TICK. TICK.

How well do you know the person working/sitting next to you? Across from you? The co-workers you pass in the hall? The clients you present to? The consumers you sell to?

As creatives, marketers, strategists, clients, we need to understand how people think.

How they form opinions. How they make choices. Its at the basis of our business, whether we realize it or not.

I’ve always been curious to know how people think. What makes them tick.

And I’m sure most of you reading this have this same curiosity, in some form or another as well, otherwise you probably wouldn’t be doing this.

I never studied philosophy, psychology or anything like that, it just seemed to be imbedded in my being. When I was a kid my father owned a construction company in Manhattan and I grew up watching him deal with the many different characters he did business with.

His laborers, building owners, gangsters, union reps, celebrities, enforcers, real estate owners, politicians, banks, suppliers, trucking companies, you name it I saw it.

That’s probably when I got interested in what makes people tick at an early age. It helped me build a good gut instinct. Which I feel most people have lost.

This business we are in is changing at the speed of light, as most businesses are today, but the constant is - THE PEOPLE.  Overall most people, deep down are nice. Some based in fear, some in power. Some in their own heads, or asses, depending on how deep they are.

Consumers are like schools of fish, always have been, always will be. They make decisions in groups because it makes them feel more secure. Then you have some that are independent and make decisions based on how they feel that day. Some rational, some irrational.

But they do make decisions, no matter what group they fall into.

And whatever message or experience we present, it will push some sort of button in each and every person that engages with it. Sometimes we can predict what the response will be, but lately, it has become more difficult. Whether digitally, or at point of sale. You think with all the data we have, and we collect, we would have a 100% hit rate. 

Not on your life. 

We still do business the way we always have and that should never change.

Find the insight. Why the product your making creative for is relevant. And why would someone need it and want to buy it.

I was a judge on a show called American Inventor, and the main criteria that I used to judge whether an invention was worthy of being produced or not was – Does it fill a need? Will people want to buy it?  Way before it is manufactured or marketed.

Not any different than judging whether a creative campaign or concept is worthy of going forward to a client, or worthy of being executed and produced. A lot of money is riding on that decision. 

So agencies hedge, especially if they are worried about losing every account, and they produce a litany of creative concepts to cover every angle of what they think the client might like. Thus burning everyone out in the process.

The most successful pitches and meetings I have ever had were the ones we went in with one or two concepts that we all knew were right on the money and nailed the strategy. No denying it. All our guts were in sync. We felt it. We knew it. And everyone on the team got behind it to make sure we sold it.

The client felt it, and when we were finished, the client knew it as well. You just knew going in that’s what was needed and that was the correct solution to the problem.

Make sure you know going in, who the decision maker is when selling a concept and make sure they are on board with you. Otherwise you will just be creating more fear and worry that will devolve into a death spiral that you’ll be chasing to try to repair.

It all comes down to knowing what makes people tick. Having a strong strategy and a good instinct at knowing what is the right creative solution and the best course of action to present it. Everything is about the experience and the entertainment. As Russell Crowe said in Gladiator “Are you not entertained? Is this not why you are here?” 

So creating the right experience may be the best way to present an idea to get the best reaction and result. This is what we do. This is what makes us tick. Otherwise, we should all go into the construction business.