You can’t find the Prospect in a four inch screen and other thoughts about everybody-gets-a-trophy

I preach a great deal, push a great deal about The Prospect as the heart of everything we do.  It seems there are some – what I thought were fully explained – confusions about what I mean when I say this. 

Creating a smart, insightful Kamikaze Prospect Definition isn’t mere intellectual exercise.  It’s not descriptors – education, sex, age, marital/parenthood status, income, geography.  They can’t give you the gut feel needed to strike a previously unexplored balance between who the Prospect is, what they may think about your client’s product/service.  Let alone how to meld the two into one universal Prospect centric concept carrying a can’t miss message in a Hey that’s me! Language of Concept.

It’s not how they dress.  It’s how they feel about how they dress.  Not who they vote for.  It’s how they feel about the act of voting 

We frequently work with huge, seemingly disparate Prospect Pools.  Not everyone is like everyone else, but they do fall into marketing maven determined classifications based upon general societal commonalities.  There will also be something – some universal truth, emotional thread, actionable attitude – which holds them together beyond the classifications, descriptors, categories.  Find it.  Push behind it, under it, through it.

Strip it down.  See, feel, intuit what’s behind its every shadow

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Working moms with corporate management positions suffer the time/balance crunch between kids, home, job, self and hubby.  But how can you use that conceptually for any product with nothing – zip, nada – to do with the time/life balance crunch? 

Push what’s behind, through, under the commonality.  Find new ways to express it, interpret it for both Prospect and client. 

Okay, we know all Prospects in the Prospect Pool struggle to find and maintain a healthy life/work/family balance.

What came before it?  Will having kids/family keep me from fulfilling my professional goals?  What’s before that?  What are the accompanying/often conflicting questions – and all possible answers – leading up to the time/life crunch we’ve been given?  Push. Push.  Strip it down to what’s before that.  And that.  And that.

What comes after?  Do kids/family give me the grounded support I need to remember what I’m working for?  Push. Push.  Work through all the accompanying/often conflicting questions, all possible answers.  Then push some more, even when the answers you find lead to – of course – yet more questions.

How do you pass through it?  Better hire a nanny, cook, tutor, babysitter, house keeper.  If only.  Ditto the questions, ditto the answers.  Push. Push.

What about what’s under it?  Is this all there is?  What was I thinking?  Is it even possible?  You know what comes next.  Push. Push.

One universal truth.  At least four threads – each leading to at least four more threads + four threads behind those.  Each expresses a single, different commonality/emotional thread.  All could lead your Prospect to your client in unexpected, conceptual ways.  On message and in Language of Concept (tone/voice you use to speak to the Prospect).

Yet too many students, beginners, even professionals – still see that working mother within the single dimension of one convenient label.  No matter they've found all the disparities, all the intellectual details, may have spent hours mining hard data.

 

What they don’t do is apply their gut.  Not their imagination.  Not what they see as probabilities.  Their gut.  That sense of coming trends, individual insight, recognition between seemingly vastly different people across rooms, miles, countries, lifetimes.

Can you do motivational, Prospect Centric work on gut alone?  I don’t know about you, but I can’t.  And I have one heck of a “gut” developed over decades of growing up always “the new kid,” living as a local in places I obviously didn’t belong.  Listening.  Watching.  Most importantly, talking, asking, exploring, caring.  Without judgment.  Without reservation.

 

In other words, being one with the world.  Whether it’s my world or not.

With apologies to Salt-N-Peppa, Herbie Mann, Push. Push.

I’ve been seeing some pretty strange, confused and confusing interpretations of this lately.

If you consider your prospect pool a single person, give that person a name, a specific job, number of kids, pets, a certain family unit and geography, your correspondingly narrow creative strategy and solution can eliminate the rest of the group.

