An Old Odd Way.

I had a phone call yesterday--a long one--with H, GeorgeCo's Account Director, and J, who appears to  might possibly and ostensibly be a new client.

It's funny how anti-MBA reality is.

I mean how the MBAs that took agencies from creative people removed advertising from reality. And common sense. Instead, their intimate knowledge of text books took over real experience.

This potential client first contacted me maybe four years ago. Sometimes it takes four years to go from Attention to Interest to Desire to Action. (AIDA.) No matter that agencies &c have been trained to measure conversion on a much briefer timeline.

We talk about pipelines. Sometimes we should talk instead about plate tectonics.

There's still a chance, a good one, of course, that nothing will come of our phone call yesterday. The client might not want to spend their money on something as seemingly as spitting-into- the-wind as advertising. But nevertheless, things like new business don't happen according to your time table. Just as in baseball, a wily pitcher doesn't have a schedule for putting a fastball in the wrong place. As a batter, you've got to wait it out.
Wait. Hope. Get lucky. Try again.

In any event, preparatory to this call, I sent the client a briefing form I like to use.
It helps me.
It helps them.
It helps make the work better.

About 72 hours before our call, having gotten the above filled out by my potential client, I went out, as I so often do, for a long walk. 

I felt compelled to prepare some stuff for our call. But it hit me--after forty-one years in the business and six years of GeorgeCo., LLC, a Delaware Company, how stupid it is to create a deck for a client.

I can't imagine going to a restaurant and getting a deck rather than a veal chop. A deck that starts, as 99.78954% of all decks start.

This is essentially what we do when we present to clients. We spend 91% of our prep time thinking about background information, which no end-user cares about or will ever see, and often no time on the actual things that influence people and clients are paying for.

Further, I wouldn't expect to go into a car dealership and be handed a deck that says "The New Simca x3845b Provides Real Driving Satisfaction at an Affordable Price. Plus, soccer moms like you love it and it makes them smile and feel they are caring for their family, fulfilling the traditional role of caregiver."

No. I need that like the turkey needs an axe.

I want to see something that excites me and makes me want to drive it. Or taste it. Or go there.

That's what were supposed to make.

Ads that get people's wheels turning.
We spend more time on insights than inciting.
We spend more time on rational than actionable.
We spend more time blabbing than grabbing.

That's dumb.

So against the modus operandi of every agency I've ever worked with or for, I said to myself "deck, bleeech."

And I wrote some ads.

Headlines, really.

With a promise and a reason to believe.
With, as articulated by the Gospel of Trott, the power to get noticed and the brevity to say what the client does. Maybe even enough to begin to persuade a reader.

Yes.
I wrote some ads.

Not Byzantine concoctions and flights of logic.

Jokes.

Purposeful jokes.

Back when the agency business was profitable, because the agencies helped make clients profitable, agencies were stocked with drawing pads and markers. 

I think the best way to sell a client on what you do is to do it. 

To grab a marker and a $19.99 Bienfang pad and write a dozen lines.

Lines to make clients smile.
Respond.
Think.
Buy.

Don't try to out-deck other agencies.

Out-write them.