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The power of unplugging
As you’re reading this, I’m miles away from the office. Nearly 2000 miles away, to be exact. (Thanks to the magic of the Internet.) It’s time for a family vacation, and my husband and I have gathered our three kids and headed off for an adventure.
Arizona
In the week before I left—which was as busy as my return is sure to be—I worked my way steadily through a to-do list in preparation for one thing: a week in Sedona. Colleagues asked me, “Will you be checking your email? Will you be available?”
After a pause, I answered, “No, I’m totally unplugging.” And that was that.
Our world has changed since I started an advertising agency in 1987. Over the years, it became increasingly easier to stay connected. Enter today, when we’re all one email, text message, or tweet away. It’s always been tempting to take the work home with you. It’s even more tempting now that work can fit in the palm of your hand.
But there’s something necessary about disconnecting. Whatever your job—“creative” or not—your brain needs an occasional refresh to keep producing your best ideas. Research documents that our brains often solve problems or generate new ideas when we’re not thinking about them. Creating mental distance by unplugging allows you to truly experience the things that enrich your creativity anyway—sunshine, laughter with your family, the luxury of uninterrupted sleep. All the while, the work you left at work is simmering in your subconscious.
You might not be at the Grand Canyon for a week, but you can leave your phone at your desk during lunch. You can go home from work, make a nice dinner, and eat it on your porch instead of at your laptop. You can declare the occasional email-free morning.
And when you return, you can tackle your work with fresh eyes. In this business, sometimes a pair of fresh eyes is exactly what you need.
CreateAthon Season Starts to Simmer
Julie Turner works it for charity during CreateAthon '10
It is still months away, but I am already excited. With each day that passes, CreateAthon is one day closer.
CreateAthon is a national nonprofit assistance initiative that was born right here in Columbia, SC. During CreateAthon, partner marketing, advertising and public relations firms provide pro bono marketing services for select nonprofits. I have been lucky enough to cry through a number of presentations to very deserving nonprofits who year after year accomplish so much good with so very little means.
The brainchild of Riggs Partners Cathy Monetti and Teresa Coles, CreateAthon has grown from a lone, local effort into nationwide network of partners. If you’re interested, there’s still time to become a partner or a participating nonprofit.
In the weeks leading up to national CreateAthon week, September 12-16, follow the excitement in real time on the CreateAthon blog and on Facebook.
CreateAthon is an amazing experience and I look forward to volunteering each year. No sleep. No showers. No egos. It’s 24 hours of pure marketing insanity that I wouldn’t miss for anything in the world.
Passing Trends
The housing bubble, gold at $1,545 an ounce and silly bandz have one thing in common. All seem completely reasonable in the moment.
I see trends as momentarily curious absurdities just prior to obsolescence. This brings me to Groupon. Billion dollar rumors abound. I cry foul.
From the consumer’s point of view, the group coupon trend is a win. At the same time, businesses are forgoing up to 50 percent of their sales for the volume Groupon and Living Social can deliver. Working twice as hard for half as much money? It doesn’t make good business sense to me.
If this equation yielded consumer trial, followed by a long-term relationship with a brand, it would be different. Yet Groupon and its peers are breeding a consumer who demands extreme discounting — one that will merely move from one discount to the next.
I met with a restaurant owner last week who lost $1,200 after implementing a group coupon tactic. It doesn’t have to be this way. Incenting trial through discounts and creating a sense of urgency are worthy goals. Just don’t give away half your sales in the bargain.
Take a cue from my local garden center. I came home Friday afternoon to find a flier under my doorknocker.
This flier gives the first 20 customers a $10 certificate.
It’s nice to see someone getting it right.
- Know your customer: The garden center had delivered to my address before.
- Establish urgency: I wanted to be one of the first twenty customers who got a discount.
- Drive preference: Why would I go to another garden center when I had the possibility of a discount at this particular one?
- Be impossible to ignore: I was forced to interact with the promotion. It was under my doorknocker.
- Get people in the door: Even if I went and didn’t receive the discount, I would still be in the store ready to shop.
- Make a sensible investment: The first 20 customers got $10 off. That’s $200 in merchandise, or $100 out-of-pocket for the store’s owner, not 50 percent of the store’s total day’s sales.
What a welcome dose of smart marketing amidst the chaos of current trends.
Full circle moments
Julie and Cathy, circa 1988
In 1988, I was a 27-year-old entrepreneur with a great passion for advertising and a tiny bank account that didn’t allow for payroll (including my own). The phone rang one day and on the other end of the line was the determined voice of high school student Julie Smith.
