All the mentors I didn't know I had

[Ed. - I wrote this article for the Digital Summit newsletter, and am cross-posting here for posterity.]

I started my career. Chaos ensued. The years blurred by. Then one day, I woke up to find I’d been promoted to creative director.

Suddenly I was managing a larger team than I'd ever been part of. I wouldn't say I was panicking, because why would I admit something like that? But I needed help. 

Sure, I'd had bosses. Lots of them. Creative directors. Associate creative directors. Executive creative directors. Chief creative officers. And practically all of them were kind, smart, genuine humans who weren't afraid to show up, day after day after day. But none of them had really taught me how to do the job I was in now.

So I contacted a bunch of CDs I respected and said, "I don't know what I don't know. I don't even know what to ask you. Will you please just give me some advice?"

Most were generous enough to respond. Here are some things I was told.

1. Define your own role: A creative director is responsible for six gazillion things. (Selling the work to clients, navigating agency politics, staffing a team, giving feedback to teams, working with production partners, coming up with big ideas, and so on and so forth.) Problem is, no one's actually good at six gazillion things. Fortunately you're the boss, so you get to write your own job description. List the things you're good at, do those things, and staff your team so you can delegate everything else.

2. You are where the buck stops: Is that scary to you? It should be. Of course you should seek feedback, criticism and advice. But understand something. You now make the final decision on what work that leaves the agency. Either get comfortable calling the shots or give the job to someone who is.

3. Watch your body language: The people on your team are going to make life decisions - buying a house, looking for a new job, planning their career path - based on how they suspect you feel about them. So drink the Kool-Aid. You have to be all-in on whatever it is you're doing. When in doubt, smile.

4. Do the work (or don't): Some people will say you have to "stop doing the work," because if you do it badly, your team will lose respect for you, and if you do it well, your team will get pissed you stole their opportunity. Other people will claim the reverse. They'll say it’s important for you to "keep doing the work," leading from the front, staying in the trenches, and showing your team you'll fight for their ideas just as hard as your own. Either path works fine as long as you're transparent about which one you're taking. The thing that will actually throw your team off is surprises.

All of that advice is mostly true. Some definite gems in there. I tried to follow it, as best I could. But a couple years into my tenure as CD, I realized something:

I didn't know any of that stuff before I was promoted.

So there was something else I'd learned, somewhere. Something important I'd been taught that had allowed me to rise into this role.

I thought back through all my previous bosses. I couldn’t remember any awesome advice or singular bits of wisdom they’d passed on. And that’s when the truth hit me like a ton of award show statuettes wrapped in a pillow case and dropped from the agency rooftop.

Real mentorship doesn't happen through an email, or in an aphorism, or even over coffee. Real mentorship happens so quietly you barely recognize it.

It's watching someone endure a 16 hour day without once losing their cool… It's a CFO funding an award show submission for a questionable piece you're unrealistically proud of… It's an agency staying open waaaayyyy past the date the founders wanted to shut it down, purely because they couldn't bear to lay off their employees.

Don’t get me wrong. The advice I got was great. And I'm very grateful for it. But the best lesson was one I didn't even realize I'd learned. 

Be a kind, smart, genuine human who isn't afraid to show up, day after day after day.

If you do that, most of the other stuff will just sort of happen.

On transcribing dialogue

 I stole this practice from someone. Mamet, I think. I invite you to steal it from me.

Anytime you run an audio interview, do at least a few minutes of the transcription yourself, by hand. 

Spoken language is a mess. Even the most articulate conversationalists constantly reset verbs, abandon sentences, staple one idea to the next, and interrupt themselves and everyone else.

And I know you know that. 

But there's a difference between knowing something in your brain and knowing it with your fingers. Transcribing real dialogue onto the page is time consuming and tedious. But if you care about communication, it is a discipline worth enduring and a lesson worth learning.

“A brand is not a logo…”

"A brand is not a logo."

I’ve said those words so many times the people around me have started to roll their eyes.

“Here he goes again.”

I’m undaunted. Unabashed. I pontificate onward. “A brand is the emotional promise created by the sum of every touchpoint between a customer and a company.”

That’s a giant statement. And every time I make it, I’m tacitly admitting there are huge parts of my clients’ brands that are outside my control. Sure, I can recommend the salespeople wear their shirts untucked or that they Windex the windows twice a day. But if they don’t, well, there ain’t much I can do about it.

There are only three elements of a brand I can control.

Fortunately, they’re three really major elements. Together, they can make or break your company.

1. How your brand looks. Its logo, colors and photography style. 
2. How your brand speaks. Its tone, messages and purpose. 
3. How your brand sounds. 

And sound may be the most important element of all.

Our minds are designed to respond to noise. Maybe that’s because when we were in the womb, that’s all we had? I dunno. But when we hear a noise, it imprints in our echoic memory. This gives us an extra few seconds to analyze the noise and understand it. It also means the noise gets imprinted with meaning.

The result? Ring a dinner bell and Pavlov’s dog wags his tail. Sing ba-da-ba-ba-ba and humans start mainlining Big Macs.

