Marty Cooke

So, AdWeek has this cool thing in the right panel of their site. It's a video feed with quick clips from people who have something to say in the ad industry.

Marty Cooke's name was listed among them and it caught my eye.

A year or so ago he came to the VCU AdCenter as a "Friday Speaker". He was our second Friday Speaker that year, prefaced by Jonah Bloom from AdAge. I took notes during those first few Speakers Series. In fact, I still have the notes from Marty's presentation here at my desk at work. Let me fetch them...

Ah, yes. Here they are.

"September 15th, 2006", I wrote. Immediately followed by SS+K est. 1993. Marty Cook on "Building Brands + Opinion in a Fractured World"

Let's see...what else...

He told a story about how they made "Fruitopia" what it is today. - a ubiquitous "snapple-like" drink some may recall emerging in the mid-90's. The most interesting part of the story was that Coke, the parent company, wanted to call the drink "Minute Made Naturals". Nice. Sounds like a laxative.

Marty told them the name sucked and reinvented the brand. Voila! Fruitopia.

That's not the only way they've been putting their thumb-print on brands.

Remember those hip yellow bracelets that came out a few years ago? The ones with LiveSTRONG seared into the rubber band? Yea. That was them.

And...oh yea, this was an idea he stressed several times...

He talked about every brand having a "Noble Purpose" - you had to write it down. It had to be six words or less. And there could be no "and" in it.

That's great. You get focused.

Wal-Mart: Make everyday stuff affordable.

Done.

BUT - ask a client to do that. Maaann, that'd be hard. There's so much you have to say and so much you can do and the consumer needs to be made aware of it and what if they don't know how great we are and I might lose my job!

Now that's clearly a generalization. But a lot of times, it seems to be the rule.

And that brings me back to the video from AdWeek. The reason I liked it is because Marty brings up another good point: "The worst part of advertising is the clients just don't trust us as much as they used to."

And while I haven't been in the industry near as long as Marty, maybe not even long enough to have experienced the days when they did "trust us", but I still feel it.

There are times when you wonder why they've hired an agency at all. It seems that you're just a scribe for their ideas to promote their brand. While, in reality, this is our business. This is our trade. This is what we know. We can help you. But only if you're willing. And it seems these days, they're not.

While flying from New York to London, you wouldn't suggest a different flight pattern and speed to your pilot. But the difference in this industry is that everybody has an opinion. And it just takes a bit of pop-culture knowledge to think it's a valid one.

There are so many brands that could meet endless success if only reins were dropped. Or at least loosened.

Granted, it's advisable to at least entertain some input from the client. I mean, it is their brand after all and ultimately, they do know it best.

That said, I would still love to see the day when, for a given period of time, complete control over brands was ushered to agencies. The client would see the end result on tv, just like everybody else. And they would laugh, cry, grow more attached to their brand, just like everybody else*.

Here's the video with the other interesting ideas he presents.

* In theory