Processes

Bill Baker (no relation) is nicer than I am, so don't pin any of my introduction on him. I recently spoke to an auditorium of C-level executives, and the title of my presentation was long but revealing: "The Happy Death of Branding, the Next Fad of Storytelling, and the Hopeful Rise of Alignment."

I guess that expresses my view of branding: there are a few firms really doing it, and the rest (and majority) aren't doing anything differently than they did before, but now they are calling it branding because it sounds upstream. There was no training in marketing, no classes, books, or even real processes. The typical four circles with the ubiquitous use of alliteration doesn't count and should be taken off your website.

Regardless of whether or not you agree with my view of branding, it clearly is yesterday's news, and storytelling comes up frequently. Rather than being marginalized even more, I think we ought to jump on this one early so that we don't relieve the word of even more meaning.

Bill (disclosure: a client) is one of the very few people really doing story telling. While the concept has been around since people wrote on cave walls, modern storytelling was really maximized by E+S (Envisioning and Storytelling) in Vancouver roughly three decades ago, a place where Bill was Chief Strategic Officer. Now, under BillBaker&Co he continues that great work with clients like GE, Relais & Chateaux, Johnson & Johnson, The Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sport, etc. Here are some of his thoughts on the difference between faux storytelling and real storytelling. Real storytelling is a very complex skill, and I can sit for days listening to Bill point out the subtleties involved. This is just the outer layer.

Here's Bill:

Good project managers are hard enough to find, and great project managers are rarer still. Thanks to Andy Crowe (Alpha Project Managers), though, we now have a peek inside the top 2% of project managers, based on a study of 5,000 of them as rated by their peers/clients. Not surprisingly, great project management requires a lot more than the ability to move a milestone.

Here are the top ten traits of project managers who are really making ideas happen:

Qualities of a Great Project Manager

• Command authority naturally. In other words, they don’t need borrowed power to enlist the help of others--they just know how to do it. They are optimistic leaders who are viewed in a favorable light and are valued by the organization.

Using a database of hundreds of firms in about 90 different metropolitan areas across North America, what are the three things that principals struggle with the most? You might recognize yourself.

 There’s not a lot to say on this subject, but management does seem to attract control freaks in inordinate numbers. My own experience as a control freak was a bit hilarious. I decided that it was time to research OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) tendencies, and so I went online and ordered three books. Right. Not one book, but three. As I explained this to someone, she just laughed, nearly rolling around on the floor. Ordering three books on obsessive compulsive tendencies seems to confirm the diagnosis before even cracking open one of the books, no?

The reason marketing firms fail is not creativity, location, or the marketplace. It’s management ability. Your firm is a direct reflection of you, and you must take responsibility for it. Here are the most common dozen mistakes we see marketing firms make. If you are managing a firm now, you’ll identify immediately. If you are an employee, this might give you some context for the decisions you may not agree with. If you are considering starting a company, this will help you learn from the mistakes of others.

A large percentage of the marketing community works at in-house departments within large corporations. The designers and illustrators and photographers and writers and strategists who choose to work in those settings do so for the opportunity, structure, benefits, predictable hours, career paths, and greater collaboration.

If you doubt that a large percentage of designers, for example, are not working for small firms, attend any conference in this field and just look at the attendee list. But in spite of their large numbers, they are underserved in some ways. All the craft topics are applicable, but there is very little advice on how to run a marketing department. How should it be structured? What systems will ensure good work that is also timely? How should that department be marketed?

You really have no business starting a business and not making good money, eventually. Money itself is just a tool, for good or bad, but when you start a business you’re declaring your intent to be profitable (after paying yourself a fair wage). Hopefully you’ll make money in an ethical manner, fully understanding the power (for good) that it can have.

What will the next couple of years look like at your firm? Before answering that question, let me list my assumptions: that you are competent, that you are not working in one of the very few areas that is not doing well, and that you have entrepreneur’s disease.

If you’ve had your head down just getting things done, you may not have realized how well advertising, design, public relations, and interactive firms are doing these days. With very few exceptions, principals are finally getting back to the point where they can be pickier about what clients they work for.

Growing pains (defined as increasing the net employee count) seem to have common themes in the small marketing firms we work with. The average firm grows at 30% a year. Real, internal growth (vs. growth through merger or acquisition) is more manageable at something less than that average, since as humans we cannot seem to adapt that quickly. (This average growth statistic may explain the unusually high failures in the same industry.)

After owning a marketing firm for six years and then advising other principals since 1994, one of the unsolved mysteries that still makes me scratch my head is why the vast majority of people in this field fade away from it in their late forties and early fifties. Not only is that unique in the professional services sector, but it’s also a darn waste because these people are smart, hardworking, and capable of having a significant impact on their employees, their clients, and even the world.