Recognizing Greatness - Understanding The Creative "Bell Curve"

Most Creative Is Above Or Below Average - Demand "Great"

By David Miranda

Statistically, everything in life (and marketing) falls on some point of a bell curve, i.e. 2-3% of everything sucks, 94-96% of everything is below or above average, and 2-3% of everything is great. The challenge is demanding great and not settling for anything less.

Nobody says "keep up the fair work" to inspire anyone.

Nowhere is this truer than in marketing creativity.

In today's hard-to-reach consumer environment, the currency of the realm is ideas - ideas that differientiate one brand from all others in the hearts, minds, and ultimately the wallets of consumers - ideas that sell stuff.

What's a great idea? MasterCard's "there are some things money can't buy. For everything else there's MasterCard." This is great idea.

For years, MasterCard was a poor Number Three in marketing after American Express (Don't leave home without it) and Visa (It's everywhere you want to be). During this time, MasterCard struggled to find its brand identity that would differentiate itself. It's previous unsuccessful tage line was "MasterCard, Smart Money". Now after seeking not just another mediocre campaign, it found greatness - and great success in the "Priceless" campaign while American Express and Visa now search for new ways to counteract MasterCard's success.

There are other examples of greatness - The Chik-fil-a "Cows", Nike's "Just Do It", The Aflac "duck", and the Apple "PC vs Apple" campaign to name a few.

It's high time that advertisers demand greatness found only in that 2-3% of the creative bell curve. This means that advertisers should say no to 97% of what they are presented from agency creatives.

Say no to mediocrity, say yes to great ideas.

The Great Compete Against Themselves, Others Compete Against Them

You Should Find Your Fiercest Competitor In The Mirror

By David Miranda

Tiger Woods is the Number One Golfer in the world. Toyota is the most profitable car maker in the world. Google is the most successful search engine in the world. Competitors try and try but Tiger, Toyota, and Google still excel.

The question is why?

The simple answer is that their fiercest competition is themselves, not "the other guy." While their competition is investing time trying to analyze and copy them, they are investing their time on making themselves better than they were yesterday. Interesting approach.

Tiger Woods, even after achieving great success, decided to change his golf coach and his swing. Both his competitors and golf pundits alike were befuddled. Why tamper with success? When asked to explain, Tiger said he needed to improve. Tiger Woods improve? But improve he did! His fiercest competitor is himself.

During a recent interview Ford's new CEO stated that Ford was examining how Toyota was able to make better cars, be profitable, and continue to gain market share. His time might be better spent making better cars. By the time Ford is as good as Toyota is today, Toyota will be better than they are tomorrow. Toyota's fiercest competitor is Toyota.

Yahoo, AOL, Microsoft are all trying to compete with Google and Google continues to gain market share despite their individual and collective efforts. Google competes with itself.

Winners compete against themselves.

The lesson is this - if you want to be great, relentlessly great, compete with yourself.

Be your own fiercest competition. Be a Tiger!