“My sister just graduated and she doesn’t know what she wants to do and I already know I want to work in advertising and if you will let me come work for you now I will do anything you need even empty the trash and you won’t even have to pay me.”
It didn’t take me long to say yes, and even today — 23 years later — I consider it one of the best business decisions I’ve ever made. It was also a valuable lesson:
Never underestimate the power of the gut instinct decision.
Is there any level on which it makes sense to hire your first — and might I add only — employee from the high school pool? Okay, maybe if your business is a landscaping service. But not in this kind of business, for which a level of talent demonstrated through a great portfolio or experience in other respected shops is virtually required. And yet I heard something in Julie’s voice, a quality that told me This girl is something special. I was right, and for the next five years, Julie added sparkle, smarts and joy to our growing creative studio.
Cathy's graduation gift to Julie
In 1992, she graduated from the University of South Carolina with a degree in advertising and I joyfully nudged her out into the world. I knew her talents would best be developed with experiences challenging and diverse, and she earned her stripes with stints at several respected agencies and in leading an in-house marketing program for a major nonprofit.
She also grew up, got married, and became a mother of two precious, precious boys.
Earlier this year, Julie founded her own creative studio, wordsmith. She has come home to roost in the fabulous WECO building, alongside Riggs Partners and among our band of crazy-talented strategic partners who also call the WECO home.
Cathy and Julie, circa now
It is one of the great joys of my life to work alongside my protégé and friend, Julie Smith Turner. She is a reminder to me, every day, that the relationships we build as we move along this “work” pathway are the real payouts for a job well done.
Stop Guessing and Learn to Talk to Real People.
Build better sites and apps by getting to know the people who use them.
PART 1 of 2
By Dean Schuster, truematter
The manic drive to create websites and mobile apps quickly and cheaply requires huge sacrifices. Is complex functionality the first to go? Hardly. How about the content management system? Goodness no. Trendy design? Please.
The first casualty of most Web projects is, unfortunately, concern for the people who will use them. After all, people might actually have something to say about that nifty mobile app you’re building. Can’t have that. Ignore them and your preconceived ideas can flourish. Your site is probably already done.
This sounds absurd, but it has become an epidemic. The drive to build right now overcomes the small voice that asks, “Build what? For whom?” We’ve created a culture of compromise.
I propose a radical idea. Maybe, just maybe, we should talk to the people who use our websites and mobile apps before we build the stuff for them. Radical ideas are bitterly opposed by the status quo. Sure enough, most Web teams avoid researching or interacting with people before they dive into work. I suppose they trust their own instincts or (gasp) make things up as they go.
I do not trust my instincts. Neither should you.
Talk to People First
Shockingly, real people have constructive things to tell us about themselves and their needs. If we ask, people will help us define our work in such a way that it has a greater chance of success. But here’s the thing. We have to interact with them before committing to a project direction.
There are several practical ways to do this:
- Field Research: Observe people in their own environment.
- Early Usability Testing or Prototyping: Test mock-ups with real people.
- Direct Interaction: Talk with people.
Today, let’s focus on Direct Interaction. The principle is simple. If you are building an app for an amusement park, talk with amusement park enthusiasts. If you’re building a site that sells high-end bicycles, get up early on a Saturday and talk to cyclists. You’ll want to know the basics:
- What are they like?
- What do they do everyday?
- How might the thing you’re building help them do what they do?
It’s After Midnight.
The morning is gone. And so are the planning meetings. Decisions are being made. We are drinking coffee and bringing things to life while you’re dreaming.
When they first hear about CreateAthon, the first comment people often have is how hard it must be to work all night. It’s really not. There are so many ideas to bring to life, 24 hours is barely enough time to make it all happen. But your body generally frowns upon 48 hours of wakefulness. So we’ll stick with what works.
Speaking of, I have work to do. Lots and lots of work to do.
By Guest Blogger Julie Smith, The Adams Group
Thoughts on CreateAthon, from a Veteran
The following post first appeared on the fantastic design blog Graphicology on September 19th of last year. Superstar art director (and keeper of the Graphicology blog) Jason Smith was an integral part of the CreateAthon team last year, and his reflections on the event moved us to tears (quite literally). With his blessings—and in anticipation of CreateAthon ’10 this Thursday/Friday, we are reposting it here, in its entirety.
