Alex Churchill

“Tony Robbins transformed himself from washing dishes in his bathtub and being homeless at times to starting 15 companies and now making over $30 million a year and reaching millions of people.”

I was once just like you. In fact, as bad as you are? I was much, much worse.

Fatter. And uglier. Well, at least uglier that you. Yes you ma’am. I wasn’t fatter than you. But I was uglier. Only just slightly. And since I am a man and you are a woman, we’ll just call it even – and from there, launch a transformation.

Yes, I was fat, and ugly, and I washed my dishes in the bathtub. It’s kind of amazing I managed to do this, since the tool shed I was living in at the time did not actually have a bathtub. Now, I have six of them. And I confine the dish washing to just five of them. One for each course of a five course meal. The sixth I use for the purpose for which it was built. Distilling bath tub gin. With which I drown my sorrows, and transform myself, into a drunker version of myself.

So when I use the past tense to describe my dishwashing in the bathtub, I use it to describe the recent past. Just this morning in fact, when the last thing I did before leaving my mansion was wash my smoothie glass in the heart shaped therapy tub in my home gym that I have classified for “blended beverages, breakfast”. I reserve a tub for them because I have a special affinity for this most transformative of foods. They begin life in solid form and embrace transformation to a liquid one pulse button at a time – we can all learn a lesson from smoothies. And, I suppose, milkshakes.

But as I mentioned, just this morning, I was fat, ugly and washing dishes in the fish course bath tub in my mansion. I only call it “a mansion” with fat, ugly people. People who live in such houses don’t call them mansions. They call them “houses”. They also call limousines “cars” and yachts “boats”. With these people – my peers – I refer to this palace as “my place”. Or “my pad”. With people I suspect to be my superiors, I’ll call it “the party house” in order to imply that I keep this six bath tub palace just to entertain – that I live somewhere else. In such circles, I’ll often refer to “the beach house” in vague terms, despite the fact that I don’t have a beach house. And I’m terrified of water in any case. Which is the reason I wash my dishes in a bathtub. Or, put another way, a bathtub is a transformative arena – where my dishes morph from dirty to clean.

About that. When I say “wash”, I don’t actually mean “wash”. I sort of mean “stack”. Or “smash”. The idea is that I throw my dishes into the bath tub and smash them into little bits with a hammer. Bits so small that you can’t tell the difference between a discarded morsel of pancetta and a fragment of Royal Doulton.  And then I move on. To a new house, preferably in a new neighborhood, before anyone discovers my horrible secret. It would be much more difficult to sell ugly fatties on transformation if they knew I can’t even transform a dirty glass into a clean one.

My ability to continue doing this is helped along greatly by the 15 companies and the $30 million a year that vomiting transformation onto paying audiences have brought me. Smashing every dish you eat on don’t come cheap. To say nothing of the upkeep on the party house and the beach house (see, it works doesn’t it?). Yes, I earn a great deal of money transformingerizing. I describe how at my lowest low, backstage in fact, I was just like you – downing Little Debbies by the palette, smoking Camel unfiltereds and wearing cotton/poly bends – something that I find transformative in and of itself. The blend transforms just slacks into no-iron, wrinkle resistant cotton Dockers. Again, a lesson lurks in there somewhere.

Today, the lesson I choose to whip out of my pants is that when I strap on the hands-free head set and hit the stage I can put these insecurities behind me, and put my former self behind me, and encourage you to do the same! Transform!

And after your transformation is complete, you can stroll thoughtfully out to the parking lot. And when you get back to your car, you can feel the affinity with me and continue the transformation by transforming your minivan into my private jet the same way I transform my private jet into my home away from home – with tiny, tiny bottles of booze. I prefer the glass ones – filled with bath tub gin. Much easier to smash than plastic.

This morning, The Reformed Broker wrote a succinct, deeply personal “why I write” piece. Read it now, I’ll wait.

Now, if that doesn’t inspire you to get on your ass and put your ideas into words, nothing will. In fact, after I read that, I went over to my local coffee shop to do a few hours of work and was affected by it in a completely different way.

I went up to the counter to get my cup, and as I was in a holding pattern, staring at the big screen above the espresso machine, I happened to look over at the woman to my left. She was crying. Or rather, she was on the verge of absolutely breaking down in tears – big, welling water works filled red rimmed eyes.

Now, the big point of The Reformed Broker’s screed was how blogging like a madman has changed his professional life in ways that he could not possibly have anticipated when he started doing it. Primarily, it has expanded his knowledge set to the point that it has made him care more. From the sounds of it, possibly too much. But that point didn’t answer the question he posed at the start of the post – “how do you have so much time to blog?” And he answered that question with another one:

“The correct question is not how can I find the time to blog, rather, it’s how could I not?”

