What I Learned in 2010: Boston's Creative Visionaries Speak

What I Learned This Year: Steve Connelly, President and Chief Creative Officer at Connelly Partners

I was asked by the good folks at The Egotist to give some sort of a review of 2010. And most people would view this as an opportunity to reflect on lessons learned over the past 12 months. A look back at industry highs and lows. Stories of facing obstacles and the economic Armageddon of 2010 yet overcoming with motivating success stories from the Adguy soapbox. Me, I’m guessing you don’t want to read any of that crap. I’m guessing you couldn’t be happier to see 2010 in the rear view mirror. Get this year over with and get on to the next one. So let’s lighten things up a bit…let’s get blissfully superficial.

See, I’ve always forgotten things. I like to think that it’s not because my head is too empty but rather too full. My kids would disagree. But my head is akin to a man’s closet, packed with stuff and none of it neatly put away. Much of what’s in there is trivial, but I can’t get that stuff out from between my ears. I walk the world everyday with a mind filled with useless facts (did you know the University of Southern Illinois nickname is the Salukis? I did). Thus my life is dependent on a Blackberry filled with reminders, alarms, and important events. Which for this conversation is a perfect way to look back at 2010. Let’s roll the magic Blackberry ball and see what pops out each month:

Um, uh oh. January 2010 is totally blank in this thing. Empty. But I swear I did stuff in January…. really I did. Wait a minute; I think January was the month I got a new Blackberry because the previous one crapped out. I freaked out. My tether to the organized world was gone. How would I survive? Yet somehow almost 12 months later, here I am. Lesson number one for all of us in advertising - no matter how bad the year looks, the sun keeps coming up. We’re all still here.

I have an interesting entry in February. There was a radio assignment I was working on. And as I was exploring directions, I wrote a radio spot specifically for Ray Welch to read. All the pauses. All the big words. I could hear Ray’s luscious voice caressing every sentence, making something better of my copy than I ever could have. The fact that Ray passed away several years ago didn’t deter me. I always enjoyed writing for Ray. I enjoyed writing this script for him as well. I miss him terribly. But I know that every time God needs to reach the angels, he has the best copywriter ever up there to write for him. Sure Ray could always turn 60 seconds of copy into 77 seconds, but if anyone can be flexible with media, God can. Ray was a dear friend.

Had a radio and TV VO session on March 9th. Funny spots. Cool thing about the day was how little I was involved. I was ornamental and had no problem with that. I had a little germ of an idea, and a whole team of CP people ran with it, improved it, created the hell out of it and made it a gazillion times better. We would end up winning a Hatch for our work that day at Soundtrack. Lunch was great….I spent a lot of time with lunch. Pizza. That was a good day.

On April 13th I had my first meeting with the folks at Dey Pharma, the people who make Epi Pens. They became a client a few weeks later. We had found a pharma client more interested in our experience marketing to moms, than our experience marketing drugs. Which was sorta limited. Ok, we had none really. This was going to be a good year.

May 20th was my Dad’s birthday. Thanks Dad. Advertising is hard work. I got my work ethic from my dad, who worked as a truckman extraordinaire his whole life. Always worked hard. Always found time for us kids. The birth of Balanceology.

Maybe you’ve seen our Samsonite TV spot? The one with the bull charging the red Samsonite Spinner bag? Pretty cool spot huh? The bull was great to work with. Kept the pooping on the set to a minimum. First presented the idea on June 2nd.

July 20th. Looked at the year to date. Determined that the year was strong enough to allow us to take our agency trip to Disney again. Been able to do it 10 out of our 11 years. Spouses, kids, partners all welcome. What the hell…what am I going to do? Spend our meager profits on cool cars and man-earrings? Nah. Is Disney a bit cheesy? Of course…it was founded by a mouse. Duh.

September 2nd. My anniversary. Nuff said.

October. The Blackberry is chock filled this month. Look at all the dots on the electronic monthly view. Man I was busy. But this is every agency’s busiest month. The month where everyone starts to look and plan and elevate expectations for the next year. The kind of month that reminds you why you got into advertising in the first place. Energy is everywhere. I love October. Perfect that October ends with bags of candy and chocolate. We’ve been on a sugar high all month.

November 12. Had a top-secret breakfast meeting with another agency about becoming part of Connelly Partners. Very exciting. Can’t tell you any more than that. I can tell you I had an eggbeater omelet with spinach and dry toast. We pitched two new accounts I can’t tell you about either. Sorry.

December: The Egotist asked me to write something about 2010. I forget why. Better go check my Blackberry.

The Year in Review. 2010. From Steve’s Blackberry. Don’t fixate on just the big things from the last 12 months. Cherish the little things that make up your year and your life. Your life is details. The little things end up adding up. They define you. Look back at 2010 and look in all the little nooks and crannies of the year and smile.

Happy New Year. And, as the politically incorrect among us would say, Merry Christmas.

What I Learned This Year: Gary Greenberg, Executive VP and Chief Creative Officer at Allen & Gerritsen

What I Learned This Year: Ted Page, Principal and Creative Director at Captains of Industry

The three most important things to know about growing a business: Culture, culture, and of course, culture.

A lot of things that I continue to learn about running an agency are right out of business 101 – the kind of things any decent MBA program would teach me, but here at Captains of Industry I’m learning on the fly in the real world, without a professor to guide or grade me. The beauty of learning this way is that I (and my business partner, Fred Surr) can take the most basic business principals and build upon them in our own way, non-theoretically, and begin to see the results relatively quickly.

