Our Point of View
“Do no harm. Take no shit. Make things better.”
~ John Trahar
GCF Founder
Creative with Receipts: Courtney Tsitouris and the Evolution of Greatest Common Factory
The agency’s first-ever CCO redefines the creative role as a growth engine, integrating human-centric AI and an unwavering loyalty to business outcomes.
View ArticleGreatest Common Factory Names Courtney Tsitouris Chief Creative Officer
She is repositioning the agency as a growth fuel company while building its AI tech stack
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The benefits of staying small within large organizations
For most companies, growth is too slow because decision-making is too cumbersome. This is especially true in marketing, where campaigns are undertaken as huge plans with lofty goals and multiple signatories. campaigns launch behind the risk-reward curve.
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Who Are You, And Why Do I Care?
A recent Gfk study finds most consumers can’t connect brands with higher purpose. Brands don’t stand for something like they used to. Call it Brand Personality Disorder, an expensive problem that will bankrupt marketing unless we interrupt it. According to the study, simply tacking an ancillary purpose onto a brand clearly doesn’t stick. So what can brands do to have more importance in the consumer’s mind?
View ArticleWhat Formula 1 Can Teach Agencies About Productivity
Just before the holidays, my wife gave me a day on the Circuit of the Americas Formula 1 track in Austin. Because I had an instructor coaching my every move. I drove a Lamborghini through twists and turns at speeds that at first felt impossible. Turns out, driving on a racecourse is all about how you manage the corners. Done right, you set up carefully, enter in control (slow) and exit in momentum (full throttle). The momentum you gain propels you faster down the following straightaway.
View ArticleWhy Working Harder Doesn't Work
The Great Resignation is making headlines around the world as people revolt against the suffocating demands of today’s workplace. While everyone’s suffering with it, talking about it and writing about it, there’s one underlying problem we’re not addressing. Work is killing us because effort is rewarded more than business results. We’ve confused the effort required to solve a business problem with the actual solution.
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5 Tips For In-House Agency Success
With its plan to build an in-house agency with a focus on design creativity, Polestar joins a growing list of advertisers that want to respond more efficiently to market changes with quick-turn content and programmatic media. In-house agencies offer the promise of greater control over assignments and a way around the inherent tensions of agency-client relationships.
View ArticleCreatives Need To Lead The Data Charge
The tremendous energy brands now put into tracking and intercepting prospective customers raises the stakes on relevant, compelling communication -- because the more intimately we intrude on a person’s life with a message, the more we must make of our chance.
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How Do You 'Drink The Kool-Aid' And Not Kill Your Brand In The Process?
Throughout my career, I have often asked: How invested in a client’s product, philosophy or approach can you get before your own valuable perspective is compromised? Before your work on their behalf suffers?
View ArticleWhy We Killed The Account Manager
When we started our agency 6 years ago, we had a third partner who was an account guy. While he wasn't a typical account person -- he'd migrated from Wall Street to a senior role at a big shop, so he skipped the customary indoctrination -- he did get us to create an account role for our little shop. Since we would be focused on making stuff, and everyone was going to be so busy doing so much, someone had to own the client relationship. Or so we all thought.
View ArticleTime to Reboot the Shoot
The marketing cost-consciousness that started in the Great Recession has intensified with the past year's uproar over production costs and "kickbacks." Yet, so far, the industry conversation has missed a more fundamental problem that truly endangers brands: How we approach create commercials can't sustain relevance, which is the epic challenge of our connected world.
View ArticleBrands Are Upside Down On Content
Everyone needs more, and better, content than ever — signal, not noise, that resonates with people today and creates a ramp for more content tomorrow. It’s an expanding mandate for advertising I call quantity quality. But most brands have the same, or smaller, budgets to invest in it. So marketers tighten scope by hiring production companies to do one-off projects that aren’t connected to other brand advertising. Or they tighten control by bringing everything in-house, risking myopia that exacerbates competing internal silos. Or they tighten targeting with programmatic content, which can still only serve the “best” version of whatever material is already available.
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It's Time To Anoint The Misfits
To survive the content generation, we need to anoint the misfits. The people who transcend the org chart but don’t rise in a department because they’re multidimensional and hard to categorize, The ones who compulsively improve stuff, react to and build on others’ work, and don’t wait on the boss’ approval to let it fly.
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