I’m not saying “how could I not?” popped into my head as I looked at this well dressed, middle aged woman on the edge of some kind of crisis, but I broke from what is expected in these situations. And while this is not something totally out of character for me, TRB’s post framed it for me almost instantly once the moment was gone.

So I asked her “You OK?” She looked over as squarely as she could and said “divorce”, grabbed her coffee and sprinted out of the place, weeping openly. As she spun and run, I managed to say “Oh, I’m so sorry…” I don’t really know if she heard.

Then, I called my wife. How could I not?

Admittedly, this wasn’t something I did for a client. Or a co-worker. Or even a family member. But I think the point is that caring isn’t something you can turn off – it’s how it manifests itself that counts. In broad strokes, care about almost anything – except yourself.

So thanks Reformed Broker, I sincerely hope she heard you.

For all the talk of adaptive marketing, performance-based compensation structures and the end of the billable hour, advertising, marketing and communications has remained a master and servant business. We make our clients’ lattes until they get sick of our lattes and go buy them somewhere else. It’s a service industry. C’est la vie.

Here’s the thing – in almost every other silo of professional services, the fee for service arrangement has been augmented (not supplanted) with an alternative, shared ownership or equity-based way of doing business. Think about what private equity has done for the growth of entire sectors of the economy with a number of different vehicles. And make no mistake, private equity, despite the obvious connotations of its name, is very much a service industry. It is the combination of two elements – financing and management consulting – applied to businesses on a sliding scale. Communications can be broken down in similar terms. Two elements – big ideas and execution – applied to businesses on a sliding scale.

In their offerings, both businesses offer expertise – management and big ideas – and both businesses offer a finite commodity – equity and execution in the form of production hours. So why has one been driving the larger economy for the last two decades while the other has been, optimistically, treading water for that same time frame?

Here’s the thing – while private equity long ago realized and popularized its relative value to the companies that might one day wish to avail themselves of the services of private equity, ad/marcom companies have never done so. Why? Well, it is very, very easy to sell perspective clients on the benefits of equity.  Every business understands just how much money it needs to keep the lights on. Or at least the good ones do. Combine that with the ease of accounting for its effect on the equation and you have a sector that essentially sells itself. Marketing on the other hand, while it gets a great deal of lip service paid to how indispensable it is, is the first thing cut when budgets get tight.

I contend it is time to put our money, or at the very least the best alternative we have for money, our labour where our mouths are. And I’m not talking about pay for performance – that’s just another form of blended rate (more on that in a later post).

I’ve coined this idea “joint venture marketing”. I propose something radically different. A form of marketing that puts the agency’s motivations squarely where they belong – in lockstep with the client’s by creating a shared vehicle for that motivation, and perhaps a new motivation altogether.

In this nascent form, I propose that it works something like this: I engage a company or brand on a pitch level. I throw a bunch of ideas at them. They like one, and at that point they start paying me my hourly rate. To push out the idea, I hire from my contact list of contractors – those fees are charged as a flow-through cost. We bring the idea to maturity, the client says go – at this point we become partners in a newco. I’m working on a boilerplate for this agreement.

Newco is a joint venture between Standard English Limited and Brand X. The responsibilities of the parties are Brand X: finance production of the agreed-upon project; SEL: Manage and oversee production and roll-out of Newco venture. Brand X would pay for my time and all parties used on the project as a flow-though cost (down the line, I hope to be able to forgo payment myself at this point). Newco is a media property “powered by” and “inspired by” the brand in question, but we would be accepting ads for other products on the platform with an eye towards making Newco turn a profit via advertising, merchandising and licensing. The joint venture would have shotgun provisions and a finite time frame (with extension possibilities) built in.

Now,  the pluses of this structure are legion for Brand X– low costs, a VERY engaged partner etc… The pluses for Standard English are the potential for a huge upside. The potential pitfalls (outside of the usual failure of the business, not hitting communication goals etc…) are a little more dire.

First and foremost, this “production company” model limits the TYPES of creative Standard English Limited can put out there. Obviously, there is little hope of a radio campaign ever making anyone any money. The actual creative product needs to be a media property with the potential for growth and monetization – and not every brand in the world can support that kind of framework.

However, all the turbulence and moving parts aside, I like this idea simply because it means that I and my clients are sharing the same motivations – and we will only profit when those motivations are realized.

