It’s a new year. A new beginning. A fresh start.

Start simple.

Simple demands a premium price.

Simple builds loyalty.

Simple creates clarity.

Simple encourages authority.

Simple facilitates buy-in.

Simple cuts through clutter.

Simple sparks action.

And, yes, simple can move mountains.

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But more and more, best practices must consider what’s right now. And consider what’s next. They must make some assumptions – based on looking to the future.

In 2007, IBM predicted that the advertising world would change as much in the next five years as it had in the last fifty. We’re speeding towards the end of that line. And it feels like the change is just getting started.

In the face of rapid change, your best practices can’t become a prison to conformity.  Best practices must be discovered and adopted, but in the face of ever more rapid change, they must be abandoned with as much discipline.

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While acting emotionally can mean acting irrationally – it’s not its only definition. And it certainly shouldn’t be the default.

You can make a rational, emotional decision. You can construct an emotional, rational message.

Think about healthcare. About pre-natal vitamins. Or getting a mammogram. Think about financial services. About investing in a college fund. Or getting life insurance.

To say a message should be emotional or rational does both approaches a disservice. Emotion doesn’t minimize logic, it adds gravity to it. Logic doesn’t eliminate emotion, it provides a path to fulfill it.

Be rational about emotion. And understand that one is not the opposite of the other.

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And it started with two simple data points that weren’t the actual data, but tied directly to it. First, 35% of computers delete cookies. Second, the average number of different cookies for the same campaign among deleters was five.

Are these true of the campaign you’re running? I – obviously – have no idea. The important question is: Do you? Because it could have a huge impact on your metrics.

If you are using cookie-based metrics – and not accounting for how your users account for cookies – you may be greatly overstating your reach, greatly understating your frequency and, if you are conducting a brand study, may be artificially raising your control score.

The implications of any of those misunderstandings can steer you in a different direction. Not understanding cookies – and other variable inputs – can prematurely ruin your appetite for a further investment that might provide a greater return than you realize. It’s not that cookies are bad. Misunderstanding their context is.

The more we become dependent on data to make decisions, the more we must really understand what we do, what we don’t and what we can’t know

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All of the above landed me in an improvisational theater class my sophomore year. Little did I know that the very class I took for some laughs and an easy A would provide me with real life lessons I could apply to my career in advertising.

1) Never immediately say no.

This is one of the cardinal rules in improv. If someone starts off a scene and says, “Check out this bike I bought you,” you wouldn’t respond, “No, it’s a pony.” You go with it.

The same goes in an agency setting. You’re immediate reaction to an idea might be to shoot it down. But don’t reject it right away. Think on it. Try to make it work. As people around Laughlin say…see if it has legs. Some of the best ideas might not be the ones you’re initially excited about.

2) Listen then react.

My improv teacher always told us:

• Don’t try to anticipate what the other individuals on stage are going to say.
• Don’t sit there thinking about what you’re going to say next.

Listen to the people around you…then react. This is imperative in the workplace. Whether it’s your coworkers, a client, or a vendor be sure you’re hearing what they’re saying. Then formulate your thoughts and react in the appropriate manner. This will help you build long term, mutually beneficial relationships and potentially avoid some strained conversations.

3) Get comfortable with not knowing what’s next.

Improv is all about unpredictability. The uncertainty of what’s coming next. It’s an environment that keeps your adrenaline pumping and builds a strong level of trust between everyone on stage. Your success and failure is theirs and vice versa.

Advertising can be an unpredictable industry. But that’s part of what makes it so exciting! It keeps you on your toes, challenges you to be flexible, and causes you to lean on and trust your team for ideas, solutions and support.

4) Find the humor in things.

Even a mundane, everyday situation can be funny. When you’re performing improv, you’re job is to make people laugh. Learn to find the humor in things and others will see it too.

Advertising can be a trying industry. So whether it’s a late night at the office or a meeting that has completely lost its focus try not to get frustrated. Enjoy your coworkers, laugh a little, like your job. It will make those around you like their jobs that much more.

