve public life, not just their public perception. Newell Rubbermaid’s Graco brand is nurturing those who nurture their children. Its hair-care brand, Goody, is focusing on building confidence in young women. And Calphalon is cooking up new ways for people to share their appetites for life.

Soulful excellence is not about a point of difference, but a point of view. It’s not about ads, but actions that add. And in taking those actions, the marketer makes a mark on society.

President Obama said he believes that by reaching back to what is old – our values – we as a nation will be renewed.

“Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends — hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism — these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths.”

Again, the lesson: Strategies and tactics are new, values are old.

Marketers can help businesses prosper and be more relevant by studying a company’s ethos and culture before embarking on strategy and communications. Rediscovering an organization’s true identity, its Stand vs. Brand, will deliver fresh insight into its essence, its “why,” its very soul. In turn, this work will inform the whole organization on how it should act. And that’s important because actions, not ads, change human behavior.

With the global search for meaning in the 21st century, marketers as well as our country need to return to their roots. Reconnecting with your business’ unique origin can be a groundbreaking exercise that yields unprecedented emotional, intellectual and financial revenues.

The president’s vision promises to help leaders, marketers, companies big and small as well as our nation excavate the treasures that lie right beneath them.

“This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed. “

Joey Reiman is the leading authority on purposeful excellence in business. He is author of Thinking For A Living, CEO of the global marketing consultancy BrightHouse www.thinkbrighthouse.com and teaches purpose and ideation at Goizueta Business School at Emory University. Fast Company named Joey Reiman as one of the 101 people who will change the way we work and live.

Marketing has been part of our lives since the dawn of time. One can imagine the first humans who worshiped the sun. That star was planning and executing the conception, promotion and distribution of humanity. Its message was life. And we were the messengers. That big ball of fire – our first TV- would turn on every morning and show us how to grow, work and live.

Then marketing fell into the hands of organizations and lost its luster and purpose. There is no root for the word “marketing” which should be a hint as to whether it has any purpose here on earth. The closest origin would be the word marcatus, which means market or trading place, which might explain our obsession with trading in one kind of marketing for another.

Most of us are most familiar with Mass Marketing. That’s where the marketer sends one message out to everyone with the hope that all will be listening and later buying. Unfortunately, mass marketing became missed marketing as television lost its reception with America. You could call it “absenTVism.” People were no longer huddling around that big box. So marketing had to turn to other channels.

First came Direct Marketing. Spawned to make reach and frequency more laser like than buckshot, direct marketers targeted customers with specific interests. This weighty decision gave birth to junk mail. In the 70’s alone, the average weight of the Sunday paper, doubled.

By the 80′s, the world of marketing was besieged with Walkmans, cell phones, faxes and computers making selling very complicated. Welcome Presence Marketing. Here the idea was to fish where the fish were or get the message to where people were going to get away from messaging like concerts and ballparks. When that strategy started to strike out, we invented “Experiential Marketing.” Espousing that only “an experience” can change your mind, it became the new marketing. Marshall McLuhan would say, ” Everybody experiences far more than he understands. Yet it is experience, rather than understanding, that influences behavior.”

Later called “Surround Marketing” and then “Immersive Marketing”, Experiential Marketing created the backlash of “Permission Marketing. The theory here was that we customers would invite the company’s advertisements into our homes. We would actually ask to be bothered. Perhaps that is how Telemarketing found its way on to our dining room tables. After all, telemarketers always call at dinnertime. Don’t they?

Soon alternative media meant that a marketer had no alternative but to use it. Marketing was going ape! That’s when “Guerilla Marketing” hit the streets. Marketing now was warfare and that meant seizing all opportunities to capture customers. Battalions of students sold cars. Models sold beer. Companies would enlist anyone and everyone if they could ambush customers.

By the 90′s “Digital Marketing” created rapid exchange between buyers and sellers. It also created a new place to hang out – the Internet. Soon, marketers would conclude that if its not online, it’s not. This gave rise to “Viral Marketing” which like a virulent disease spreads fast and furiously until we are all consumed. There seems to be no cure for marketing’s permutations and mutations. Most recently, marketing has morphed into Narrowcasting. That would be the opposite of broadcasting born in the era of mass marketing. Ego marketing is now making its debut as a way to customize a message and market directly to a market of one – you. And then of course, there is Product-Placement Marketing that integrates products into movies in order to script you and then direct you to buy that product. Finally there is “NeuroMarketing” that actually looks at the blood flow in our brains to see if there is a buy button. By the way, there isn’t.