More on this to come.

If a strategy is decided upon, and a tactic is developed subsequently that is perfect for the product, but not on strategy, should the tactic be shelved or should the strategy be reconsidered? In the agency world, there is no contest, strategy beats tactic like a red headed stepchild every time out.

But under an adaptive marketing model (thanks to Jon Lax for getting me on that train), that really shouldn’t be the case. If by adaptive marketing we mean communications that help consumers and continuously evolve based on consumer feedback, then it is entirely possible that the second a consumer gets ahold of a single tactic formulated on a given strategy and requests that it be changed in some fundamental way, the strategy under which that tactic was formulated is now invalid – and counter to the adaptive marketing model. It means that marketers who ascribe to the adaptive marketing model have to re-think how they view “strategy” and “tactics” and the law of nature that dictates the former drive the latter.

For my part at Standard English Limited, I see it boiling down to this: sometimes, a killer tactic can formulate strategy rather than the other way around. It is essential that once the strategy is re-aligned to that tactic that all other work stay with that strategy, until the next killer tactic comes along. After all, if agility is the key selling feature of an adaptive marketing organization, shouldn’t the strategists have to be as fleet of foot as the creative teams?

The world has now served as the backdrop for movies for almost 100 years. From Central Park to Big Ben to countless locations in LA and Mumbai – thousands of lines of dialogue have been imprinted on our brains with the sites in the background anchoring them. And while people have been running up the “Rocky Steps” at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and belting out “The hills are alive!!!” high above Salzburg, there are hundreds of other, smaller movie moments that are seldom repeated.

From Audrey Hepburn outside Tiffany’s (often repeated) to Harold and Kumar beginning their trek to White Castle outside their apartment building (hopefully, not often repeated), these are little moments that are woven into the consciousness of millions of people around the world. And while actors and directors have made entire careers on a single scene, most of the locations that co-starred (and the cities that are their custodians) have done very little to celebrate their part.

That’s a shame. And unnecessary. We have public art commemorating everything from the sacrifice of war to the citation of authors. Now that everyone has a camera with them at all times, isn’t is time we developed some public art dedicated to the craft of the camera? After all, how movie cameras see many places is how those places are defined.

It’s a simple idea. Where  scenes famous, kitschy or silly were shot, place a permanent tripod, in-ground dolly or just block of granite with a rudimentary camera mount and basic blocking instruction. Where the actors stood or walked we have positions and in the ground in front of them, their lines. We encourage passers-by to reenact the scenes and upload them to YouTube where we structure a license from the copyright holders that will allow views of the scene-reconstructions to generate ad revenues to pay for the installations. Of course, that trickle of pennies will some time to pay it all off, but what an off-the-top sponsorship opportunity for a big cinema chain, media or production company.

In my own city, Torontoist does a fine job of uncovering those – “Hey, I recognize that!” – hogtown moments with the excellent Reel Toronto feature. They run through movies shot in Toronto and tell you where and what each location is. Toronto is a city that often stands in for other places on film. For instance, that scene with Harold and Kumar was supposed to be New Jersey, but was actually shot in Toronto. And commemorating a silly scene from a pointless movie not even set in the city it was shot in meets what I see the point of this to be: to celebrate how cities have been framed in a viewfinder in a fun, interactive way.

Surprising piece in the NY Times today on the results of a study from the Kaiser Family Foundation that indicate that the average young American spends every waking minute outside of school using a smart phone, television, computer or other electronic device. Without examining the veracity of the study, the numbers seem surprising – even more surprising was a point that came up outside the study. Near the end of the piece:
Even during the survey, media use was changing.

“One of the hot topics today is Twitter, but when we first went into the field and began interviewing, Twitter didn’t exist,” Ms. Rideout said.

Clearly, real time research simply isn’t enough anymore. Research has to be “always on”. And conclusions have to be stream of conscience. Of course, for real scientists, this isn’t a method at all. But for marketers, not bound by the strictures of scientific rigor, this represents a great opportunity.

Back at my last job, there was a much ridiculed set of professional “steps” that we practitioners were to follow. The most ridiculed of all was “wiki to learn”. Now, despite not really understanding what that meant, we all got the gist. And I think the point was a good one – or at least contained the kernel of good pointedness – a kernel I would modify to “Wiki as research”. Because the only way to draw a map of the constantly shifting sands of media usage is to have it drawn in the sand itself.

But back to the Kaiser study – how would we get kids to engage? And stay engaged? Would there be any point at all in trying to keep them engaged?

