Adland_ Searching for the Meaning of Life on a Branded Planet - James P. Othmer [109]
Today agencies primarily focus on advertising the hand (products) they are dealt, while extensions and innovations are left to the overburdened brand stewards. This is where Vuleta and company saw an opportunity.
“Some consulting companies do strategy well,” Vuleta explained. “Some don’t do strategy but do consumer experience well. We do both.”
F-212 is typically brought in to radically rethink a brand or category and create a completely new set of what its president, Mark Payne, calls “big, fast, and doable” consumer experiences. And while the concept of innovation outsourcing is not entirely new, just about every aspect of the high-velocity, unconventional way F-212 goes about it is.
For instance, they don’t pitch clients. They wait for clients to come to them, which is pretty brave in an industry where dog and pony shows are the norm. Then there’s the five-month turnaround schedule (billable hours be damned) from initial contact to final presentation. And finally, they employ a virtually unheard-of (and some might say insane) compensation model in which up to two-thirds of the total is based on the realization of success.
In other words, for F-212 to make serious money, its ideas have to be market ready and damned successful once they get there.
Like any company trying to differentiate itself from the pack, F-212 is big on process, if only because having a trademarked, proprietary methodology is mandatory these days for entrée into the C-suites of the world. But its greatest asset is clearly the assortment of big and nimble minds it brings to a brainstorming session. Here’s how “big, fast, and doable” works. When a client enlists them, all eighteen employees, each with his or her own unique superhero powers, get on board with the project: creative directors (including one who worked in robotics for NASA and designed rides for Disney), financial experts, designers, business directors (including one with a psychology and philosophy master’s from Oxford), a strategic analyst with degrees in sociology and international affairs, and an office manager who was an off-Broadway actor.
There are also plenty of people with ad agency experience at F-212, but as is the case at many of the anti-agencies, it is the unconventional career trajectories that are emphasized the most and, perhaps, the most important.
After an initial new-business chat around, the employees spend about five months spinning ideas, trying to turn the status quo on its head. When they settle on a core of about five big ideas, they don’t stop with a nifty PowerPoint presentation. They actually make the new products they dream up, presenting them to the client in ready-to-sell form. Often what’s presented is the last thing a client expects but precisely what it needs.
For example, Diageo hired Fahrenheit 212 to jump-start its moribund Smirnoff Ice brand. The firm’s response, in essence, was to recommend abandoning the brand it was hired to fix. Instead, F-212 wheeled out a selection of all-new, fully designed, and ready-to-drink Smirnoff flavors, including raw tea and a product that simply combined spring water and alcohol. Versions of both are already in market, a fact that makes F-212’s compensation model seem slightly less insane.
Besides being immersed in solving the future of music and beverages, F-212 is usually engaged in no fewer than five other live projects, ranging from the development of disruptive applications for flat-screen video monitors to rethinking the taste profile of chocolate.
When asked if his people ever had reservations about having to master and quickly develop a portfolio of ideas in such a broad range of categories, Vuleta replied that speed was actually on their side. “We work at such velocity that we never really have time to doubt or question ourselves, or get scared. Sometimes fear, as well as knowing