Consider your Prospect Pool too broadly, your creative will be everywhere but where your Prospect will find it motivating.  All you’ll have to build on will be clichés, generalizations, product information.  Regardless how huge the group, how general you think you have to be to address them, there are always at least four more ways to express, dissect, examine, push your gut and intellectual universal truths into less expected, surprising concepts.  Before, after, through – push.  Push.

I realize this may be difficult for those living life in a four inch screen to grasp.  This bigger picture/universal truth aspect of Prospect Definition’s far too big.  The screen, barely the size of a decent selfie.  The creative possibilities, impossible to divide into neat little touch screen compartments.

 

Your universal truth – your Kamikaze Key Fact – is at once common within the group, even as it barely skirts the boundaries of what makes everyone in your Prospect pool different. 

We may all see a different culprit in the time/family/work balance formula – traffic, non-stop after school activities, travel for work, eating meals standing up/on the go – but we must expose what’s behind the obvious to speak differently.  To cut through the clutter surrounding a prospect pool constantly bombarded with the obvious: how little time they have.

A few more Prospect Centric thoughts spinning my head of late:

Q:  How can you expect ten dollar words to motivate someone with the (sad but true) American average Seventh Grade Reading Level.  What’s the solution?  Dumbing down your copy?  Or helping to raise the reading average?

Q:  Who is it I’m supposed to know?  How do I get behind, under, through, before?  Go Zen.  Be the prospect.  Be the Tree.  Learn to see through descriptors from the inside, out.  Live the Prospect, don’t just observe.  Observation only creates pack imitation.  Be the Prospect.  Be the tree.

Q:  If every kid gets a trophy, must we stop group sports and other non-competitive competitive activities before no one’s left who understands the difference between genius and mediocrity?

Q:  It’s about time to stop this post, don’t you think?

As with everything posted on kamikazecreative.blogspot.com, this entry ©2015, Doreen Dvorin/Kamikaze Creative™ unless otherwise noted, dated.

HUCKSTERS, SHILLS, SELLING ICE TO ESKIMOS: Why I hold students, co-workers and clients to such high Ethical Standards

Thanks to Congress and Used Car Salespeople, the ad trade no longer anchors the “Most Trusted/Respected Professions” list.  According to Gallup, today we’re held in slightly higher esteem – third from the bottom, up from dead last.  When it comes to how many individual ad people are trusted, seems Americans would turn their back on less than half of us. 

That’s terrible! say too few.  Who cares! say many too many more.

Where do I stand?  If you’ve taken my classes, asked for advice, attended one of my seminars or speaking gigs, been my creative partner, my client, you wouldn’t question it.

There are two ways to look at everything we do.

 

We can be manipulators.  Or we can be motivators. 

We can take advantage of the world economic engine.  Or we can help keep it fueled.

 

Sell ice to Eskimos, bridges to Innocents.  Or speak to people we like and respect.  Honestly communicating product benefits they find important, useful – never exaggerated, over-promised, without choice.

Why bring this up now?  Why me?  I’ve never been afraid of the harder road.  Never sold one of those bridges.

I teach Kamikaze Creative Strategy™ and Advertising Concept/Problem Solving/Copywriting.  A style of thinking so Prospect Focused, that great mass of strangers needing our client’s goods/services/points of view are as near, dear – and morally important – as those we care for most.

Everything we do hinges on Prospect Knowledge, Prospect Respect.  Leading to Prospect Belief. 

Watching late night info scams, reading all those paid/written by social media hack internet reviews, you’d think just the opposite.  But that’s not the kind of work I do.  Not the kind of work I teach.

 

I never think, “wade in muddy waters - do trickster stuff, play huckster games with client money, earn lots of my own.”

I say “connect people with goods and services they need, want or can have fun with using honesty, creativity, prospect knowledge and respect.”

If everyone in the industry took that same path, would it change our public standing?  Perception being reality, probably not. 

Who cares?  In Doreen’s World of Kamikaze Creative™ it means a great deal.  I’ve seen Presidents, Senators, Members of Congress, CEOs, murders, even everyday traffic scofflaws perjure themselves.  For the most part, get away with it.  That still doesn’t mean I should do the same.

