THS SPCH S OLY HAF FNSHD

Good afternoon, thanks so much for having me. I’m Eric Kiker and sorry, but this speech is only half finished. I wanted to ask you all an audience participation question to start things off. And I’m going to record the answers right here in this next slide:

MUCH MORE______________?

I just thought of this the other day and I’ve never tried it, so sorry in advance if it’s glitchy. I call it Spontaneous PowerPoint, or SPPT. So if you would, please, spit out some fill-in-the-blank answers when I ask, from a business perspective, what do you want much more of? Okay that’s great. And now, the speech can start.

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What happens when you go here?

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advertising agencies loc:

Akron, OH

… and enter this?

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Once you've zoomed out four clicks, here's what you get. Can you find yourself in this picture?

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advertising agencies loc:

Chicago, IL

Let's try your neighbor, Chicago.

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Now, again, I pulled back a bit to show the surrounding area. That's a heck of a lot of dots. And they shouldn’t feel bad at all - because the same holds true in every market:

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Los Angeles

Los Angeles

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New York

New York

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Des Moines

And just in case you think the lots of dots example only applies to big cities, here's Des Moines. Again, no shortage of people like us doing the sorts of things we do.

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Denver

My agency is located in Denver, where there are almost as many ad agencies...

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Denver - plumbers

As there are plumbers.

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Our agency is called LeeReedy/Xylem Digital. We're a traditional and digital agency with a long history of working with great clients including:

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Chiquita

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Chipotle

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Geek Squad

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Jamba Juice

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Atkins

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Hunter Douglas

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and Naked Juice. Yet, we are, beyond our own back yard, virtually unknown. Why.

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New York

Because we...

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Los Angeles

...look like...

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Chicago

...everyone else.

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Denver

So we set a goal for ourselves. To stand for something true. So when a very specific kind of client is looking for precisely what we represent, the map looks a whole lot less like this:

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...and more like this. But selling more work, not necessarily standing out was what we had in mind when we hired a business consultant.

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This is Cindy Kenyon. Cindy's the consultant we hired to help us sell more work. But after listening to our story and looking at our materials, which we thought were pretty good, she said in a cute Texas drawl, "Y'all need to start showin' up better." We were stunned. After all, we thought we had some pretty good stuff. Our line at the time was this:

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Think like investors

We think like investors. We thought it was good. After all, a lot of our clients were and are VC firms. Naked was owned by a VC firm. Atkins is owned by the same one. We also tend to work with a lot of start up brands who don't have a lot of money. So we liked this. But Cindy wasn't convinced it was differentiating enough. So we said, “Fine, we’ll just put you on retainer little missy.” Cindy knows a lot about advertising agencies - and a lot about a lot of advertising agencies.

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After all, she ran the RFP for Radio Shack back in 2004. Cindy looked at a ton of agencies, which were culled down to a great many agencies, which eventually resulted in Arnold Worldwide winning the business.

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You've heard of Arnold. Volvo, Carnival Cruise Lines, Jack Daniels. Arnold is in Boston.

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Boston

They're the big B.

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Cindy Kenyon

Cindy introduced us to a number of people in her personal network:

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Cindy Kenyon

Cindy Hennessy

Cindy Hennessy was Marketing and Innovation VP at Pizza Hut, then SVP of Innovation at Dr. Pepper Snapple Group, then she held the same title at Cadbury Schweppes. Cindy kills it.

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Cindy Kenyon

Cindy Hennessy Don Carroll

Then there was Don Carroll. Don was Chief Marketing and Brand Officer at Radio Shack, then President and CEO at Heelys. They make those kids’ shoes that turn into skates.

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Cindy Kenyon

Cindy Hennessy Don Carroll

Janet Bustin

Janet Bustin spent 19 years as President at DDB Dallas. Big brains, all of these guys.

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What they told us (between bites of free food)

So, we went to Dallas, where Cindy Kenyon introduced us to these pretty impressive marketing and advertising people. One of my partners, Patrick Gill and I, told our story - talked about our clients, asked questions, showed our Think Like Investors deck. And we did okay. What we heard was, based on our deck, we didn't seem that different than lots of other agencies.

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Janet Bustin put it to us best, drinking hot coffee in a Corner Bakery that was hotter than both the coffee and hell. She said, "Fellas, I've been in the agency business for 20 years and they all say the same exact thing."

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“We’re big idea people.”

We're big idea people.

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"We're big idea people." "We're highly collaborative."