Some scientists think music makes us feel happy because our brains release dopamine when we hear it. Yes, dopamine. The exact same neurotransmitter that makes social media so addictive.

But the dopamine kick you get from music is memorable, not addictive. That’s because your mind decodes it the same way it decodes sentences, poetry and even your favorite Russian novel. (Which should be The Brothers Karamazov, but I digress…)

So far, there’s nothing groundbreaking in any of this. It’s just stuff I picked up as a second-rate musician, frequent Wikipedia reader, and professional ad guy.

Here’s the real news: Sound = Success.

When you add a sonic cue to your brand, the ROI is otherworldly. You probably know this already because the Nationwide jingle and the Intel chime and the State Farm chant are all burned into your brain. But if you want facts, here they are.

A brand that includes sonic cues… 

• Generates more effective ad campaigns (Kantar, 2023). 
• Increases scores for authenticity, uniqueness and likability (MarketingBrew, 2024). 
• Is more likely to earn attention and be high performing (IPSOS, 2020). 

Hey, you skipped to the end of this post? Good for you.

This is the most important part, anyway. The Coupe folks can help you develop a  stronger brand and increase sales. They can give you the tools you need to convince the C-suite to invest in marketing. And they can create a sonic brand that real people will be humming moments after they hear it. And all you got to do is say hello.

[Ed. - I wrote this for the Coupe Studios blog and thought I'd post it here, as well. Hope you enjoyed it.]

Six questions to ask yourself before giving feedback on creative

At some point in your marketing career, you’ll probably be asked to give feedback on creative. Before you open your mouth, ask yourself these questions.

Is this my call? Or just my opinion? Feel free to give feedback either way, of course. But understand that if you’re the decision maker, every passing comment will interpreted as an order, so be careful what you say. And if you aren’t the decision maker, people might decide against implementing your feedback at all. So if that feedback is really important, you need to phrase it in a way that sells it.

Where’s the good in this work? Phrase your feedback so it sounds like you’re not killing something bad, you’re clearing space so the good can shine through. Don't say, "This doesn't work." Instead, try, "This part prevented me from understanding this great idea."

Will my feedback make the work 10% better? If it doesn’t, don’t give it. I got this tip from an ECD, shortly after I became a CD. He told me that if a team loses ownership of their idea, they'll stop giving up their nights and weekends to work on it. And the quality will drop by a lot more than 10%. So if you're going to change something, make sure the improvement is obvious.

Are you giving feedback on their idea, or pitching your own? People become creatives to bring their ideas to life. Not to execute your idea for you. Severing the idea from its execution is a recipe for apathy.

Can I give this feedback without physically touching the work? Especially in today’s virtual culture, it’s tempting to draw lines through things and drop comments into decks. That reduces your feedback to a punchlist that can be ignored. It’s harder to ignore strategically sound direction that’s delivered as a challenge statement.

Do I have a thick skin? The creatives killed 95% of their own ideas before they shared the work with you at all. So if you voice an idea and the creative team shoots it down, don't be offended. Go back and get a different idea. That's the expectation for creatives, and it's only fair that the rules apply to you, too.

A trick I use when I write about AI

I don’t really have a hot take on AI. But I do have a trick I use when I write about it. After I’m done, I replace the word “AI” with the name of someone I know, and read the sentence aloud to make sure it still makes sense. 

For instance, you’d never say, “I wrote this copy in Matt.” Or, “I wrote this copy using Matt.” You probably wouldn’t even say, “I wrote this copy with Matt,” unless you and I sat down at a keyboard together. 

It’d be more accurate to say, “I asked Matt to write this copy.” Or “I directed Matt to write this copy.” Or even, “I got a rough draft of this copy from Matt and then edited it.” 

Performing this exercise does two things. 

1. It helps make sure I'm thinking about AI accurately. As a collaborator, one with proclivities and processes I may not understand. 
2. More importantly, it ensures I don’t casually overstate my role in the creative process. Because the dangerous thing about AI isn’t just AI. It’s the way it lets us fool ourselves.

Some thoughts about COVID-19 and the future of travel

For three years, we’ve heard rumblings. The ecological cost of leisure travel was unconscionable. Millennials couldn’t wrap their heads around things like paper passports. The era of peak travel was coming to an end.

And then, 2020. And all those rumblings turned into that train from Snowpiercer.

For consumers, 2020 might represent a seismic shift in collective consciousness. But for travel marketers, it’s more like an acceleration of five trends we were already grappling with. (Or, in some cases, trends we hoped would go away if we twiddled our thumbs long enough.)

#1. We are all SI/SO now

In mountain towns, accommodations are sometimes labelled SI/SO. Ski In/Ski Out means no schlepping gear through town. And suddenly, just as important, it means no steamy buses or sardine-tight gondola lines.

Right now, every travel destination needs to ask itself what its own version of SI/SO is. Maybe you’re running accommodations on a resort property or in a walkable downtown area. If so, the answer to this question is obvious. And you should look to create package deals with nearby attractions that let travelers get from their beds to their experience with a minimum of operational friction and human contact.

