The Black Bird. And Holding Company Mergers.

Of course I have an axe to grind. Anyone who says they don't is either lying or they've bought a chain-saw. (See above for a dramatization.)

For about thirty years now, I've played a little game in my head. When I see a giant company, one of the ones who used to spend a lot on advertising, make a substantial move, I try to imagine what the cover of the Harvard Business Review will say about that move five years from now.

Back in the mid-1990s, I worked on the Mercedes-Benz account.

Mercedes-Benz had been blindsided by the advent of Japan's entry into the super-luxury car-market. Acura. Lexus. Infititi, they all ate away at M-B's share of that rarefied (and profitable) niche. What's more, Japan back then was like China today. Their economy was soaring--their yen was strong against the dollar and the Deutsch Mark and they could afford to sell their cars more cheaply and in essence buy marketshare. 

When I worked on the Mercedes pitch around 1992, I remember reading that Mercedes had gone from selling 100,000 cars in the US to selling about 60,000. Unless you're an ad agency or an internet start-up, losing 40% of your sales is generally a bad thing.

One of the ways Mercedes responded was to expand its product line. In just a few short years, they added to their four-car-line-up, bringing out an SUV, a two-door-roadster, a luxury coupe and a few other models. I remember writing those Harvard Business Review cover-story headlines in my head, "Mercedes: Expanding Products, Contracting Sales." Or "Mercedes: Going Mass and Keeping Class." 

Though it appears the second track has won out, thirty years ago, no one was sure.

The Harvard Business Review-cover game is a good one. In amerika today you can play it with politics, climate policy, trumpism, the democratic party, or any number of topics. You can play the same game with the ad industry. Though if you know anything of extractive industries that deplete once and for all all available resources, you know how that one will turn out.

As I look at business today--as seen partially through the lens of my 30,000-strong LinkedIn network, I write my HBR covers.

I see hundreds of start-ups in my feed. And over the almost six years GeorgeCo., LLC, a Delaware Company has been percolating, I've worked with hundreds more. I've worked on everything from frozen pizza to a tech company that gleans insights from literal chicken shit. There's one thing they all have in common. There's one thing maybe all advertisers have in common: They all underspend.

I say this for the most mercenary of reasons, of course: I want their money. I want them to spend with me.

But more, I say this because I've developed a marketing belief system based on my opinion. I believe in something I call the Four Ds. I sell this world view, with no little success, to my clients. They seem to believe it, too.

I see the word "scale" more times in a single-day than a project manager sees overages coming from the c-suite. But perverting what Mark Twain is said to have said about the weather, "everybody talks about scaling, nobody does anything about it."

In short, no one wants to spend (with me or anyone else) on any of the Ds above, especially the first, most-important two, or the last, most ROI-y one.

Growth is multi-variant. 

That's a MBA-y way of saying it depends on a lot of things, in proportions that change every day. But one of the most important is the one most companies think about least: D1.

99-percent of the companies I see seem not to know what they sell, not to know what makes them different, or important, and not to know why people should consider them. 

Worst of all, if you believe the Trout and Reis dogma that a company has to own one word in the customer's mind, like Nike owns Athlete or Apple owns Creative or IBM (until they ceded it) used to own Think, 99.999999-percent of companies fail to own a word--and 99.999999999999999999999999999999-percent of CMOs fail to realize that they must (to achieve D1-ness) own that word.

So.

Under.

Spend.

So.

No.

Growth.

You can write your own Harvard Business Review cover. I have a raft of art-directors and for a small fee, I can have it designed for you. You can frame it an hang it in your workspace or have a digital copy on your phone.

More important, you can hire me.

And work to make your Harvard Business Review cover come true.

--

[As an industry, and as observers of the industry, there are two sets of HBR headlines we might think about this morning. One set might be: Advertising Holding Companies: The Economies of Scale or Advertising Holding Companies: The Economies of Fail.

The second might be: America Without Anti-Trust Regulation: The Death of Competition and Innovation. or America Without Anti-Trust Regulation: Size Matters (Too Much.)]