Here are five tips I wish I had been given on my first day :

Relationships Trump All

Your relationships with clients are no different than your relationships outside of the work place; they are predicated on trust. Your client needs to know that you are a hard-working and capable individual because, at the end of the day, their job performance is partially linked to how well you are able to move projects along. The foundation for this trust is built on the simplest of things : adherence to deadlines, attention to details (like properly formatted documents) and most importantly, the proofreading of all emails. Well thought out and poignant emails can do wonders in terms of helping build the client’s confidence in your ability.

Breathe

Advertising is a business that revolves around deadlines. No one plans on racing against the clock to get an ad/presentation out, but sometimes that’s the case. The worst thing you can do is let the added stress affect how well you perform. There is a natural tendency to want to move things along as quickly as possible when time is getting tight. However, with this stressed mindset, mistakes are bound to happen. Instead of attempting to take care of three things at once, take a deep breath. Get away from your computer and write down a list of tasks that need to be completed in order to complete this job. Not only is this therapeutic, but it also gives you a strategic blueprint to see the job through completion.

Check, Double Check, Then Check Again

Before any marketing materials go out to the client, make sure to triple check the content. Look over the brief again and examine the string of emails you have had with the client regarding the assignment. Is the URL on there? Are the dates correct? Have the changes the client requested been made? The list goes on. You want to make sure that everything the client has asked for, you are delivering. It’s the attention to details that will help you build trust with the client.

Don’t Change Who You Are

The worst thing you can do is create a business persona that is markedly different than who you actually are. Don’t be afraid to be yourself; in fact, do everything you can to embrace your unique personality. Figure out what strengths/traits make you “you” and figure out ways you can use them to your advantage. If you try to be someone else, people will know, Its hard to build trust with someone who isn’t genuine.

Enjoy it

In one of my first meetings at Laughlin Constable, a creative director said something that will always stick with me: “We work in the rock n’ roll of the business world!” Do not underestimate the amount of time and effort that goes into being a successful professional in advertising, but do remember that there is a reason why you wanted to get into this business. We work in a fun, fast-paced, culturally relevant, and openly creative environment that most people envy. Even in account service, we are regularly asked to think outside of the box and find innovative ways to solve our client’s problems.  Very few people are lucky enough to have “creative thinking” as part of their job description.

This is not a post on metrics or measurement. A good deal of ink is – rightfully – spent daily on the importance of each. Instead, this is a post on attitude and approach.

Plenty of attention is paid to the result of the process (metrics). Not enough is paid to the input (approach).

Let’s start with this: We all have budgets we’re managing. Budgets suggest a finite amount of money, outlaid as a series measured expenditures. But the marketing term isn’t Return on Budget. It’s Return on Investment. Investments suggest smart expenditures made with the expectation of a result or return.

Why do we manage budgets? Why don’t we act like investment managers?

How many times have you left a meeting feeling like you have outlaid one in a series of measured expenditures? (“How much is this going to cost?”) Like you are leaving with less than you walked in with? (“We only have $X left this fiscal year.”)

We need to rethink how we think about all of this.

Marketing expenditures should be empowering. As long as your brand provides a value, marketing is the first step towards providing more of it. The Television Bureau of Canada even proved investing in broccoli can provide a return. Broccoli: The Ultimate Tough Sell.

So figure out what value you provide. Then invest in that value accordingly. Make it grow.

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That same month – July 2010 – an AdAge article suggested that coupons may be selling more body wash than The Man Your Man Could Smell Like. I know this because I bookmarked it, wanting to come back to it with some hindsight. Hindsight like: This campaign just won the Grand Effie.

So, was this the most effective advertising of the year or a case of coupons accelerating  the growth of a brand in a growing category?

I don’t know. But, as I’ve written many times before, the long run matters. And I fear the AdAge article was falling prey to benchmark-eting, so I’d put my money on the former. That said, I’m not sitting around a conference room table with the folks who could actually know. Neither, it should be noted, were the Effie judges or the AdAge reporter. There is likely truth to both.

The bottom line is that numbers and data are what we make them. So proceed with caution. Don’t ask “what do we know?,” ask “what do I care?” And while simple answers may be comfortable, true success comes in successfully navigating complexity.

