Methods

There’s a famous quote from the very prolific Dr. Linus Pauling, “The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas.”  We use some techniques that are not standard in the business, but which we have found to be wildly effective.

We generate these ideas from our knowledge and research, from the know-how and expertise of our clients and their employees, and from the creative interaction of the two.

Knowledge Based

For us it starts with a deep knowledge base that ranges across many disciplines both theoretical and practical. We know a lot more than our competitors. But we don’t know it all. That’s why we back up our knowledge with research.

During our early days in advertising, using expensive research firms was the only way to find the background info needed. But now online research via Google and a dozen other search engines offers more and better information, usually for little or no cost. Every day we rely on this new research potential to supplement our knowledge and experience and keep it up to date.

Our cross-disciplinary method has helped us solve client problems many times.  Frequently we were able to take big ideas that were already mainstream in one industry and import them into a new industry and achieve breakthrough results. Our experience in working in diverse product and service categories makes this possible.

Client Know-how

Our clients spend their days drilling down in their fields to improve their products and services and to understand the marketplace they work in both in terms of prospects and competitors. There knowledge and expertise is critical to generating effective communication in advertising and public relations.

We know that clients are usually too close to their company and need to have their views expanded by outside people to better persuade the public.  Yet this inside knowledge needs to be mined and exploited in crafting the messages we prepare.  So we listen!

Good listening has become a rare trait. Many of our clients told us that they felt that many of the people they worked with in the past never really listened to what they had to say.  We don’t make that mistake.  It would make our work suffer if we did.

Interaction With Clients

Among advertising creators, you frequently hear stories about how the clients killed their best ideas.  Often that’s true.  But what you don’t hear is that clients working with their writers helped them produce their best ideas.  In many cases, we’ve found that the best ideas came neither from the client nor from us, but from the two of us working together. We examine existing approaches, brain storm new directions, criticize and re-evaluate our work, and then see pearls emerge that we could not have created alone.

So when we write something and even before that when we put together our creative strategy, we start with the ideas we have developed in conjunction with our clients.