Lost lessons from the creative brief
By Randy Mitchell If you were a student in my marketing class back in 2009, I am deeply sorry. Like a fool I stood in front of you and babbled on about strategy, concepting, workflows, tactics and the emerging role of social. And somewhere in that caffeinated wall of words, I devoted 30 seconds to the creative brief. Wait, what? It may provide little consolation now, but please know that I have learned my lesson. Over and over again. The creative brief is a topic that everyone wants to discuss in depth. In fact, it has become a focal point in every class I teach, from MBA level marketing down to creative basics. We debate the creative
The Tagline Tarpit
By Randy Mitchell The place: Prehistoric Los Angeles The event: The very first marketing meeting A small group of Paleoindians is gathered around a rock. They are locked in a heated debate over a timeless marketing question: “What should our tagline be?” The meeting drags on and on. It’s an epic decision and consensus seems eons away. Before they realize it, the meeting’s momentum begins to fossilize. Literally. Our intrepid marketing ancestors have been entirely engulfed by thick, black goo. I cannot confirm that this actually happened in ancient La Brea. However, I have empirical evidence to prove that the tagline tar pit is real. Agencies and clients frequently disappear into the primordial ooze of trying to
Want the best work from your agency? Use the Magic Document.
By Randy Mitchell You’re a reasonable marketing professional: smart, productive, and you have great taste in blogs. You work for a reasonable company: they have important programs, big plans, and they were wise enough to hire you. So, when your company’s leadership team makes the all-important decision to bring in a marketing firm, it’s only reasonable to expect the agency’s best work. But will that expectation truly materialize? Far too often the answer is no, particularly when it comes to B2B marketing. The relationship starts well enough. Everyone seems to connect, and the agency promises a quick ramp up and real progress. “They actually get it,” growls the company’s tough CEO, and everyone is smiling. Then
Reimagining the quadrant
By Randy Mitchell Boomm works with many diverse technology companies. Some are clients others are partners. They come from multiple practice areas, including data management and marketing automation. And they range in size from startups to industry leaders. However, despite their many nuanced differences, these technology companies have one trait in common. They all dream about getting their platforms into the Gartner Magic Quadrant. If you’re not familiar with the Gartner Magic Quadrant, let me do my best to give you a creative person’s rudimentary definition. The Quadrant provides a graphical representation of where companies and their tools rank on a simple Cartesian grid. The Quadrant is influenced by key criteria such as “ability to
Three secrets behind the best webinars
By Randy Mitchell There are far too many webinars in the world right now. In the last year alone, the use of webinars grew by 69% according to HubSpot. Chances are, you have two or three B2B webinar invitation emails in your inbox right now. On the flip side, there are far too few excellent webinars to satisfy our content-hungry world. We don’t need a data point to prove that one. If you recently wasted an hour enduring a bad B2B webinar, I’m afraid you will never get that time back. Which brings us to the question marketers everywhere are asking: How can we rise above the noise and create a webinar that people will
How a B2B campaign crushed clichés and won the highest honor
by Randy Mitchell, Creative Director Clichés are the curse of B2B campaigns. If you don’t believe it, pick up an industry trade publication and flip through the glossy pages. Or visit a trade association website and check out the digital ads. Most of the approaches will seem blatantly obvious and sadly homogenous. Why does this happen? Because B2B topics are so difficult to explain and clichés offer an easy way out. That fact hit home just one short year ago for the Boomm creative team. We were surveying the landscape before diving into a massive rebranding for an industrial client. Most of the B2B campaigns we saw featured the same four elements: Serious looking
Changing the world for B2B brands
by Randy Mitchell, Creative Director Here’s a promising sentiment for every creative out there: Your ideas can change the world. You simply have to share them with the right people. But where are the right people? Who can give your best ideas the stage they need? It would be natural to assume your best shot at creative immortality is to work on mega brands, like Coca-Cola, Nike, Major League Baseball or McDonald’s. I have a different perspective, because I worked on all of those accounts. It looks impressive on a resume, but in reality, I was merely one of the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Those brand behemoths had no idea who I
Finding your assets with both hands
Keeping digital assets organized and available can be harder that you think. by Fred Gaede, Chief Creative Officer “Can you send me that high resolution logo file again?” “But I emailed it to you only last week!” “I know, but I can’t find it and I don’t have time to search for it. Please, can you just send it to me again?” Sound familiar? Probably. Whether it’s locating the correct logo for your PowerPoint, the correct photo for your blog post, or the latest PDF of your product brochure, managing digital assets can be not only a hassle, but also a headache. While many major corporations may have an IT or marketing department that controls
How to survive a creative presentation to Darth Vader
by Randy Mitchell, Creative Director It’s the day of your big creative presentation and you’re about to take center stage. Are you nervous? Please. Everything is iced. The strategy is inspired, the budget is on the penny and the creative is exceptional. You live for moments like this. Besides, the room is alive. The clients are geeked about the new program. In fact, their whole month has been leading up to this meeting. Then Darth Vader walks in. [caption id="attachment_6724" align="alignright" width="300"] Don't let Darth Vader throw you off your presentation game.[/caption] The chatter stops. Clients scramble madly for their chairs. Someone whispers, “I thought he was in China this week.” Darth Vader slashes his business card
When it comes to agency selection, it’s about the music they play, not about the sound system
by Gary Mattes, CEO When my lovely wife, Lisa, agreed to marry this guy, she took on all but one task in the wedding planning. Boy, did I get it wrong! (That’s my task, not my choice for a wife.) The one task assigned to me was arranging the music for the reception party. She knew that I had strong opinions on music and “Celebration” by Kool & the Gang was not being played at my wedding. It had been played at every friend’s wedding for years. I arranged to meet with a couple of event DJs. One DJ had great playlists. He was somewhat of a musical dopplegänger to me and seemed