We're highly collaborative.

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"We're big idea people." "We're highly collaborative."

"And we're all about results."

And we're all about results. We couldn't believe it.

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Chicago

Chicago…

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Los Angeles

Los Angeles…

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New York

even New York agencies are all saying the same thing?

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"We're big idea people." "We're highly collaborative."

"And we're all about results."

These three things? Well, at first, we were more than somewhat disappointed. Don't really know why. Maybe it was just thinking we had something great and distinctive with Think Like Investors. And all this meant was that Cindy Kenyon was right - that we needed to show up better. More to the point, we needed to show up better - and different. But the fact was, we realized after we got out of that hell hot Corner Bakery and got our brains back into Cindy's air conditioned Lexus, that here was a real opportunity. If all those dots were generating the same three ideas - and winning clients anyway, how amazingly well could we possibly do if we could just figure out what sets us truly, differentiatingly apart.

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Denver

So we came home to this. And we started thinking. But of course, clients kept calling and kept wanting us to do the work we'd agreed to do. So beyond the excited plane ride back to Denver, we didn't get much done.

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Cindy Kenyon

A few days later, Cindy Kenyon called. "I have this great opportunity," she said, still Texas drawling. "Randy Gier has agreed to meet you and Patrick as a favor to me. Isn't that great?"

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Cindy Kenyon

Cindy Hennessy Don Carroll

Janet BustinRandy Gier

Randy Gier was CMO at KFC, then CMO of Pizza Hut, then Advisor to the office of the CEO at Tracey Locke. Today, Randy's CMO of LaLa - a $2B Mexico-based dairy moving into the US market. Randy's job is to make them into a $4B dairy. And he'd agreed to see us as a favor to Cindy Kenyon.

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A favor to Cindy Kenyon.

To say we weren’t bothered by the fact that we were a “favor” would be, a lie. We did care. And it made us feel rather small. And local. The day before we left, an old client dropped by.

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Susan Aust was, up until recently, the Creative Director at Noodles and Company. I'd written their website a couple years back, when I was freelancing and had also done several on premise promotions - Susan was - and is - a really great person and I was glad she came by.

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The Brand Workshop

Susan asked what was going on with me and how my work had changed since I'd become a partner at LeeReedy/Xylem Digital. I told her I was spending a lot more time moderating and analyzing our brand workshop, which we called, The Brand Workshop. I told her what a great tool it was and how we routinely turned brand essence statements, positioning platform and more, around for clients in just two weeks.

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"Yeah, Susan said, Noodles and Company's new agency, Martin Williams has a process like that - they get to all that stuff just like you do." "Oh, I said," acknowledging the reason we'd never "branded" our brand workshop or TM'd it or anything - because everyone has a process like it." "Yeah, Susan went on." "It took them four months." At that moment I heard a tiny little "click," as if a light had been turned on, way down a long, long hallway.

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Dallas, TexasLaLa Headquarters

Thursday

Cindy Kenyon, Patrick Gill and I arrived to see Randy Gier. The first thing I noticed as we arrived was that LaLa was in the building owned and populated by The Richards Group.

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That’s their homepage. Really simple and cool. Does anybody know about The Richards Group? Well, for those of you who don’t, The Richards Group is America's largest independently owned ad agency…

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they’re not owned by WPP

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Omnicom

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Or Interpublic

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Stan Richards: Damn cool guy

The Richards Group is owned by Stan Richards. They're one of my favorite agencies - flat from an organizational standpoint, no real hierarchy, everyone sits together - top guys next to junior guys, account guys next to creative guys. Travelocity, Amstel Light, Fruit of the Loom, Patron. Amazing. These guys know who they are. And we were walking into their building.

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Randy Gier: An awfully nice man as well

Cindy Kenyon had told us Randy Gier was a great guy - and he was. All smiles, very warm. He showed us the concept for his hobby, a new restaurant he was opening with some partners called Cedar Plank Grill. We talked about LaLa. We showed him our Think Like Investors deck. He liked our work, asked probing questions. I told him about our Brand Workshop and how we'd proudly eschewed any branding or TM'ing. Then Randy told a story.

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Brainfarts

"Oh, you've got to brand it," he said. Because you'll get into P&G or some other big company, where they have a bunch of Associate Brand Managers running around with MBAs but no creative experience whatsoever. You'll do your process, your Brainfarts process. Next week, some other ABM will ask your ABM, "Hey what was that brand thing you did last week?" "Brainfarts right?" "And you'll get a call from that guy too. Because these guys, as smart as they are, just never search outside their four walls." "So yes, Brainfarts will sell."