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One startup that’s caught my attention is the freshly released social start up, WhereBerry. The brainchild of Nick Baum and Bill Ferrell, former Google techies, seems like it could have a fighting chance.

Most social networks capitalize on what we’ve done in the past or what we’re doing now. The logical next step is for people to share what they want to do in the future. WhereBerry, which opened to the public last week, allows people to post activities they want to do… someday – from restaurants they want to eat at, to movies they want to see, to places they want to visit – people can organize and store their desires in one convenient place, turning the familiar “bucket list” virtual, and most importantly, social.

As a society of “dreamers” it is in our nature to make plans and set goals. As a rising society of “sharers” it is in our nature to broadcast these plans to friends. WhereBerry seems to have what it takes to capitalize on these popular behaviors. But it is at a fragile and vulnerable state in its growth, where important decisions can either make or break its success. I believe that if they can successfully accomplish the following, they could in fact be the next big thing:

1. Community & Groups: With the rising popularity of social networks, we not only want to share, we want to be part of a community or group. What users of WhereBerry are going to want next is the ability to join together with others around entertaining, thrilling, educational and delicious activities. Providing users the ability to share plans with smaller, private groups will not only be a feature users are interested in using, but will allow the application to spread virally as friends plan together.
2. Sharing on Steroids: The sharing is currently very straightforward: add to your list, post to your wall, see your friends’ to-dos in your feed, etc. WhereBerry should evolve the “share factor” by using a more complex formula – connecting people who have similar interests, presenting users with to-dos that seem to match with their trends (and location), suggesting plans their friends have, and more. The key is, users want the service to do the work for them and provide them with value they wouldn’t have on their own.
3. Competition and Achievements: Based on your bucket list and the items you accomplish, users should be able to achieve recognition or status for their completed tasks (e.g. Advanced Foodie, Dare Devil, Movie Buff, etc.). This brings a level of competition to the utility and drives participation, stretching users to try more and more – and therefore use the social network more.
4. Businesses & Brands: Selling this idea to brands by presenting the benefits to their business and getting them involved will provide substance to network by providing users with recommendations, deals and rewards, and will be the push to eventually turning this start-up into a money maker.
5. Continuous Evolution: WhereBerry needs to pay close attention to analytics, use, feedback, and the industry as a whole to learn what users want. They need to quickly evolve, adapt, grow, simplify, and integrate in order to meet users’ rising expectations.

The tech world today is a rough one to survive in, and the get-rich-quick theory very rarely applies. In 3-5 years we may see WhereBerry checking “10 Million Users” off their bucket list. Or we may be asking, “What’s WhereBerry? A new BlackBerry device?”

The task was to develop a fully-integrated re-branding campaign for Kleenex Anti-Viral tissues, based on a simple directive: Make moms believe. Kleenex Anti-Viral actually kills the viruses that cause colds and flu in the tissue. The challenge was communicating that fact quickly and effectively.  The key-insight presented by our planners was to re-establish the brand based on Carl Jung’s Hero Archetype to connect with moms, plus kids, school nurses and childcare professionals. This classic story of “good vs. evil” manifested itself with the creation of an animated Cold & Flu Bug — a mischievous little fellow who disrupts our daily lives, regardless of what we do.

With no money for traditional TV production, we still were charged with creating an ad campaign that went viral – literally. We created a shock and awe campaign by repurposing existing YouTube videos and modifying them with the introduction of our cold & flu bug.  People could then join the fight by “enlisting” at BattleTheBug.com, a microsite we built which featured downloadable posters for classrooms, youth-friendly games, webisodes, tips on staying healthy, even a cold and flu tracker which highlighted the appearance of the cold and flu bug across the entire country. We supplied original content via a toolbox of equities to partner agencies, including New Media Strategies, Mindshare, Ketchum and GMR. It was the mother of all battles!

If you haven’t seen the work, the webisodes are available on the Laughlin Constable YouTube channel. Plus, our bug made it past the ad campaign and into mom’s hearts across the country.  It was a highly-effective campaign and dare I say, it was nothing to sneeze at.