A better-than-many presenter, tapped to sell bad work to good clients when no one else could, I often left jobs without plan or back-up.  Often risked my job to disagree with superiors rather than charm and swarm wrong or mediocre work into client approvals.  As a freelancer, I risk clients when what they want – and what their customer needs – are far from one and the same.

It’s the way I live my life.  The way I work.  The way I teach.

I also believe if most people took the time to think about it, they’d choose the same path, or as close to it as reality allows.

So why the bad rap?  Sometimes it’s ignorance.  Sometimes ad “pros” truly don’t know what they say is wrong, aren’t aware there’s a better, smarter way to their Prospects’ heart through their sense of right and wrong.  There’s also the reality your work isn’t just your work, a job’s not just your job – it may support a dozen other people, families, children, as well.  That’s a lot to risk.  I don't judge.

I’m here to tell you there is a better way.  One that’s smarter, truer, more effective.  One that more ad pros endorse, live by, than get credit for.

Let strongly held personal and professional ethics be your guide. 

If you do it, own it.  If you don’t, own that too.  Forget Shirley Jackson* and her derivatives/imitators.  If the fault’s mine, I need no scapegoat.  I own it.  If I’m wrong, I apologize, do what I can to correct my mistake.

What I never have – never will – do is blame my shortcomings, mistakes, off-prospect communications on someone – anyone – else.  Sure, it’s easier to say “the client didn’t give me the right input,”  “the account person told me to keep it,”  “the CD told me all that matters is winning awards.”  We also have the opportunity at every possible junction to say Wait!  There’s a problem here.  We need to fix it.

It’s your career.  As students.  As professionals.  The truth starts here.  Advertising ethics can be meaningful or an oxymoron.  Up to you.  You have only yourself to answer to – you, your CD(s), account people, production people, clients and – ultimately – your Prospect.

 

If asked, I know my clients and co-workers would put me at the top of the “most trusted” list.  What you need to decide, where do you want them to put you?

Advertising is a team sport.  Cheat, steal, slack off.  Lie, make false claims.  It isn’t politics, it’s Advertising.  Burn your creative partner, they’ll work with someone else.  Burn your client, be prepared to be known as the writer who lost the XYZ account and was never seen again.  Burn your Creative Director, hope your portfolio’s in order.  

If the people you work with, you work for, don’t trust you, you may last.  You may even prosper.  But sooner or later – in this lifetime or the next one - no matter how good you are, karma will notice.

Sure, sometimes nice/honest folks finish last.  True, not all cheats get caught.  When they do, many either die denying or try to turn it on another, honest person. 

One of the most popular client company (and sadly, ad industry and creative organization) speaking programs I do is called “How to Judge Ad Creative.”  What I teach isn’t about subjectivity, rules of thumb or individual tastes/insights.  It’s about how to look at work, how to see what it’s based upon, who it’s meant for and how to marry these together – using graphic, strategic and creative education - to properly consider if the creative is right for your Prospect.  And therefore, if it’s right for you.

I believe we’re not here to bury the client, the doubter, the unbeliever.  We’re here to educate them.

That’s the concept behind Kamikaze Creative™.  Being willing to risk your job on an idea good enough, right enough, honest enough to ask the client to risk her/his job, too.  And to make sure that client knows as much as you why the only risk is not taking one.

Every time you present, the unexpected smartness, honesty, educated gut and originality of everything you show must put you both out on that limb.  As long as you’re not selling melting ice or distant bridges, your honest belief, based upon honest, intimate Prospect Knowledge and Respect, will prove it

*Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery."  If you haven't read it, you should.

Kamikaze Creative(TM) and Kamikaze Creative Strategy(TM) are trade marks of Doreen Dvorin/Kamikaze Creative.  This blog, as with everything else published in this blog, is (c)2015 or earlier by Doreen Dvorin/Kamikaze Creative unless otherwise noted