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™

"What if we called it Two Weeks to Truth?" I asked. Feeling the very independence Stan Richards must feel when he tells MDC, owners of CrispinPorter + Bogusky and other agencies, to go suck an egg. You see, the afternoon before, sitting in the bar at the very stylish W hotel in downtown Dallas, Patrick, Cindy Kenyon and I had been working - on showing up better. I had told them my down the hallway epiphany surrounding the possible real difference between our brand workshop and everyone else's TM'd process. Two weeks. It all happens in two weeks - and we don't just give people a brand essence, we give them positioning platforms, tactics that bring the platforms to life, even packaging or first round creative - in two weeks.

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Randy loved it™

"Two Weeks to Truth. I love that," was Randy Gier's response to my moment of Stan Richards-like confidence. "That says great things to me on several levels. Oh that's much better than Brainfarts." So to Randy Gier, I say, thanks for doing the favor to Cindy Kenyon - you did us a favor too.

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Back to Denver. And the beginning.

Through our meetings, we'd learned a lot about what not to do and pushed ourselves to find the greatness in one thing we'd been doing. Two Weeks to Truth was TM'd. We created a deck around it. It gained traction around the office and with clients to whom we spoke about it.

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Two Weeks To Truth™

Two Weeks to Truth, as Randy Gier had told us, instantly gave our heretofore anonymous little branding tool some heft. Like an unknown actor who wins an Oscar - only in this case, we'd given the award to ourselves. And no one seemed to mind.

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Damn

The branding of Two Weeks to Truth simultaneously buoyed us up and sunk our battleship. It wasn't enough to make us start "Showing up better." For that, we needed to go deeper. And that meant getting our big tool out and using it on ourselves.

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What we saw in the mirror

The first thing we do in every Two Weeks to Truth workshop is ask,

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If we do our jobs well, we will...

if we do our jobs well in this process, we will, what? When we asked ourselves that day, this is the list we generated:

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Know or create our niche

Be more interesting

Have a big vision - and make it come true

Take more risks

Be seen as thought leaders

Be written about

Make everything easier

Get in front of the right people

Be in a position to hire our clients

Most of these are fairly expected and things you'd put on your own lists. But for us, that last one was the one that gave us our first clue as to what the truth of the LeeReedy/Xylem Digital brand is: Be in a position to hire our clients. Great goal, but how on Earth could we accomplish that?

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What are we?

Another step we go through in Two Weeks to Truth is to ask, "What are we?" On that day, we asked what are we today, in July of 2010 and what are we in July of 2012. Here's an abbreviated list of what we came up with:

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Looking beyond our small pondA think and do tank

UtilitarianOwners know how to do the work - and do it

Flat organizationallyReady for change

Tend toward being yes menEntrepreneurs

Risk-takersLikeable/Trustworthy

Invisible/under the radarSolving problems through design

InventorsWe seem project oriented

Cheap

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Looking beyond our small pondA think and do tank

UtilitarianOwners know how to do the work - and do it

Flat organizationallyReady for change

Tend toward being yes menEntrepreneurs

Risk-takersLikeable/Trustworthy

Invisible/under the radarSolving problems through design

InventorsWe seem project oriented

Cheap

In 2010, we decided, we were (and are) an all-purpose marketing firm. We have and have had many of the same uncomfortable issues many of you may have had - not being valued as highly as we'd like; having clients whom, if not for the money, we'd have little in common with; being order takers - or worse, pairs of hands. Yet, we had and have strengths that could and should be valued:

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2010A think and do tank

UtilitarianOwners know how to do the work – and do it

Flat organizationallyEntrepreneurs

Risk-takersLikeable/Trustworthy

Solving problems through designInventors

2012Food and beverage specialists

CPG specialistsBeing sought out

Able to be selective

Now let's layer onto these bolded items - unique strengths, with some additional truths we hope to acquire by 2012. That list looks like this: What we want to add is essentially some focused specialty, specifically related to our food , beverage and CPG clients of today. And we hope that increased focus will help us be sought out and able to be selective - in other words, gain a reputation. So that's us, current and present. Next, we looked at our clients with the same filters.