268. What I Learned At CreateAthon ’09.
Last Thursday at 8am began my first foray into CreateAthon. I had been threatening for years to be involved in some way, and I finally made good on that—learning quite a bit along the way.
First, you should know what CreateAthon is. CreateAthon is (from the site)”…a 24-hour, work-around the clock creative blitz during which local advertising agencies generate advertising services for local nonprofits that have little or no marketing budget. Since the program’s expansion from a single market to a national effort in 2002, 73 agencies have joined the CreateAthon network, holding CreateAthon events in their cities. This effort has benefited over 1,000 nonprofit organizations with 2,248 projects valued at more than $10 million.”
So yeah, it’s like anything that is followed by -athon. You do it, nonstop until the job is done only instead of money we’re raising ideas that can live long past the event. You drop everything for 24 hours and focus on a problem or two that can be helped with a little design, writing, some creative thinking, strategy, multimedia or whatever you can give. Time being the key gift. And you give that gift to a select group of nonprofits. The nonprofits that we were assigned had to go through a thorough application process and be approved before the event.
CreateAthon was started 12 years ago by Riggs Partners, a much cooler than you can imagine group out of Columbia, SC. I’ve known Cathy Monetti, Teresa Coles and Kevin Smith for several years now and finally got down there to participate. I wasn’t sure what to expect. I have turned around a project or two in less than a day during my career, but nothing like this. We were going to go from creative brief discussion at 8am to concept to execution to presentation to driving home without much sleep all in 24 hours. Yikes! But I couldn’t resist being included and knew that because of the time limit on the process that much would be learned. And what thing learned isn’t even more powerful when shared?
What I learned during CreateAthon ’09.
1. The effect of ego. Immediately upon walking into Riggs early on Thursday morning, you knew there were no egos. Everyone was an equal part in the process and was equally respected. We were all coming together for a cause and that spirit was palpable. That had largely to do with the founders at Riggs, but let’s just say everyone there were the nice people with which you would like to work. This was a good thing come 4am when you might otherwise freak out. This absence of ego was refreshing.
17 people. Zero Egos? Yep. (With me in the back as usual.)
2. What is your title / responsibility again? Every team had a strategic AE, an art director, a writer and one senior person person from Riggs to make sure everything was okay, but to be honest I could hardly tell who was resonsible for what. If you want a model of integration or collaboration or whatever fancy word is being thrown about these days, this was it. The AE took strategic thoughts form the art director. The art director took design input from the AE, the writer helped choose a strategic plan, the student on our team killed an idea (wisely) and was as free to speak his/her mind as one of the Riggs partners. This and the ego thing above went a long way to make this an enjoyable effort. I think replicating this spirit on a normal project, consistently over time, with regular employees would make the creative/strategic product better for sure. Not to mention the effect on morale.
3. Time constraints can be your friend. The impossible was done, going from brief to presentation in under a day, but there is a hidden lesson to be learned and that is the fact that a lack of time forces one to trust their creative instincts more. We had to think about it (concept), ask someone for his or her feedback, and then decide. (This was one of the taglines for the day, written down and everything.) There simply was no time for waffling or indecision. The clock was at once our friend and enemy. I could be wrong, but I believe Milton Glaser is quoted somewhere as saying that the more parameters he is given, the better his work becomes. I think Glaser would like CreateAthon.
I just need to: 1. think about it. 2. Talk about it. 3. Decide.
4. Insight versus problem reiteration. Raise your hand if you’ve ever been given a strategic brief that simply reiterated an obvious problem, and gave you nothing new with which to work. Ok, put it down. You would have loved the briefs we were given during CreateAthon. They were simple. Clear. Concise. And most importantly provided a strategic platform that helped focus the creative work. As a matter of fact, most of the briefs were every bit as creative as the final work. Working from these documents was a joy and saved a lot of that valuable factor we mentioned in lesson #3. I believe Katy, Kevin, and Teresa were responsible for all the briefs and they were great.
Katy presenting her brief and organizing our effort.
5. Sharing. This is slightly different than mere collaboration. Around midnight on Friday morning, we took some time (time that maybe—technically—could have been wrongly argued to be better spent actually working,) and got around a table to present our progress to all the teams. Seeing all the work from the other teams gave us a chance to applaud the good, nudge things that might need a little change, prepare for our final presentations a mere 8 hours later, but overall be encouraging to those laboring on other projects. It was inspiring to see what everyone else was creating and to show off what we were up to. This was as close to a creative community as I have witnessed. Sharing your work in process and being open and sensitive (the good sensitive, not the bad) to the reaction it garners is more than beneficial. It’s also fun. Below, George, a photographer mind you, presents some of his copy and a design from Ryon – who by the way can really make typography sing like it’s supposed to.