Smaller Convention and Visitors Bureaus might not find obvious answers, but they’re out there. Americans are craving nostalgia and have an ongoing love affair with mom-and-pop shops. Put those together and you can design a bunch of new experiences, from drive-in concerts to farm-to-sidewalk outdoor dining. And destinations could use streaming technology to sell virtual ticket options to experiences that have limitations on the number of visitors.

The upside to designing SI/SO experiences? People pay more for them.

#2. Travel sans surprises

In one of my talks, I joke that Baby Boomers and Millennials are the same. They both expect someone else to do everything for them. Boomers use travel agents and Millennials download digital concierges, but both groups expect a curated vacation.

This tendency is probably going to pick up steam among Gen X families seeking to quell their anxiety about exposing their kids to coronavirus. And it’s guaranteed to force seniors online. Before 2020, 68 percent of seniors said they bought something online at least once a week, but 80 percent preferred to shop in person. COVID-19 is going to change that, pushing seniors onto the Internet to consume more content and make more purchases. With 99 percent of Boomers planning annual leisure trips, you can expect them to start learning the same digital techniques that have made travel so much more accessible to Millennials.

#3. #StayCloserToHome

America’s always been Roadtrip Nation. Between 2014 and 2019, the number of people taking roadtrips increased by 64 percent. And, according to a 2020 travel trend report released by a global collection of 750 independent hotels, microcations were rising in popularity among all age groups. And that was before coronavirus.

Resonate recently released a survey that stated that even after stay-at-home orders are lifted, only 11 percent of people would feel safe traveling internationally. But 52 percent would feel safe traveling within their own states. As travelers start dipping their toes back in the water, their first excursions are likely to be those they can drive to.

There are two ways to take advantage of this. First, advertise not just to home-state audiences, but your neighbors. Your first customers might be people within just a few miles, who trust you specifically because they see you on their way to work every day. Second, make yourself part of a curated road trip. Create tools that let travelers reach you without airlines, and show them how much fun they can have along the way.

#4. Your face is your passport

Organizations like the World Economic Forum (WEF) have long advocated digital identity tools that’d let you manage a profile, collect digital “attestations” of your identity and decide what to share. United States Customs and Border Protection is using facial recognition to match travelers to passports. And reaction has been mixed, with companies like IBM and Amazon being forced to scale back in response to privacy concerns. But fast forward to today. Travelers might start advocating for biometrics so they can get through security without touching anyone.

Back to the WEF. “In a COVID-19 context, a traveler would be able to securely obtain and store trusted, verifiable health credentials such as immunizations or their health status in their digital identity wallets. This would be combined with other trusted, verifiable identity data from public or private entities.”

This is one of those trends that went from being ten years out to two years out in the space of a month. Every time you hand someone your driver's license, paper ticket, phone or passport, you run the risk of contracting a deadly disease. Consumers will be watching to see how fast destinations offer biometric check-in, digital passports, contactless payment, medical screening and robot cleaning. And once early adopters pave the way, the rest of the industry will have to get on board.

#5. Make healthcare part of the pitch

When you work with luxury vacation properties or ski resorts, there’s often a whispered understanding that somewhere in the decision-making process, someone (often referred to as the Chief Mom Officer) will ask “Where do we go if one of our kids breaks a leg?” And when you work with airlines, there’s always that one traveler pulling a Naomi Campbell.

COVID-19 will turn these whispers into shouts. Proof of sanitation and access to emergency care will help consumers feel confident about being away from home again. And destinations should consider sharing that information on their websites.

[Ed. - I wrote this piece for the Heinrich blog, complete with links and sourcing. I'm crossposting here, just for posterity.]

If you're going to read one book by Thomas Pynchon, read The Crying of Lot 49

Over the past three years, I've read them all.

I flew through the earth with The Chums of Chance. I kicked through California beaches with Doc Sportello. I don't even want to begin to tell you what I did with Brigadier Pudding.

I read every single one of Thomas Pynchon's unreadable, impenetrable, chaotic-hard-right-turn novels. And when I was done, I decided to perform this service to humankind:

I'd decide once and for all which one of Pynchon's novels you should read first.

I rated every one of his eight books on four scales. Order of importance. Personal enjoyment. Accessibility. And how well it introduced Pynchon's worldview and themes.

I tallied the results nervously. What brick-of-a-book would come out on top? Melancholy dark horse Vineland? The esteemed and reviled Gravity's Rainbow? Post-9/11 mystery Bleeding Edge? Perhaps my personal favorite, the epic American meta-fiction Mason & Dixon?

Man, it wasn't close.

If you're going to read one Pynchon novel, read The Crying of Lot 49. Besides Gravity's Rainbow, it's his most famous book. It's his shortest and among the easiest to follow. And it takes you on a whirlwind trip through all his major themes. The unsettling paranoia, the layered fictions, the sad sense that maybe America had something special once, but whatever it was it's been lost and it's not coming back.

After that, read Mason & Dixon. And then just see if you can stop yourself from finishing them all. I know I couldn't.