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2010

High maintenance“Killing me”UnawareTacticalChallenger brandsBootstrappingNervousGreenLean on us extensivelyTrying to get purchasedLaunching something newImpatientStart-upsInnovatorsGrowersCourageousTaking risksEntrepreneurs

2012

Urging us to take risksPrivate equity companiesBoard membersDamned pickySeasoned and knowledgeableVisionaryUnconventionalTrying to be purchased or go publicLaunching or relaunching somethingTrying to become the clear choice

At first glance, our clients in 2012 are far more sophisticated than those in 2010. Mainly due to the first things that popped into our heads when we asked, "What are our clients?"

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2010

High maintenance“Killing me”UnawareTacticalChallenger brandsBootstrappingNervousGreenLean on us extensivelyTrying to get purchasedLaunching something newImpatientStart-upsInnovatorsGrowersCourageousTaking risksEntrepreneurs

2012

Urging us to take risksPrivate equity companiesBoard membersDamned pickySeasoned and knowledgeableVisionaryUnconventionalTrying to be purchased or go publicLaunching or relaunching somethingTrying to become the clear choice

So what if remove those negatives and leave just the things we love about our clients today and what we want in our clients in two years. The two lists look like this:

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2010

Challenger brandsLean on us extensivelyTrying to get purchasedLaunching something newImpatientStart-upsInnovatorsGrowersCourageousTaking risksEntrepreneurs

2012

Urging us to take risksPrivate equity companiesBoard membersDamned pickySeasoned and knowledgeableVisionaryUnconventionalTrying to be purchased or go publicLaunching or relaunching somethingTrying to become the clear choice

Not that much different right? What this told us was that our clients today are not that different than our clients two years from now. Our best clients that is. The ones that are getting the most out of us – the ones that are using everything we bring to the table not just from our fingertips to wrists.

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Epiphany #1

That thing Janet Bustin told Patrick, Cindy Kenyon and me in that sweltering Corner Bakery was eating at me as I wrote our Two Weeks to Truth roundup. "Every agency says the same three things about themselves..." I remembered her saying. About themselves, themselves, selves, selves. And then something hit me as I kept looking at the lists of attributes that defined our clients. The best ones have many of the same attributes...

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They're under tremendous pressure

They hate wasting time and money

They're not looking for marginal improvement...

...or to maintain a leadership position

They're incredibly intense and obsessed with success

At LeeReedy/Xylem Digital, we're all the same things they are. That list right there contains things that drive us. These attributes were driving us to put ourselves through our own process. So why wouldn't we express our brand essence in terms of, not what we are - but what our clients are? I wasn't aware of any agency that had done that. So right there, we could have a way of saying something different. But what should the words - the ones we'd use to define our clients, which in turn define us - say?

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Epiphany #2

I presented my hypothesis to one of my other partners, Scott Snyder. Scott's the remaining original partner at Xylem Digital. He's a sharp interactive guy and a sharp sales guy - so it was natural to run what would become an initial sales message by him. Scott loved the idea of our brand essence being a statement about our clients. On the phone, I came up with the statement.

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Clients with Fight

It was good. It captured everything I've been telling you about. It started with "Clients" and it ended with something emotional that epitomized all those attributes our best clients have in common. Clients with Fight was scrappy, determined, goal oriented and defendable. And it was a marvelous placeholder until we found something even better.

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About a week later, after we'd all been talking rather excitedly about Clients with Fight, something dawned on Patrick's, Scott's and my other partner - Kelly Reedy. Kelly's Lee Reedy's son, who along with Patrick, purchased the company eight or so years ago. Kelly's realization was based on the work we'd been doing with a new client called Corazonas.

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Corazonas was a four year old brand with a great story - they owned a patent from Brandeis University for infusing plant sterols into chips, thus they were and are the only snack food capable of actually lowering cholesterol. But when we were introduced to the company, they weren't getting the sales traction they deserved. We knew it had a lot to do with their packaging. Delicious-looking, but it didn't make the promise. And in the chip aisle, it was getting lost.

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We successfully repackaged the brand to make the point as loud and clear as their Washington DC lawyers would let us. But this wasn't the point of Kelly's realization. What interested him was how our process and our entrepreneurial drive may have actually reawakened and strengthened that of our client.

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A four letter word

"You're talking about Fire" I said. Clients with Fire.

