“Look for what you notice but no one else sees.“
Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being
In early 2007, my business partner and I had a lukewarm lead with Mutual of Omaha.
A Fortune 500 company and a sleeping giant. Nobody knew them. Unaided awareness? 2%. Their most recognizable asset wasn’t their product… it was their old Wild Kingdom sponsorship.
We saw an opportunity. So we called.
“We have some ideas we’d like to share.” Total lie. We had no ideas. But when the SVP of brand and advertising, John, said, “If you’re willing to come to Omaha on your own dime, I’ll give you an hour,” we took the meeting.
We had two weeks to come up with something.
A few days before we flew out, we made one last move. “If we’re making the trip, let’s grab dinner the night before and get all the introductions out of the way.” John agreed. We did our homework. We were ready. And at the end of dinner, he said, “Forget the hour. Take as much time as you need tomorrow.”
The next day, we pitched three ideas. He loved one. A few trips back to Omaha, a lot of refining, and two guys with a tiny office and no employees walked away with a national ad campaign for a Fortune 500.
For seven years, we ran digital, TV, and experiential. We increased awareness, pulled in billions of impressions, millions in revenue. We produced the first-ever national TV spot featuring American Sign Language. We even beat a cease-and-desist from Oprah. (Maybe I should make that my LinkedIn headline.)
The Point.
John’s gut told him something wasn’t right with Mutual’s messaging. It was too safe. Good enough wasn’t good enough. He trusted that instinct. And he had the courage to act on it. Even as his team was pushing back with variations of, “Let’s do an RFP and get lots of pitches!” To which John replied, “This is the idea. And these guys brought it to us.”
That’s what built this campaign.
That’s what changed Mutual’s trajectory.
That’s what wins.
Then & Now.
It’s been nearly twenty years since that Mutual of Omaha meeting and one thing remains: the best leaders follow their intuition.
What’s now different? How I work. I did the long, drawn out retainer thing. I worked with clients over months and months, years and years. And that doesn’t work for me anymore. My intuition told me it was time for something new. Something different.
It told me it was time to create a different model. It told me it was time to tap into what I do best and what I love most to solve your biggest challenges. I noodled with models, but nothing felt right until I landed on this one.
One Hour. One Week. One Month.
GOOD + FAST + AFFORDABLE + FUN
We will succeed together.
We will tune your intuition into impact.
Let’s Talk. Email to set up a chat.