Our Third Quarter Progress Presentation.
6. Trust. Because there was no time we had to rely on each other. When someone gave you negative feedback on something, you really had no choice but to trust it. And by you – I mean me. There was a point on our project when I was very close to nailing a design but something wasn’t quite right. What I was hearing was negative feedback, or at least constructive criticism, and they were right. Trusting people that I had not known very well (at least this intimately or creatively) in something as important as I consider design was not difficult in this environment. I took the feedback. Made a change. And the creative was better for it. You can try to be as collaborative as possible, but if you don’t trust the people around you it’s impossible.
7. How to use down time. Normally, if I am working on a project and get a little burnt or tired of working on it, I’d walk away from it. Go for a walk. Hit the gym. Grab a coffee or whatever. And this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But I also learned that maybe the best thing to do when stuck on something is to go help someone else. This was surprisingly an effective means of recharging my own efforts. I am not sure just how helpful I was to the other teams, but there were a couple of times I tried to give my two cents and help solve a problem that wasn’t mine. When I came back to my own little hole, it was much easier to dig myself out of it. And I should have done this even more. Imagine if everyone at your agency or studio did this regularly.
Me trying to payback all the mojo by helping Lauren before her presentation.
8. Fun. This might seem like a little thing, but there is a difference that can be seen in the work when people that are having fun produce it. I believe the entire team had fun on every project and that’s why you should get your agency and or studio to join next year. It’s never too early. You’ll have a blast, especially if you can replicate the environment and spirit present inside Riggs headquarters last Thursday/Friday.
Cathy being cheerful even at an ungodly hour.
Also, don’t forget to bring a few toiletries as you do not want to look and smell like I did come 8 o’clock presentation time. (More proof that the Riggs folks are nice, they never mentioned it. Ha.) Try to work with people who are not as photogenic as our group, because you end up looking like the homeless person in the crowd. (I’m not offering photographic proof of this, just take my word for it.) And for goodness sakes get some sleep built up beforehand unlike me. You’ll need it.
Thanks everyone for letting me play a part this year. I’ll be back for sure.
The entire gang post -athon.
What’s making poor college students pay up (and it doesn’t involve a keg)
I knew very little about my college major (advertising) when I first chose it freshman year. It was my professors who taught me the trade, helped me improve and opened my eyes to the opportunities stretched out before me. They encouraged me, critiqued me and congratulated me when I finally succeeded. My professors were my bridge from youth to adulthood, from student to professional.
The professors I’m referring to are those from the University of South Carolina. But if I had attended Virginia Commonwealth University (and if I had been a design student) I would be speaking of Peyton Rowe.
I’ve only met Peyton once, but once is all it takes. She has a huge, friendly, enthusiastic personality. There’s no other word for it – she is beloved by her students. Not only is she open and fun-loving, but she also took Riggs Partners’ CreateAthon and adapted it into a student event called CreateAthon onCampus. She provided a way for her students to do real work for real clients. And trust me – to a student, that is a huge deal. (I’m not even a student anymore, and I still feel like a celebrity when I see something in public that I created.)
This summer, Peyton is switching roles. She is going to be the student, attending a summer intensive hosted by the School of Visual Arts in New York City. The course is called IMPACT: Design for Social Change, so Peyton will be learning new ideas and methods to implement with CreateAthon onCampus. On the downside, the total cost of her adventure will be roughly $10,000.
Students, this is your opportunity to say “thanks.”
Here at Riggs Partners, we’ve started a fundraiser to help Peyton pay tuition and living expenses. We have created a Facebook page called “Send Peyton Away,” a place for her students to gather and show support. On the page, we ask for a $10 donation (although some donors have generously given more). I know how tough it is being a poor college student; it wasn’t that long ago for me. But I think everyone has $10 to spare, especially for that one person who helps you reach your goals and chase your dreams.
What has Peyton done for you? Let her know how much it meant: http://facebook.com/sendpeytonaway.
- Sammy Rutkowski
Coughter to Ehlers to RP on PRESENTING
It’s the old triple play: Nice piece on the art of presenting well, authored by Peter Coughter, posted on Heidi Ehlers’ Black Bag blog, now brought to you via RP:
Great Ideas Must Live. Here’s How to Make Sure They Do.
Devour, and practice. Practice. Practice.
