“In this business you have to make a scoop of shit taste like vanilla ice cream… and when you’re done, count on your stomach to voluntarily order a second helping!”, Bob James told me in 1988 when he was CEO of McCann-Erickson Worldwide, and who also added an arguable job description: “Make your client happy”.
Back then, as Vice-President and Account Director of McCann Mexico, I faced a lose-lose relationship, and clearly ordered to subordinate myself to the client, usually represented by unimaginative marketing managers highly focused on taking care of their job, preparing their promotion or even their exit. So, in those days we were taught to make the customer happy, whatever it was, even if it meant tasting the particular vanilla ice cream he described to me, which often came from brand managers who particularly enjoyed issuing the “I don’t like it”, to elaborate an intelligent argumentation of their criteria. In his approach, James was proposing that I do whatever it takes to make the customer happy, while omitting a single allusion to professional service, level of creative or effectiveness. That was a lesson from the old school of advertising, which I carried out for years without realizing the mistake, until I decided to take my own path, professional and with another level of added value to our clients, who today I try to make fall in love with Tribu, for our unique value proposition: creating Lovemarks.
From the old school, however, unfortunately there are still many teachers and uninspiring examples. That old school of complacent advertisers left us with an ill-fated legacy that some continue to follow by the only way they can imagine: lowering their prices. Likewise, that legion of old-fashioned advertisers inherited us a profession deteriorated by the reduced added value, by making advertisements to the client’s taste, by limiting themselves to make them happy and losing the very essence of our activity: creativity.
In Costa Rica, as in many countries around the world, we inherited a sick advertising activity, and for many years, we did everything necessary to make it even sicker. Some of the country’s advertising players, like myself, did everything in our power to make the client happy, without realizing the damage we were causing by ignoring our responsibility to nurture their brands, evolve and strengthen them, even at the risk of not giving the client what they wanted, what they asked for, what they expected.
For some years now, because of the importance of evolving and guaranteeing the sustainability of our companies, I have focused on reinventing myself, on reinventing and stimulating reinvention. In every sense, Costa Rica is called to take advantage of its enormous social capital, as well as to rebel against its conformist and passive idiosyncrasy. The publicist of our country must, therefore, take the crest of the wave and show with courage all that we can do for the brands of our clients, abandoning this attitude inherited from complacent, to become business partners of the highest added value.
Parenthesis: I write in the blog in an open, simple, informal way, as in any blog. I don’t care much about writing, I don’t try to prove anything in literature, nor do I try to make a single person admire lexicon or writing. I type in disorder and I do it this way, as I do now, as I want and as my conscience suggests. Always with respect and consideration for you, dear reader.
In any case, and to finish, today’s proposal is the same, but different. I want to have Permanently in Love Clients, for our creativity, our strategy, for the way we design, add and give what they would not have imagined possible. I am not interested in bringing them what they expect, I want to surprise them with our ideas and seduce them to innovation, daring and attraction for their brands. We don’t want to be extensions of their marketing departments, nor do we want to know so much about their business that we start thinking like them. We want to give them fresh, innovative, visionary and forward-looking visions that will consolidate their business, move their cash registers and sustain them forever.
We want to bring them a vision of the world in advance, to open their eyes to the need to evolve from client-agency to business partners, to forget their focus on the next transaction, and to go for a relationship. We rely on their resources and adapt them to seduce the consumer, who is the shopper in chief and who must be served by their brands with passion and sensitivity. We want to remain focused on your communication, yet turn your brands into ones that inspire addiction, loyalty without reason, relationship without end.
For no reason do we desire a diet that is not nourishing, and for this reason, at Tribu we have been giving up the stage of complacency in advertising for some time now. If there are still clients who just want to be “pleased”, there are still agencies that know how to do it. We are focused on adding value, adding relationships, nurturing brands and uncovering expectations. This is how we want CPEs. And that’s why Bob James’ ice cream has been gone for some time now, forever and ever.
So I propose that we move from the old guard to the new, from the school of complacency to the school of added value and value propositions. Let’s leave behind this search of many clients for enslaving or frightening relationships of their trembling advertisers, let’s move on to the relationship of business partners and meet as equals, for your brands, for your business. Let’s leave behind what has not served, and let’s give the consumer what she is looking for to become a buyer. Let’s move forward and focus on a better future.
Well, and to conclude, let me tell you that I think there is no ice cream like Pops, my favorite is the cookie, then the vanilla, then the chocolate, then none other. Nothing tastier than a cookie milk shake, or that chocolate sundae that tastes like my youth, after standing in line at Pops in La Sabana more than 25 or 30 years ago. Flavors of childhood, flavors of love, flavors of a Lovemark for life.