Are You Radiating Out? Are You Inspiring People?

Not everybody worships at the altar of creativity. Some people think we could do without it. Who needs crazy ideas when there are solid fundamentals? Who needs fresh thinking when there’s analytical thinking?

Today, we’ve got a haystack of creative naysayers, all talking about silos and logistics and statistics. They believe in systemized structures and communized thought. In their minds, the world would be a better place—even a happier place—without loonies, oddballs and prima donnas.

Well, let me tell you a story—not about a creative person—but a salesperson. This goes back to when our agency was promoting the Water Pik Shower Massage. One day, our main client (I’ll call him Ron), came in for a creative presentation. Because we were working towards the Christmas season, Ron decided to bring in the head of the sales force (I’ll call him Peter). Ron wanted Peter’s buy off on the advertising so he’d go back and stir up the reps.

On this particular day, we were presenting a television commercial idea. In the commercial, we showed this old guy standing in the shower, refusing to use the Shower Massage. A hand comes through the curtain and starts moving the old guy’s arm up and down. The old guy remains stoic—until the arm disappears. Then he’s suddenly having the time of his life. He just didn’t like being pushed around. He didn’t like someone forcing him to do anything.

Ron was only mildly impressed. As far as he was concerned, we were spending more time on a geriatric than the Shower Massage itself. Peter, on the other hand, kept eyeing the script. Outside in the hall afterwards, he told me he liked it. From a sales perspective, he could see it working in the field.

Six months later, we got a phone call. Ron was leaving the company and Peter was now president. He told us he wanted to run that ‘old guy’ commercial.

To make a long story short, the commercial did well. Sales went up, we won awards. Everyone was happy, especially Peter—not just because he chose to run the spot, but because of what happened afterwards.

As it turned out, a lot of the sales divisions—particularly the ones out west—had suffered a kind of malaise under Ron’s presidency. He'd been so dry, and everything—especially the marketing—had ended up being dry, too. With this commercial, not only did their families laugh, so did the distributors and store owners. They kept bringing up the commercial, saying, “That old guy’s funny. What’s his name again? Where’d you find him?”

It created a conversation which, in turn, created sales. More importantly, it inspired the sales force. About a month before Christmas, Peter got a phone call from his Calgary division. It seems they—along with their families—had decided to wrap all the Shower Massages before delivery to the stores. Some even had wrapping parties. The distributors loved it, the stores loved it, and the customers loved it. Sales went up even more.

Each time something like this happened, Peter would call us. He didn’t talk about silos, or systemized structure, or logistics. In fact, he was laughing his head off. He was a salesman again. He was holding conventions, showing the storyboards from the commercial, even asking if Fred Booker, the old guy from the commercial, should be there rallying the troops. Fred Booker, by the way, won a Best Actor in a Commercial that year, quite an achievement for a 72-year-old who’d spent most of his life as a janitor.

Because Peter was pumped, we were pumped, too. When he came to us with another project for their Oral Hygiene Instrument, he said to us: “Let’s do for this thing what we did for the Shower Massage.”

Now, obviously the Oral Hygiene Instrument (essentially pulsating water jets) didn’t have the same cache as the Shower Massage. But because Peter was so enthusiastic, we weren’t going to let him down. In fact, I booked an appointment with my dentist, figuring maybe he had some ideas. As luck would have it, he did, and this is what he told me:

“Some of my patients spend five grand on braces for their kids,” he said. “The kids come back after a year with cavities galore. Toothbrushes are useless with braces. That Oral Hygiene Instrument works great. Tell your client I said that.”

(He's still my dentist, by the way—35 years later!)

The next day, Peter was in our office looking at his latest Oral Hygiene Instrument creative. The headline simply said: “Now that you’ve spent $5,000 on braces, how about some insurance?” Again, he was thrilled, the sales force was thrilled, and the stores were thrilled. Through a combined effort of sales and advertising, we increased consumer demand. And that Christmas, just like they did with the Shower Massage, the sales force wrapped Oral Hygiene Instruments.

If you’re saying, “Well, that’s a cute little story,” it’s not cute. It’s what happens when you radiate out, when you inspire people. All this talk about systems and logistics and analytics reminds me of Ron. He loved anything formulaic. He wanted numbers and graphs and charts. He wanted guarantees.

Peter, on the other hand, was all about sales. He was a man-on-the-ground, working more from instinct than instruction. And what he knew about sales—which was a lot—he knew flourished in an atmosphere of like-minded people who believed in earning consumer attention not contriving it.

He didn’t see creatives as loonies, oddballs and prima donnas. He saw them as people willing to try something different. That’s all creative is at the end of the day. If you look at life differently, you get a new perspective, you introduce a new reason to purchase (something car companies haven't done in 40 years).

People essentially want to feel good. You can say, “Hey, forty percent off will brighten their day.” Yes, it probably will. But discounts will always cheapen a brand. It’s easy and it’s lazy. If we’re talking strictly about ROI, isn’t it better to add something than to take something away? Think how little it cost that western sales force to wrap all those Shower Massages. They didn’t have to cut prices. They showed initiative and ingenuity instead. When was the last time your sales force did that?

This isn’t an argument for loonies, oddballs and prima donnas. It’s an argument for fresh thinking. It’s an argument for changing rules, changing perspectives, even changing mentalities. It’s saying that new ideas, new thoughts—whether they come from copywriters, media directors, clients or dentists—radiate out. They infect everyone, they inject enthusiasm.

If you still say it’s all about formula, science, silos and logistics, think about this: Those Shower Massages doubled in sales over the next two years. So did the Oral Hygiene Instruments. All because of a little imagination and cooperation from all sides (plus a water shortage in California which, for some reason, had women frantically looking for more efficient, yet powerful, shower heads).

What about you? Are you ready for new thinking? Are you ready for a few loonies, oddballs and prima donnas? Let me know at: rcormack@rogers.com

Robert Cormack is a freelance copywriter, blogger and novelist. His first novel: “You Can Lead a Horse to Water (But You Can’t Make It Scuba Dive)” is coming out in paperback this spring. Look for it online and at most major bookstores. More information is available at Yucca Publishing and Skyhorse Press.