Consulting Case Study:

IMMERSION LEARNING

This one is a classic case of an agency being so close to its magic that it could no longer see it. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

As usual, my mission is to uncover the agency’s “obsession,” or that thing they fixate on that other agencies do not. Could be a point-of-view on the ad world, could be a methodology they believe in, could be an overwhelming appreciation for a stylistic virtue. I had to find out.

I began by conducting one-on-one interviews with the people who know the agency the most. In this case, it was all the partners and then a mix of clients and contract workers familiar with the agency. I also went through several of their past pitch materials, creds presentations, website, case studies, creative work and anything else I could get my hands on. All the while listening and looking for clues.

Key insights:

• The name “Must be something” was an asset. Almost everyone I talked to (except for maybe one) loved the name and thought it was cool. Thing is, the partners had been moving away from it, even shortening it to “MBS.” Hmm.

• The three partners give off a good vibe. Every single person I talked to raved about these three guys individually and collectively.

• They’re a combination of “The Dude” and “Willy Wonka.” I heard that this agency is super laid back like The Dude. But also wildly magical creatively sorta like Willy Wonka.

There were more findings, but those were the major ones. Now my task was to identify that obsession and give it a compelling articulation.

THE IDEAS

Funny thing happened when I started coming up with ideas. I had some great lines that indicated usable obsessions for the agency, but then when I tried to couple these lines with the name of the company there was a problem. The name of the company was already basically a tagline. How could a tagline have a tagline?

And then it hit me.

The name is the tagline! The name is the idea! It’s right under our damn noses!

Now, I had asked the partners where the name came from and there’s a story behind it from their old Wieden & Kennedy days. Something about how a Wieden pitch team was gathered outside a client’s conference room and another competing pitch team exited said conference room all giggles and high fives. One of the Wieden guys asked, “What do they have that we don’t have?” To which, someone else said, “Must be something.” And, boom, Jed Alger, hearing this, adopted it as the name of the company. He’s good like that.

All well and good, but the sentence fragment “Must be something” speaks volumes about the agency, its mindset, its approach to creativity, its approach to new business, everything. It’s a line that says “hope” and “magic” and “try, try again” all at once. And better yet? It’s exactly what I heard from my one-on-one interviews.

So I started to really dissect the phrase.

Soon, the partners were on board, and excitedly so. I could see their minds start reeling with all the things they could do if “Must be something” was the obsession.

Again, a classic case of an agency being so close to its own magic that it can’t see it or feel it anymore. It was like a watch you’ve habituated to and can’t feel on your wrist. I knew “Must be something” could be a huge business-building idea, and now the partners did. It just hadn’t been brought to life.

We had our idea.

ACTIVATIONS

Activation is in progress as I write this, so not much to show yet. However, we talked about never, ever using “MBS” again because you can’t shorthand THE IDEA. Always spell it out. We found that www.mustbesomething.com was available and they’re buying that. Jed is a genius writer and is composing their first-ever blog post about their obsession with hope and how it fuels the “must be something” mindset. They’re working on updating their pitch presentations and website as well.

As they roll things out, I’ll post updates below. But a super fun project and just a joy to see their transformation from “What the hell do we do?” to “Holy shit, this is awesome!”

Other agency case studies: