At Fazer, we like to think of ourselves as “cheerful contrarians.” That is, we have a healthy disdain for the marketing status quo. But we’re not simply contrary or negative. If you want to say “no” at Fazer, you need to provide a better alternative. So here we go.
Fazer is a brand strategy firm. Our proprietary methodology—De-Positioning—is inherently contrary to the status quo. We’re cheerfully contrarian to the core. We don’t believe in the dogma of differentiation, which is how most of our competitors approach strategy development. Instead, we focus on disrupting markets by addressing “hero” pain points and competitive weaknesses. This process, De-Positioning, delivers powerful brand strategies that drive sustainable competitive advantage for our clients. It’s brand judo to our competitors’ hand-hurting karate. We use the dead weight of our competition to metaphorically throw them across the room.
This Is Not a Lament
I’m a lucky human. To paraphrase Goodfellas, I always wanted to be an ad man. I’ve been fortunate to work at all the places you’d want to work: McCann for 25 years, Ogilvy (twice), DDB (twice), and Wieden+Kennedy (once). On all the big global brands: Coke for a decade, IBM, IKEA, Mastercard. It was a wonderful run, and I have great memories and great friends all over the world. I adored being a strategist. I had insights and ideas for a living. They actually paid me to do that. It was a gift.
An Industry Under Siege
This won’t surprise you: I didn’t leave by choice. My departure is a symptom of larger pressures. Guess what? I’m not alone. It feels like all my peers are on the outs, too. This is a function of structural weaknesses. Sure, the economy plays a role. But the real drivers are:
- The holding company business model: Holding companies are doing addition by subtraction to maintain the bottom line in a growth-starved industry.
- New technologies: AI and programmatic advertising are emphasizing efficiency over creativity.
- Consulting firms: These firms have usurped ad agencies’ influence in the C-suite.
The Problem Beneath the Problem
But you know all that. I’m here to tell you there’s a more fundamental challenge: Ad agencies are getting strategy all wrong. There. I said it. We’re talking to ourselves. In love with our own brilliance. What do agencies sell today? Creativity. How do we get there? Insights. How do we prove our worth? Award shows that we created ourselves—to celebrate ourselves. We’ve forgotten our primary purpose (and replaced it with Brand Purpose), which is to sell. To drive measurable growth for our clients’ brands. Selling, in fact, has become a dirty word. It’s purposeless. Beneath us.
What do agencies sell today? Creativity. How do we get there? Insights. How do we prove our worth? Award shows that we created ourselves—to celebrate ourselves. We’ve forgotten our primary purpose (and replaced it with Brand Purpose), which is to sell. To drive measurable growth for our clients’ brands.
The Trouble with Insights
I grew up dining out on the power of insights. I was an insight-writing machine for decades. Insights are often beautiful. But insights are fundamentally flawed because they are aimed at the wrong thing. I can’t tell you how many times a planner told me an insight was great “because it contains a tension.” But insights aren’t about creating tension. Our insights should be about relieving tension. Removing it from consumers’ lives. Not through storytelling, essential as it is. But through pain point solutioning. The exact same thing that consultancies are eating our lunch with.
Pain Point Solutioning Should Be Our Wheelhouse
Pain point solutioning is how McKinsey’s and Deloitte’s do it. It is hard strategy—business strategy. Not soft strategy—storytelling strategy. Which is what agencies mostly produce. It’s a happy place. When agencies work with big consultants, they take pain points and reduce them to insights. Rather than using their creativity—all through the funnel, not just the tippy top—to drive measurable business results for clients’ beautiful brands. I’m not suggesting less creativity. I’m screaming from the rooftops for more. In more places. The places we can’t currently get a foothold. Like new products, packaging, and brand experience. The places that have the greatest impact on why people buy. To capture the lifetime value of customers using the most powerful tool of all: holistic brand marketing.
I’m not suggesting less creativity. I’m screaming from the rooftops for more. In more places. The places we can’t currently get a foothold. Like new products, packaging, and brand experience. The places that have the greatest impact on why people buy.
Four Tips for Today:
- Be a Brand Heretic: In service of the business—the client’s and yours. Let go of your obsession with insights. Your insights are generally unmoored from what brands and businesses do. Products and companies and, yes, brands exist to solve problems for people. That’s a beautiful brand purpose, unto itself. Focus on finding your “hero” pain point and then be relentless about using your amazing creativity to provide solutions of all kinds. The consultancies can’t match that because they can’t execute like you can. They deal in data, not images, words, and ideas.
- Ideate Upside Down: Stop starting meetings with a gorgeous brand rip delineating the purpose of the brand. Begin with big ideas that solve pain points in brilliantly creative ways. Or just hard-working ones. Clients have problems. Focus relentlessly on solving them. They’ll love you forever.
- Start with “You,” Not “We”: Agencies say they are customer- and consumer-centric. And then they create work that starts with “At brand X, we believe…” It sounds great because it feels purpose-driven. But customers don’t care about you. Not unless you are relieving tensions and bringing elegant, seamless solutions to pain points.
- Be a Holistic Brand Strategist: Decades of insight obsession and storytelling romancing have shrunk your potential. Start with the hero pain point and then be relentlessly creative about delivering solutions for customers on behalf of brands. That’s why they’re in business. You should be too. It’s a heroic mission and the key to delivering unstoppable business results.
The Road Forward
The agency world is at a crossroads. We can continue down the path of self-congratulation, prioritizing creativity for creativity’s sake, or we can refocus on what matters most: solving problems for our clients. By embracing pain point solutioning and expanding our creative energy beyond traditional silos, we can reclaim our position as indispensable business partners. It’s time to redefine our value, not by the awards we win, but by the results we deliver. The future of our industry depends on it. Let’s get to work.