One of the first things any business guru will tell you is to “get the right people in the right seats.” Sounds simple, right? Hire great people who are really good at what they do. In 2010, we took this premise and, as we say around here, we Captainized it. Yes, we hired great people – people who are talented, smart and entrepreneurial. Total team players. The extra ingredient was love. Any time we interviewed anyone, we asked ourselves, do we LOVE this person? We looked for that feeling of, “Oh my God, I can’t let this person out of the building, because they might take a job somewhere else!” We knew we could hang out with this person all day. We could enjoy a beer or two with them at the airport when our flights were cancelled. We would happily spend hours in the conference room brainstorming, or shooting the breeze. Once we had that feeling about a job candidate, then we had other employees interview them. If the other employees, unprompted, used the word “love” in their description of the candidate, then we’d make the hire.

Over time, we’ve gathered a whole group of people who really love working together. They love coming to work every day. They love working with our clients, and the clients love them right back, and hire us to do more and more work. Our attrition rate is near zero, and we’re getting better resumes sent to us for consideration. Our culture contributed a lot to the growth of the company in 2010. But the best thing about this culture is that it makes for a fun, creative, productive and profitable company that’s great at any size.

What I Learned This Year: Pete Favat, Chief Creative Officer of Arnold Worldwide's Boston office

This year I learned how to re-learn.

Let me explain.

Throughout my career I spent a majority of my time learning how to do what we do.

And most importantly, doing it well. Learning how to get to great insights, learning how to create a strong brand, as well as learning how to launch a new brand, I had to learn all the disciplines that go into creative execution, how to manage a creative department and shape a culture for a company.

Needless to say, it was a lot to learn. I think I have done pretty well.

But today, I feel it is all changing. The way we get to insights, the way we create brand image and brand messages. The way we execute creatively. All changed. Layer on top of that new technology and the channels that seem to be springing up every day requires a lot of learning.

We are moving faster, we are more responsible, we are held more accountable and the way we design conversations is a huge shift in thinking.

Our basic goal hasn't changed, but the way we get to it and how things are executed has.

It’s kind of like once you think you have it all figured out, you don’t.

Some may see it as a royal pain in the ass. It may make life seem more difficult.
Maybe that's true.

The way I look at it, re-learning this industry is far more challenging and therefore more exciting.

When I was young, I used to think someone who worked in a business for 25 years (me at this moment) must know everything there is to know about what they do and how they do it. How cool.

But now I am re-learning that thought too. If you think you know everything there is to know? How boring.

Peace,

Pete

What I Learned This Year: Mitch Levy, SVP of Creative at Digitas, Boston

What I Learned This Year: Adam Larson, founder of Adam&Co.

Entitled, "All that's good is born from dreams."

What I Learned This Year: Michael Gatti, Creative Director at The Barbarian Group

What I’ve learned this year.

2010 was the year of identity crises. No one was immune: fledgling newcomers were put to the coals as hard as their middle aged establishment-type peers, and very few came out unscathed. Mainly I learned that, in the same way you can’t return from a “spa retreat” with a significantly diminished proboscis and expect everyone to play along, neither can you revamp a well-known brand logo and expect the Twitterverse, Blogosphere, or greater Interwebs to be silent about it. Under such immense pressure, there are several ways to play your response. Here are a few of my favorites from this year:

Cave like a Chilean mine.
It took Gap all of six days of merciless Internet ridicule to abandon their new logo, presumably five days, twenty-three hours and fifty-five minutes longer than they spent designing it in the first place.

Speak your customers’ language.
I know everyone calls it “The Y”, but does this mean Christian men are no longer welcome to associate there?

Ignore the criticism. Loudly.
“We disagree” is how Steve Jobs responded to one critic of the new iTunes logo. “…asshole” is presumably how that sentence would have continued.

Accept your limitations, and embrace them.
MTV realized that if it’s been years since you were in the business of showing music on television, it’s probably time to remove “music television” from your logo.

…but know when to stop.
Just because you’re Starbucks’ bland, adopted brother doesn’t mean you need to look like it.

Let your product speak for itself.
It may not be the hit of design blogs, but as long as Comedy Central continues to crank out The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, Futurama, and South Park, I’d say it doesn’t really matter.

Launch a preemptive strike.
This redesign might be the best $5 Urban Outfitters ever spent.

What I Learned This Year: Steve Phillips, president of Phillips Design Group

Top 10 Things We Learned in 2010

1. We're entering a new era of branding.

2. You have to create more meaningful experiences to engage customers in your brand. Communication alone does not work!

3. Brands connected to a higher social value have greater appeal than brands that aren't.

4. In many categories, “low cost” and “great service” are becoming commodity attributes and won’t differentiate brands over the long term.

5. It's never been more important to ground strategic thinking in internal as well as external audience insights.

6. If you aren't measuring, you aren't learning. If you aren’t learning, you are guessing.

7. Design has never been more important.

8. Alignment is the most critical aspect for effective brand building. Not only does the brand vision have to be in synch with the marketplace needs, but the organization must align their objectives, strategies, resources, and timing to succeed.

9. Brands that move harmoniously across channels are more valuable than brands that don’t.

10. Despite popular reports, big ideas are not dead!