philossary

ASSUMPTIONS are lurking everywhere. Identify them. Prove or disprove them. Never ignore them.

ADVERTISING has mutated. I wrote an essay about its role in the age of misinformation: How Advertising Conquered Democracy With This One Weird Trick. It was intended to provoke discussion.

ANSWERS to the wrong questions, even if correct, are less valuable than no answer to the right question.

ASKING the right question, is more valuable than the correct answer to the wrong question.

BE what you want to be. Brands and campaigns should not say a thing; or even show a thing. They should be the thing.

BRAND is a construct in the mind of the consumer or customer that’s based on the sum of all interactions with a service or product and its company. This is why brand manager is a misnomer. Brands are behavior-based organisms. They learn how to be in the world by interacting with it.

CHANGE is conflict. All conflicts stem from the forces of change fighting same.

CONWAY’S LAW: outcomes mirror their origins. Complex organizations create complex products. Dysfunctional teams produce chaos.

CULTURE is difficult to describe. It's like a fish talking about the water in which it lives. I believe creative people and cultures have three traits which map to how we think, feel and behave. They are curiosity, empathy and tenacity. 

CURIOSITY eventually leads to the truth. Asking 'why' of every assumption leads to an irreducible trait of human nature. And that is where the real insights are hiding. Questions are the only real tools we have for discovering the truth, divulging the scandal, destroying the status quo, and delivering progress.

DISADVANTAGE has its own advantage. EG: Having nothing, means having nothing to lose. Being a challenger, means not having to defend.

DELETE twice, add once. Humans have a bias toward addition over subtraction.

DATA is losing its meaning as a term in today’s marketing jargon. Whereas evidence is data that can get a person convicted in a court of law. Evidence is the reason behind our strategy and the proof that our work is working.

DIVERSITY is critical to a growth mindset and innovative culture. I am and will always be a member of my company’s ARDE&I initiatives. If you’re not diverse enough to comfortably consider a cis-gender, straight, white guy like me—we shouldn’t be talking.

EXAMINE a leaf, and it will reveal the tree. Even the forest. But it does not work the other way. 

GAP is the language of problems. The gap between a client's expectation and the agency's performance. The gap between a brand's promise and what it delivers. The gap between what you say and what you do. The gap between what the data says and what we want to believe. The gap between you and your competition. The gap between the push of your business model and the pull of what your customer needs. The gap between knowing when to end this entry and when I actually end it.

GIF is pronounced with a hard 'G,' like 'good' or 'graphics.' If you agree, we’ll get along just fine.

HICK’S LAW shows that insights are (by definition) not obvious. And they’re often counter-intuitive: More choice means fewer chosen.

INSIGHT is decoded belief or behavior in humans (and sometimes brands.) To change one requires changing the other.

LEADERSHIP happens on the ground. Not in the sky or the yacht or the tower.

LEARNING requires simultaneous unlearning. New emotions, beliefs, and behaviors must displace another. 

METAPHORS are king & queen. We actually think in metaphors. 

NARRATIVES matter. Comedies, tragedies, histories; it doesn’t matter. We use stories as structure for memory. We believe stories. Especially the ones we tell ourselves. 

OXYMORONS aren not a thing. It’s possible to hold two opposing beliefs. Beware of the false choice.

PARADOX: two things that can’t both be true, yet are. Beware of people who can’t accept that level of dissonance and ambiguity.

PURPOSE is why you exist. It doesn’t matter if you’re a person, an agency, a brand or a company. It is frequently and unfortunately synonymous with the appearance of purpose. The label of “cause marketing” gone because it was too transparent. Any effort of a company or brand to burnish its social, environmental or economic justice credentials should make certain it’s doing so because it will make a difference—not just be known for it. I care deeply about this, which is why I’m working with an early startup as a writer, editor and strategist; Protagonist will be a collaboration space for the purpose economy.

QUESTION why. It’s the most powerful question there is. Keep asking until you get an irreducible answer.

READ between the lines. Beware of unintended communications, eg: The marriage equality movement began by arguing the case for equal benefits. The between-the-lines message: Same-sex couples marry for money and benefits. Then they switched strategies to show how similar we are, that they marry for love. Marriage equality followed.

RACE can’t be a conversation we confine to classrooms and podcasts. If we learned anything in 2020, it’s that white Americans have to do the hard work of listening, talking and acting in order to create racial and social justice. We never had a period of truth and reconciliation in this country; it’s long overdue but not too late.

REACTION is like the atmosphere. It’s everywhere. Abbie Hoffman, Andy Warhol, Frank Lloyd Wright and the Apple iPhone were all reactions to something.

STRATEGY is the who built on a why, the insight. All creative has to do is figure out the how. :)

STRENGTHS are the things we do without trying, as individuals and systems. It’s more effective and efficient to leverage them than to try and fix weaknesses.

STRESS is an echo chamber. It’s up to each of us to turn down the volume, internally and externally. I try to remember that we only see the surface of each other, that stress is what we hide from others. If we don’t manage stress, it eats away at our resilience and confidence. We can’t survive in this industry without resilience and confidence.

TRUST is our currency. It’s traded between agencies and clients, customers and brands. We can earn it, lend it and lose it.

TRANSPARENCY promotes honesty. Honesty gives everyone permission to say, "we can do better." A culture of truth produces work and brands based on a truth.

TRUTH in advertising shouldn’t be an ironic. Lying to consumers, employees and clients is disrespectful and usually comes from a place of fear.

UMBRELLAS don’t make it rain. The casual observer might think otherwise. Be wary of confusing association or coincidence with causality.

WORDS is all we got. Use them judiciously to avoid diluting their value through inflation.