By Mike Braue, Managing Partner, Director of Client Services, David&Goliath

 

 

 

 

 

At David&Goliath, we believe that no person or company can be great without first being brave. We were founded on that conviction. In 1999, we opened to service Kia Motors America (KMA), then a fledgling brand—and the number 12 import—with a reputation for inferior quality.

A new, better-made line-up gave us a lot to work with. But to win market leadership in segments already dominated by industry goliaths, we knew we needed to get brave or get out. We started by running every strategy, campaign and decision through a filter, constantly asking: Is this our bravest option? Does it give us something to live up to? Would a “safer” agency walk away?

Courage became our barometer. And for the next nine years, Kia’s market share increased year over year, including in 2008. It’s now the number 5 import, with BMW, Mazda and VW in the rearview mirror. As the overall auto industry sales plunged 38 percent year to date through March from year-ago levels, according to sales tracker Autodata, Kia fared far better, as one of only three manufacturers to increase sales (+1%).

Recently, we’ve decided to turn up the volume on our brave stance. In a climate that’s got a lot of businesses basing their decisions on fear, we’re going in the opposite direction, because we believe that no economic climate needs or rewards bravery more than one in crisis.

It’s not like this would be the first time. When P&G’s depression-era shareholders pushed hard for marketing cutbacks, then-President Richard Deupree instead saw his company through by doubling his ad spend—not once but every two years throughout that beleaguered decade.

Scores of other brands were born and bred during economic slumps: HP, Revlon, Charles Schwab, Microsoft, FedEx and MTV. At the start of the Eisenhower recession, a salesman named Kroc inked a franchising deal with the brothers McDonald. And in 2001, another year of economic and social upheaval, Apple introduced the iPod.

This year, we took some time to review our own history, extracting a set of practices that, historically and today, drive the agency’s bravest work.

A BLUEPRINT FOR BRAVERY

1. BUILD A BRAVE CULTURE: Company philosophies are about as useful as a box of wet matches unless they’re part of the culture. And a culture can’t be brave unless its people are. The minute we really got behind our philosophy, we noticed that brave people—clients and employees with extra fight in them—started to find us. Today, our new hires participate in random acts of bravery. Planners write brave criteria into their briefs. And our creatives are the type who know they’re on to something when an idea makes them a little nervous.

2. MAKE IT REAL: Bravery’s intangible. To make it concrete, give it a physical presence in the world. We started with a redesigned identity system that communicates our position clearly. In our office lobby, we challenge ourselves to overcome our deepest personal fears, displaying them in frames on our “Wall of Goliaths.” One employee conquered his fear of marathons, another her terror of Excel spreadsheets.

This isn’t about dressing up the office. It’s about committing wholeheartedly to the value you want employees to embrace. By making this abstract quality real for your people, you’re extending the philosophy beyond work and into their lives. And that gets poured back into your business.

3. UNLEASH SECRET WEAPONS (IN A STEALTHY WAY): An army that charges blindly into the fray isn’t brave so much as suicidal. When we go to battle, we arm ourselves with intelligence, insights and brand strategy. We gather and examine all this during collaborative, agency/client meetings that we call “Brave Sessions.” During one stage of those sessions, we identify the lethal “Weapon,” or marketing strength, which we’ll use to slay our client’s marketing “Goliaths,” or challenges.

For our clients, we do a deeper dig than your typical strength/weakness analysis. Because when it comes to challenger brands facing goliath competitors, the best weapon will tend to be a secret weapon—an opportunity that hasn’t been leveraged fully or at all.

In the early 2000’s, Mattel came to us with a goliath goal: Increase sales for the 100% Hot Wheels brand—producer of Mattel’s die-cast model cars—on a matchbox-sized budget. When we learned Mattel had been buying space in niche, model-making publications, we found our secret weapon: simply put, guys love cars. And guys who love cars are everywhere. Toy collectors? Not so much.

Our target market quadrupled (or more) in an instant. But for maximum impact on a small budget, we had to be stealth about they way we deployed our weapon. Instead of placements in typical die-cast and toy collector pubs, our ads surprised automotive enthusiasts reading Car & Driver and Road & Track. To further stretch resources, we placed hundreds of inexpensive classified ads in AutoTrader. We shot the models as if they were real, but fine type revealed a $25 price tag and Mattel’s URL. When we ran a phone number, more than 600 people called in the first week to thank us for a good laugh. And it paid: Q4 sales increased by 26% over the same period a year prior.

4. BE FIRM IN BELIEF, BRAVE IN BATTLE: Unless they have something to believe in—a conviction that’s bigger than the battle—armies will retreat. During another stage of our Brave Sessions, we work with each client to develop a Brand Belief, a guiding principle that gives our creatives and clients a greater sense of purpose and meaning. It’s something to live up to, bigger than any one product or service.

New Yorkers are so diverse it would be hard to get them to agree on the color of an orange. But they do share one, overarching belief: They’re tough. They show the world what it means to bounce back. When we started working with Zoo York, we recognized that the Marc Ecko brand of footwear embodied that catch-me-if-you-can resilience. It gave us the opportunity to connect with East Coast skate/street culture at an emotional level—and far beyond product attributes.

But by “emotional level,” we don’t mean “sappy.” That would hardly resonate. Instead, we made a video about another shared reality for Gotham residents: The indestructible cockroach. In it, one roach tells another about a buddy who got nuked in a microwave and survived. That’s tough. When the video debuted on YouTube, it got over 1 million hits on its first day.  

5. SPEAK THE TRUTH: Brave marketers can handle the truth. They rely on their teams to hold them accountable, to turn good ideas into brave ideas. They accept the cold truth about their own ideas for the sake of bigger, bolder solutions. And they step up to tell clients the truth for the same reason.

When we talked to guests of the MGM Mirage-owned New York-New York Hotel & Casino in 2007, we realized the Vegas hotel had lost its energetic, New York City vibe. Once our new client accepted that uncomfortable truth, they snagged ownership of the city-that-never-sleeps attitude with a brand and retail campaign that compelled guests to “Shut Up & Play.”

Telling consumers to shut it: Not for the weak-kneed. New York-New York has backbone, and it paid. In three months, online bookings and monthly unique web impressions increased significantly.

In advertising as in life, you can’t teach bravery any more than you can teach creativity. But you can establish a set of conditions that allows courage to flourish. And when you do, this otherwise immeasurable quality—without which greatness isn’t possible—produces highly measurable results. At D&G, we think Aristotle said it best, and with perfect simplicity: “You will never do anything in this world without courage.”

 

Author Bio:

Mike Braue is Managing Partner, Director of Client Services at LA-based creative agency David&Goliath. A 9-year veteran of the agency, Mike heads up the agency's new business efforts and leads a diverse group of brands including: Universal Orlando Resort, Universal Studios Hollywood, Bacardi Brands, Mammoth Mountain Resort and MGM Mirage's New York-New York and Monte Carlo Hotel & Casinos. For more information, visit www.dng.com.

How to Take Risks in Marketing and Succeed: A Blueprint for Bravery.