1. A week or so into this, there is talk that Jeff Zucker is threatening to freeze Conan out for years if he doesn’t go along with the plan and meekly sidle into the 12:05 slot after a half hour of Leno.

2. In addition, given Conan’s geek cred, it’s not surprising that there has been some fanitorial generated asking if Conan could succeed in an online only format with the nerds asking if you would watch/pay for the privilege or pay attention to the advertisers.

3. Many are comparing the Conan as a web-only proposition to Stern jumping to Sirius. Only in this case, 1+2+3 does not equal five, or whatever. The blogosphere is correct in thinking there is a precedent for this sort of thing, only it’s not with Stern leaving, it’s with who replaced Stern – the above mentioned Caca – Adam Carolla (Man Show etc…). In 2005, Carolla took over from the satellite-bound Stern (with Stern’s blessing) on selected radio markets in the West. In February 2009, the CBS affiliate in LA that produced the show switched formats leaving Carolla out in the cold. Three days after his final show, Carolla started The Adam Carolla Podcast – downloaded 1.6 million times in the first week and continuing on to the present at or near the top of the iTunes charts. Carolla continued to draw a salary from CBS radio for the duration of his contract – resulting in The Adam Carolla Podcast being sponsor-free for the first six months of existence.This grace period let Carolla fuck around with the format, get a regular roster of guests and build up his bank of ideas and contacts to roll right into what he is now calling The Ace Broadcasting Network – a whole bunch of man-related talk online – and a deal with CBS radio to provide streaming content. In short, Carolla’s venture capital came out of back pay.

Now, assuming Zucker would have to continue paying Conan his $10mm per over the course of three plus years in what would be essentially the largest holding deal in history. Conan would have over three years to find a groove and build on what one would assume would be the largest audience on the web to begin with. All on NBCU’s dime. Carolla estimated in May that bandwidth for his daily, audio-only show was running at roughly 9K a month. Say it cost Conan ten times that. 10% of Conan’s yearly gross is a small price to pay were he to build a whole new model in late-night talk. Again, venture capital coming out of back pay. It’s the power of what happens when slow, expensive and bloated rubs up against fast, cheap and lean – and if Conan’s quick, he can be there to sweep up the gold dust that falls from that friction point.

I’m not at all sure Zucker understands the forces he’s fucking with here. If Conan jumps ship right now, pulls a Carolla to the power of ten over the next three years and keeps building audience right into the widespread adoption of web-enabled TV, he’ll bring about the end of network television as we know it – or maybe that happened the minute Zucker tried to move Leno up an hour. Or maybe it was bound to happen sometime. But just like everything else that was “bound to happen” – the pioneers were the ones who bridged the gap between “bound to” and “happen” – and this time around (sorry Adam) I think it’s Conan.

“With two agencies, and fewer than 10 years under my belt, I’m still a fledgling in this industry.”

- A real LinkedIn profile from a real copywriter
Is it possible to have almost a decade’s experience in something, anything, and still consider yourself a beginner? Under Gladwell’s 10,000 hour rule (which I think is preposterous by the way – google 10,000 hours and read some of the critiques, I agree with literally all of them – and would formulate my own, but I’ve only notched up 8500 hours of literary criticism) it would only require a part time job (20 hours a week) for a decade to be achieve greatness. Not competence, not advanced skills, greatness. If you’ve been at something for a decade, and still consider yourself a beginner, then you’re either full of shit (you consider yourself at least an expert and think that feigning modesty is more appropriate) or just shit.

And yet, the above quoted copywriter, a high school classmate and former co-worker of mine two times over (well, one and a half times, but that’s another story) said just that on his LinkedIn profile – “With two agencies, and fewer than 10 years under my belt, I’m still a fledgling in this industry.” And this is in the ad industry. Really? 10 years on and you are a rank beginner? Just getting your legs underneath you? Will you be a “good club player” after a quarter century? This is a good guy. A nice guy. A smart guy. But let’s be honest: advertising ain’t rocket science and once you’ve been at it for almost a decade, if you’re a smart guy, you ain’t no fledgling.

Here’s the problem: The big ad business wants its people to believe they still know nothing after 5 or 10 years in the business. That way, the rather arbitrary constraints they have set up in regards to seniority, compensation and impact don’t seem so bullshit-y. That, and 90% of ad people wouldn’t know a good idea if it walked up and bashed them over the head with a Lion D’Or – all they have to go on when weighting the relative merits of ideas is how long said person has been in the industry or whatever dartboard the hack du jour is using that week to make up their minds. The result is an enforced, extended adolescence that anyone who wants to get into (or stay in) the industry must suffer through in order to make any impact on so much as a single account.
In fact, I think anytime someone has 10 years experience in something and considers himself a fledgling, that’s a systemic problem for whatever that something is. And keep in mind, this is advertising, not quantum physics or movie trailer voice overs. So, what to do about that? Hmmmm, how about instead of giving everyone the obligatory “senior” in front of whatever bullshit title they currently hold, we figure out a way to give them some responsibility and a clearly delineated path towards getting compensated for taking that responsibility and beating some money out of it.