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For us, it caught. Clients with Fire had everything we had been looking for. It was about our clients first, not us. It instantly gave an emotional impression. It wasn't anything like any of those three things Janet Bustin warned us about saying, yet it implied big ideas, collaboration and results. Best of all, "Fire" is such a loaded word, no one in our industry has used it the way we were intending. For instance, Google "Fire advertising agency" and you get a bunch of articles on how to fire your ad agency. Google Clients with Fire and you get this:

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So, three months after hiring Cindy Kenyon, we had two TM'd phrases - Two Weeks to Truth and Clients with Fire. The next step was to create a deck, the first couple pages I'll share with you here.

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Some companies may think they have

plenty of time:

To position or reposition their brands

To build sales distribution

… and awareness

… and market share

To innovate product, package,

communications strategy

To attract investors

To stimulate an acquisition

Time //

why? //

fire //

hate //

Some companies really do have lots of time to do these kinds of things. To position or reposition, to build sales, awareness and market share, to innovate, to raise money, to get bought.

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Our clients don’t have

time.

Because the competition wants to destroy them

Consumers want to ignore them

And still, they have the audacity to think they can win

Because our clients have Fire.

So do we.

Time //

why? //

fire //

hate //

But our clients don't have that luxury. Because the competition wants to destroy them, consumers want to ignore them, and still, they have the incredible audacity to think they can win.

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What’s Fire?

Fire is having no time or money to waste … and understanding that wasting either means we lose

relationships … or our clients fail

Fire is recognizing ideas are hugely important, but…

… gaining alignment, iterating and validating ideas is even more crucial

… getting ideas to market now, so they can start addressing

business problems is vital

… and getting this intense process completed fast and right

without spending lots of time and money is something no one

wants you to think is possible

Time //

why? //

fire //

hate //

Fire is: having no time or money to waste and for us to understand what happens if we waste either. Fire is recognizing the importance of those ideas everyone talks about - but gaining alignment, iterating and validating ideas and getting them to market now, is even more important. Fire is the fact that getting everything done fast and right is, for our clients and us, an everyday occurrence.

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From one cluttered map to another

With Two Weeks to Truth and Clients with Fire, we could easily segment the marketplace and immediately go after more of the kinds of businesses that would get the most out of us. For instance, we have a long history of success with Northcastle Partners - they're a VC firm - and they hate wasting money and time and not moving the needle. So should we be focusing our efforts toward venture capital and Private Equity firms?

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Denver

This is a Google Maps search for “Venture Capital, Denver." Lots of those guys.

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Boulder

Here's the same search for Boulder, a thirty minute drive from our office. Nice, right?

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Los Angeles

Los Angeles. Tons of VCs and P/E firms.

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Chicago

Chicago. Again, great market.

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New York

New York. You can see why we got excited about our new positioning. But that was all theory. What would real business people say about our deck? Well, we asked.

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What they told us (no free food needed)

I sent our new Fire deck to Greg Post, senior VP at Cricket Wireless and a friend of a friend. Greg had just finished spending six months brokering a $300 million deal with Sprint.

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"I really like your strategy doc. It's the most results oriented, focused, sense of

urgency presentation I've seen from companies in your space. Others

seem to be more conceptual and esoteric. You're spot on."

Paul Colletta is a Manhattan-based business consultant who works with brands like Jamba Juice, Chiquita and others. Paul's led Xylem Digital to a number of opportunities in the past, but he's no pushover.

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"It is really good. I like the tone and the message. It conveys

confidence and passion."

Just last week, our friend Cindy Kenyon got feedback from Don Carroll, ex-CMO of Radio Shack and Cindy Hennessy, of Dr. Pepper Snapple Group. These next slides sum up what they said:

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"The overwhelming response was that they really

did like the fire theme and the brand voice/confidence..."

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"...they said it caught their attention and grabbed them

by the throat..."

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"...and they LOVED that this positioning places the client front

and center in all that you do."

THS SPCH S OLY HAF FNSHD

So what happens once you've gone through your own version of what I've outlined here today? Once you've taken on the mind numbing, blood boiling, “what if we broke through” experience of finding your truth - and communicating it. Well I can tell you what should happen. You should be invited to an all-you-can-eat success buffet. You should see nodding instead of shaking when you speak to clients and would-be clients. Your hair, or scalp as the case may be, should look incredible.

MUCH MORE______________?

You should get much more blank. Whatever blank is to you. Whatever you put on that list we made in the beginning. So, we'll see - we believe Clients with Fire will catch, in fact, new business is already starting to show an increase - could be the economy, could be the brand, could be the confidence that came from creating the brand. One thing's for certain, having a story that's half-written feels a lot better than that old blank page.

Thank you so much.