Perhaps, Supermarketing is just around the corner. In this world, marketing is all we do. We live in a virtual supermarket where products and services are marketed 24/7 and people are bagged like vegetables. On the other hand, we might “get back, get back to where we once belonged” as the Beatles’ lyrics suggest and remember how this all began. Let’s call this the new era of “ECO-Marketing.” Here, marketing returns to pay homage to the sun and serves the ultimate customer, the world itself. Here the power of marketing nurtures our nature for connection and helps us connect with nature. Sustainability in this new universe does not mean to survive at the expense of others but thrive along side each other. Marketing then exists to sell more than things. It promotes purpose. It creates action. And it saves a people and a planet that is just about spent.

Marketers need to ask themselves, “Are we messengers who forgot the message”. Their answer will determine the next iteration of marketing. And what’s next for society, itself.

Joey Reiman is the leading authority on purposeful excellence in business. He is author of Thinking For A Living, CEO of the global marketing consultancy BrightHouse www.thinkbrighthouse.com and teaches purpose and ideation at Goizueta Business School at Emory University. Fast Company named Joey Reiman as one of the 101 people who will change the way we work and live.

The value chain, a chain saw mentality, chain store thinking and chains of command have the world of business in shackles. Each chain sets off a chain reaction that kills off creativity, passion and discovery.

Value chain was put in place to make sure companies are not spending dollars foolishly. But the value chain has a few weak links that in the end will cost your company even more money. Based primarily on reducing cost of services, value chain executers (an appropriate name) splice and dice, trim and slim and rip and strip budgets squeezing the very lifeblood out of the service that is being offered. The results: less service and quality. What’s more the value chain process has little value in building relationships. Often they hurt them. It is time that value chain departments depart from investigations to investing in what might be the next great idea for their company.

Chain saw mentality has cut into our values as human beings. Cost reductions by way of deducting people is no way to grow a bottom line. Still companies partake in employee genocide wiping out entire floors of people. The Coca-Cola Company lost much of its intellectual pop lately as it has many of its finest were poured out onto the street in the last decade. And most recently, BellSouth made the unfortunate call to let thousands go. Corporate policy must change so that autocratic leadership cannot become automatic canning of the most valuable asset a company has – its people.

Chain store thinking might be great for franchise operations, but within a unique company sameness or routinization will destroy innovation. For many, the dream is to do the same thing over and over but people are over it. Customers no longer buy products; they buy solutions- custom made ways of making their lives way easier. The days of one-size-fits-all have been circumvented by “the power of one.” Even conventional chains are localizing their efforts. Micro-brews are an example of “big is small.” Worst of all chain store thinking incarcerates brains. Thinking inside the box becomes the corporate standard. Standards are not for people who stand for making the world work better. It is time that we reward people creating new orders, not following them orders.

Chain of command is perhaps the most antiquated concept in business today. Militaristic, this medieval caste system allows for the rise of modern day dictators. In these organizations the boss is nothing more than “double S.O.B. spelled backwards.” Steely-eyed, know-it-all dogmatic, top-down leadership is a ship that is sure to sink as its captains abandon this old world school of management for more liberating, organic and democratic systems. Companies today need to get horizontal with their staffing structures if they want their profits to be vertical. Round tables should be used as a metaphor for how decisions will be made. And ideas should be heralded as the currency of leadership. Nurturing environments become the hot beds of creativity, passion and discovery. In allowing ourselves to fail without the ridicule of supervisors we innovate faster, better and more often.

Prison chain gangs work together. They are linked by common values. And they all report to one boss. Sounds like your company. Perhaps it’s time you make a break for it.

Joey Reiman is the leading authority on purposeful excellence in business. He is author of Thinking For A Living, CEO of the global marketing consultancy BrightHouse www.thinkbrighthouse.com and teaches purpose and ideation at Goizueta Business School at Emory University. Fast Company named Joey Reiman as one of the 101 people who will change the way we work and live.