Yes, I know, rewarding people with money rather than gift certificates to the oxygen bar is crass, but money is fantastic. There is a reason smart people changed their post graduation address from Madison Avenue to Wall Street – it starts with a M and ends in a Y, and while the judges would also accept “Muffy” as an answer, what I’m thinking of is money! Yes, that’s right money. It’s amazing how motivated art college grads would become with even a sniff of a little more of it (spot the pun!).

I know, I know the profit motive was long ago discarded in ad firms – right around the same time they started losing business to glorified accountants. But if we brought it back, little by little, in clearly defined ways (and I’ve got some ideas for that), we might even convince someone with 10 years, or 10 months or 10 minutes experience that they’ve earned the right to consider themselves more than a rank amateur. How will they know they’ve arrived at “experience”? The same way everyone else does – by looking at their bank account.

With yesterday’s launch of Google Street view Toronto, I, like thousands of others immediately rushed to check out my surroundings as though Street view’s arrival suddenly made our very existence real. But when I arrived on my street – De Grassi – via Mountain View what I saw was all too real.

As of yesterday morning, De Grassi Street is in perpetuity (or until the Googlites decide to take another joyride) gray, denuded and very early on Monday morning.

I know it is Monday because Bonjour Brioche, the landmark French bistro on the corner of Queen & De Grassi, is closed. I know it is early because said landmark French bistro is cluttered with garbage cans awaiting their early Monday morning pickup.

Previously, De Grassi was known as if not the happiest place on earth at least amongst the most melodramatic – and I don’t think the association with teen melodrama hurt resale prices. Any brand-name is better than no name at all.

But is any picture better than no picture at all? And I’m not talking about resale prices here – though it would be interesting to examine the quality or conditions of Street view images and how that corresponds to resale prices – I’m talking about pride in one’s neighborhood.

I realize this is silly. Toronto has grey days.  Hell, it has November through May. But then, it also has litter and homeless people. That doesn’t make me any less likely to be embarrassed by the appearance of either in the park across the street should we have guests (PS I’m not embarrassed by homeless people because or if they smell etc. I’m embarrassed by homeless people because a perfect sun-dappled street in a perfectly just city would not be so cruel as to leave people to sleep rough in their midst. I appreciate your vote.).

And appearance is what it all comes down to. I’m sure there are practical purposes for which Street view is perfectly suited. However, for many – me included – Street view is an elaborate, exquisite exercise in either nostalgia, vanity or novelty – depending on where in the real estate food chain you happen to lie. And since appearances determine so much about where that is; is it too much to ask that we be given the chance to look our best — and I’m sure many streets would be willing to pay for the privilege of a sunny day shoot — for our close-up.

I love TinyURL. It’s one of those tight little services that takes a widespread problem (urls so long that they wrap in emails) and solves it in the most straightforward way possible (shortening said urls). Early on, TinyURL would only provide randomly generated URLs. You would input a very, very long URL and get something like this – http://tinyurl.com/al7xm. More recently, they’ve added the ability to customize your TinyURL. Input something long and end up with something in the format http://tinyurl.com/whatever, specifying anything you want AFTER  tinyurl.com/.

Other than being elegant and convenient, this custom TinyURL feature has resulted in a great, untapped and unseen body of what I will call “status editorials” – the words people use to finish off their TinyURLs and what they say about the content they are linking to. Who developed these links? When? And why?

tinyurl.com/obama – Links to the home page of UK tabloid The Sun. Republicans – scouring the globe for fair & balanced coverage about Obama being an alien.
tinyurl.com/shit – Someone doesn’t think too much of Ratchet & Clank for PS2.

tinyurl.com/madoff – Disappointingly, and accurately, links to the original SEC press release of December ’08. More salaciousness please.

tinyurl.com/billgates – Links to the economist “probituary” of Gates’ time at Microsoft. It’s somehow fitting that Bill get mixed reviews in perpetuity.

tinyurl.com/lolcats – I won’t actually link this. Suffice it to say that it leads you to being rick rolled in the most annoying fashion possible.