New Media Buzz

Tactic Four: If It’s Your Baby, Nobody Else Should Be Doing the Parenting.
You’ve probably heard the saying that “Success has a thousand parents, but failure is an orphan.” What it doesn’t mention is that most of those parents had nothing to do with raising the child.  If they did, the kid wouldn’t be a success.  More likely the child would have been pulled in so many different directions, he’d be seriously maladjusted. Ideas are the same way.

We’ve seen it countless times. A client comes to us with an idea, or we bring one to them. It doesn’t matter where it came from, the point is, everyone loves it. At first everything looks great—we’re excited, they’re excited. The idea evolves to a fever pitch. It gets funded—we have a go! This is going to be so great. We can’t wait to launch this.

Then…it happens. Gary the IT Director gets invited to a meeting. He’s quiet until the last 2 minutes, finally piping up, “Did you run all this by Jan’s group?”

Before you know it, the idea has a following. The cooler the idea, the more people want to be associated with it. Just as we’re headed to launch sequence, the call comes through: “We had an internal meeting today. Susan from Jan’s group had a couple of thoughts…”

Like a confused child, your idea begins to slip from your control (and he’s not even a teenager yet).

Susan is probably a perfectly nice, bright, well-intentioned person. But now your idea is being sucked into the vortex of committee. This turn of events spoils the concept nearly every time—because brilliant ideas do not come from disparate groups—they come from small concentrated teams. Once it gets out of the “family,” it loses focus, takes on too many directions, tries to serve too many masters and tries to answer too many questions. In short, your idea has gone bad. And, unlike, children, there is no therapy for ideas.  No, for situations like this there is only one option: STOP.

Right now you might be thinking, “OK, great advice, but isn’t this article about going viral?” Well, yes, exactly—your campaign will never go viral if it’s gone bad. In the interactive landscape, your brand needs to provide a narrative—one that’s relevant, entertaining and informative. If your campaign is headed down a path where the message is watered down, compromised, or becomes nothing but a thinly veiled advertising spot, stop, stop, stop! Do not compromise. Do not let Susan, with all her good intentions, compromise your great idea. Hit the reset button. At worst, pay your agency, suppliers, whatever, and cancel the initiative. A bad campaign will be ignored, or worse, ridiculed. It’s a waste of everyone’s time and money, yet it’s amazing how often this common sense is ignored.

How come you don’t see a lot of these crappy campaigns? Oh you see them, you just don’t remember them. Not a very effective use of your advertising budget.

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