Strategic Insights – We’ve Got Ideas

I’ll admit it–I’m a Paul fan. When you break down Beatles fans into two camps, you’ve got your John fans and your Paul fans. Count me among the latter–lame lyrics, maybe, but boy do they stick in your head!

In the early 80s, after several execrable albums (all of which I own, of course), Paul finally approached legendary producer George Martin, the genius behind all the Beatles albums, about working together again.

Having heard Paul’s recent self-produced efforts, George was naturally tentative. It’s not like he needed the money. So George said, “What have you got?” Paul said he had about eight or nine songs and proceeded to play them.

George’s response: “You’ve got two, maybe three.” Not exactly what Paul wanted to hear, but he didn’t go to George to be told what he wanted to hear (he had Linda for that)–he wanted an honest, expert opinion.

In the end, Paul wrote a bunch more songs, George threw a bunch more out, and they ended up making “Tug of War,” one of the most critically acclaimed albums of Paul’s solo career.

David Ogilvy used to claim he wrote 50 headlines to get one. That’s a little extreme, but I do fill up a good page or two in an effort to nail the one. I teach copywriting at UNC, and I can’t tell you how many of my students turn in their first and only attempt at a headline. It shows. A truly great headline should take hours to write but look like you thought of it in seconds. And it does get easier the longer you’re in the game–you use less paper, do more writing in your head, etc.

But to this day, when I think I have eight or nine headlines, I have two, maybe three.

Bill Cokas
Creative Director
Strategic Insights

A recent trip up the east coast gave me reason to reflect on several issues and how it can be a learning opportunity as it relates to marketing and branding. My wife, Susan, and youngest daughter, Adrienne, and I traveled to the upper regions of Vermont to visit my oldest daughter, Zandy, who is teaching tennis at a Windridge Tennis Camp near Craftsbury Common. We were only able to see her for a few hours and meet the kids she taught who were from many foreign countries and the New England area of the USA.

Upon leaving we trekked down Interstate 91 for a three-day stay in New York City which my youngest daughter had never seen. It was the first time I had been able to visit Ground Zero. It seems to me to be sacred ground even without the physical memorial. There are only a handful of pictures and a timeline of the roughly two hours that the entire event took place. Otherwise, there is a big hole in the ground with work crews making the site ready for the next building to replace the Twin Towers. Yet a simple hole in the ground has a profound and emotional effect on nearly everyone who visits.

Later that week we continued our trip to Washington where again we were introducing my 10-year old to our nation’s capital. We visited the Vietnam War Memorial and the new World War II Memorial. The Vietnam Memorial is a very simple structure with hundreds of people around but hardly a word being spoken except in whispers. The WW II structure is a little more grandiose but mostly filled with memorable quotes from the leaders of that time. Again the simplicity of the memorial grabbed my attention. Could it be that a memorial is not a physical structure at all. If it’s make out of granite, wood or just a large open expanse it can have the same meaning. A memorial is the individual memories of the people who visit it and a big hole in the ground had an impact on me as big as the hole.

Now what does this have to do with marketing? It’s a method of teaching that a brand like a memorial is not a physical thing like a logo or a product. A brand is a promise made by the company to its customers. A memorial is a promise not to forget and I’ll never forget that big hole in the ground.