The Time is Now.

I’ve spent the last year and a half working with some of the largest brands and with a number of top creative agencies on eCommerce and eMarketing sites. Couple that with my agency background and I’ve got a lot to talk about when it comes to the state of brand presence on the internet.

I still strongly believe in defending the idea. I see the brands who use their sites to build relationships with their customers, who create unique reasons for their customers to badge themselves with their brands and their products, who celebrate their uniqueness and tell their story.

But I’ve also seen technology replace the idea. I’ve seen the statement, “I don’t want to get in the way of a customer who wants to buy.” as an excuse to put up eCatalogs rather than immersive sites. I’ve seen short-sighted brands and agencies fighting over easy things—fonts and cropping and colors while never tackling the fact that they’ve lost the idea.

People like beautiful, functional sites—there’s no doubt about that. But that is just the entry fee to be a top brand. What they really want is that experience you get when you walk thru Saks or Macy’s or Bergdorf Goodman’s and bump into something unique. The salesperson focuses you on the things you need to make a buying decision. Whether you buy or not, you’ve had an experience.

Right now I am infatuated with commerce on the internet. This is that rare time when nobody quite gets it. Sure, there are great paradigm breaking sites like Uber, Task Rabbit and AirBNB. These breakthroughs are changing the way we buy. But for established brick and mortar brands, there’s no simple answer.

That’s why I’m trying to press my creative friends to start thinking about eCommerce. I believe that with the current platforms (open source and SaaS) there are ample opportunities to be great merchandisers. But what I haven’t seen yet is how a great marketer can breath life into an online presence.

Let’s make shopping social and interesting and exciting and an experience unto itself. Let’s use personalization and all the data we have to paint a unique picture for our customers. Let’s combine commerce and concept.

The opportunity is there. This is the time. It’s freaking exciting. 

Are you working the Idea?

The Idea should help your business. That seems common sense, but sometimes we get caught up in our own work and miss the big picture.

Just because an Idea is wacky and memorable, doesn’t mean it’s good.

Develop an achievable, measurable goal for your marketing, for you growth, for your business then measure your work against it.

Just because you always spend money and time at that event in the fall, that show in Vegas, that direct mail campaign; doesn’t mean that it still tracks with your business goal.

Why are we doing this? What are we hoping to accomplish? How will this get us more subscribers, sell more toilet paper, fill the seats in our stadium?

That’s the Idea. Do what helps and not what you’ve always done. 

Evolving Great Ideas From Bad Ideas.

In my years of generating Ideas, I have found that while each one is unique, the path is eerily similar. In my head this process is generational in that it takes one step to create the next.

The first generation of Ideas are the easy ones. The puns, the things that are like other things, the simple connections. These make sense, have the basic feel of an Idea and sometimes convince you that you are done. A little time watching TV and you’ll see plenty of these. The most basic is the illustrate the problem. “Auto Insurance got you pulling your hair out?” And the visual is a guy pulling his hair out. Heh Heh. That’s great. Look at him with the wacky hair and he looks pissed. And there’s your logo. 

Illustrate the problem is but one example of First Generation Ideas. Write em down so they no longer take up valuable space in your brain.

Second Generation Ideas make no sense. Sometimes in brainstorming you think they make sense. But when you go back over your list, you end up asking, “What did we mean Ice Cream Sundae of home repair options. I thought that was cool yesterday, but I can’t really explain it today.”

Don’t worry. You are moving toward an Idea. Crazy connections that don’t work, that others don’t understand, that take three page explanations are part of the process.

Because then you come to the beauties of third generation Ideas. Having gone thru the obvious and the derivative, moved past the insane, you’ve arrived at Gold. OK all the concepts you develop here aren’t Gold, but to come up with a clear, strong concept that uniquely connects your product/service to your customer/prospect, it takes work.

So don’t settle for the common or the crazy. Work to get to the Idea.

The Idea makes it easier for your employees.

The Idea tells more than your customers who you are, it tells your employees too.

With a clear expression of what makes your company unique, your employees know exactly what to do in every situation. You’ll never be surprised how they react to a customer. Do they issue a refund with a smile or do they keep the money in the drawer? Do they bring in the right new business that you are looking for or are they wasting valuable sales hours with bad referrals?

Make sure you express your Idea to your employees as well as your customers.

It doesn’t have to be difficult. It just has to be consistent.

The jukebox response.

Even though I’m old, a jukebox was still before my time. But I’ve always thought a good Idea delivers the Jukebox Response. That is, when you push J8, you used to get Chuck Berry. When I push cold, thirst-quenching drink while driving, I get 7-11’s Slurpee.

What buttons need to be pushed to have your brand to show up in the customers’ minds? What situation/filters/time of year/emotion makes them pick you out of the stacks of competition?

What I like about the analogy of the Idea as a Jukebox is that you can only own one thing. And it has to be unique to you. You can’t be cheap and quick if someone else in your space already is. You have to come up with a button that is all your own.

So ask yourself, if the customer wanted to find your brand, what jukebox buttons would he push?

Now you’re getting to an Idea.

Roll over Beethoven. 

Everyone doesn't have to be right. Everyone just has to be included.

Machiavelli told us it is better to be feared than loved. But Machiavelli would make a terrible marketer.

Input is important. Listening, writing down, and showing that you heard what everyone said. Once you have their input, you can use consumers to tell them that it is not cogent. But if you tell them their Idea doesn’t matter, whether that is by action or directly, they will tell you your Idea doesn’t matter.

The start of any Idea generating process should be consensus building. This is when concepts are inexpensive and plentiful. Court them from everyone. Make sure your problem children get special attention.

When they are heard, they will listen. When they have been included on the input they will have ownership of the output.

Build consensus and you can build an Idea that permeates your organization. 

How BK missed the Idea and sold Big Macs.

Working at Leo Burnett in the late 80s, the most coveted assignments were the “reputation” spots for McDonalds. These were some of the most memorable spots McDonalds has ever done, because they put McDonalds into people’s lives and didn’t try to cram cheeseburgers down their throats.

Roy Berghold, the one man responsible for all the McDonalds advertising during that period tells the story of the power of the Idea.

For years McDonalds had done reputation spots like Olympic Hopefuls about the little kids and their Olympic aspirations and the classic Country Hero spot where the kid loses the big race but is greeted at the train station by the whole town when he returns. 

Burger King tried to do their own reputation spot and actually did a really nice job at it. They entered it into a national award show and won a big award. But what happened next proved the power of the Idea.

The person in charge of the award show called up McDonalds and told them they had won a prize for their spot. They went back and looked it up and they had to admit Leo Burnett didn’t enter a spot of that title.

It was the Burger King spot created by their agency. But the Idea of a reputation spot was so firmly McDonalds that even when BK did it well, the credit still went to the Golden Arches.

The Idea can make excuses for bad service, can create new markets and can even make your competitor’s work sell your product.