You Sleep When You Die

Thanks to Ed Ethridge for providing one of last week’s top questions. Remember, get your questions about advertising, business, the economy and more answered every Wednesday by posting comments to blog posts or, better yet, on Twitter via #askjz.

“What is your response to Jonathan Salem Baskin’s recent Ad Age article, “What If Giving Up Your Brand Really Means Giving Up?” If the trend is moving towards NOT trusting the people we engage with through social media platforms, how will advertisers and marketers adjust? And will it even still be relevant?

You’ve always espoused growing a brand while simultaneously driving traffic and sales. Where does social media fit into this Brandtailing pyramid?”

You can accomplish anything you set your mind out to do. I speak to hundreds of students at various universities. My goal is to make them believe that anything is possible.

[...] you have to work until you are the very best at what you’re doing. I haven’t gotten to be as successful as I am today because I’m the smartest at what I do. I’ve gotten here because I work the hardest. I never stop. I don’t give up until I’m the best.

When is the rest of the industry going to wake up? We have continued to kick the shit out of other agencies for the last five years. We won 14 out of 15 pitches in 2009. Overall, we are 40 out of our last 45 pitches.

How do we keep winning when other agencies can’t even hold onto the clients they already have?

What’s most interesting about this whole debate is that it’s getting so much attention. If we attached as much importance to creating great work that works for our clients, we would be much better off. To suggest that being banned from entering an awards show for five years could signal the end of a career is ridiculous. I guarantee you that if you create work that produces results for your clients, they won’t care if you never win another award…and neither will other potential clients.

Many industry experts were surprised about the recent announcement that VW and Crispin are parting ways. After all, VW’s market share actually improved in recent months and although sales were still down, the decline wasn’t as steep as the automotive industry as a whole. In addition, the four-year partnership resulted in some memorable and much talked about advertising.

Crispin certainly helped elevate VW to a new level of ‘coolness.’ Unfortunately, to be cool is often to be niche. And when your job is to market a brand that is dependent on the mainstream masses, coolness alone just isn’t going to cut it. And that’s precisely where Crispin missed it with VW.