Happy Monday. “No, we don’t have a budget. Just send us a proposal, ok?” Has a client ever said this to you? Did you believe them? Don’t fall for it. Ever. Here’s why… Years ago over drinks I challenged a client of mine (a VP/Creative Director at Discovery Channel) and he laughed: “Of course, yes,…
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(Because I have this discussion with multiple owners multiple times every week, I thought it would be helpful to collapse my thinking here in a shareable format.) By now, we all understand the importance of narrowing one’s positioning. But how to narrow is where most owners get it wrong. Perhaps you’ve heard yourself say something like…
"You can gain great traction by doing the opposite." – Richard Holman Where do great ideas come from? Is there a methodology for generating great ideas? In this episode of the RevThinking podcast, Joel Pilger speaks with Richard Holman on the topic of Creativity, Love, and the Power of Ideas. You know great ideas are...
After a full week at Promax in LA, I thought I would share my biggest takeaway from the conference. You might expect I’m sharing a big insight into the seismic shifts in the entertainment industry… or the evolution of branded content → brand content → content… or the rise of Netflix / Hulu / Amazon…
"When I came in, narratives were rousing battle poems that got lost in a powerpoint deck that just got filed away. But I think right now and what we are trying to do is to be able to translate that into things that can be experienced by more people. " – Matt Taylor In this...
Do you feel stuck? If you run a up-and-coming creative studio, you’re in familiar territory. It’s ok. Every studio / production company gets stuck in the Painful Season at some point. (My studio Impossible Pictures was stuck there for its first 7 years!) Some get stuck there indefinitely. You’ll know you are in the Painful…
(In case you missed my email on The Spectrum of Replaceability referenced below, find it here.) I so appreciate readers who share feedback with me drawn from their own experience running a creative studio. Case in point, I found this note from Brandon, owner at ColourMovie in LA (shared with permission) particularly interesting: “I just…
Brands’ needs for “cheaper services” raise ethical questions around the ad industry But, in digital advertising, efficient may be more valuable than cheap The Digiday piece above, breaking down the increasingly “transactional” nature of agency-client relationships, emerged last week alongside side this AdAge piece arguing for ethical media buying, which asked “What would an ethical…
“When you start to understand WHY you’re doing what you’re doing, that’s what makes you different.” – Andre Foster at First Fight Ever since Simon Sinek's much-ballyhooed TED Talk, business leaders can't stop asking themselves, "What's our WHY?" In this episode, Joel Pilger speaks with Andre Foster and Guy Allen, partners at Detroit-based studio First Fight. Among...
More than a few readers who listen to our podcast have asked me, "Why do you hate testimonials?" Meet Dave, my good friend who is a marketing consultant. For years, I've been ribbing him to nix the testimonials on his website. Each time, Dave hemmed and hawed, but the testimonials remained. Now then, in addition to...