The Man in the Gray Flannel Box

Ever stop and think about how much of what you do is simply copying what you did before? I'm not talking about cutting the grass or making Tater Tot hotdish. I'm talking about your professional life, during which you get paid the big bucks for your ideas and insights. Bunk. If you're not replicating what you did last month you're probably digging through the Hollister files so you can copy what you did on that project back in '99.

I thought about this a few weeks ago when I got stuck writing a news release for a client. (PR's not really our bag but, hey, if someone asks we're experts at it.) I needed the standard CEO quote, the one every news release serves up after establishing the company's "leadership" has been "extended" thanks to its "breakthrough" new "solution," yadda yadda. For some reason I was having trouble pulling one out of my ear, so -- God and client forgive me -- I dredged up a release from the archives, copied the CEO quote, changed four words, and plopped it in.

Hey, I wasn't proud of it. Most of my work is fiercely original (as you will see when your company finally relents and agrees to meet with us). But the client was delighted. Why? Because they wanted us to follow the template, to copy what had been done before. Despite what they say about wanting to stand out, most companies in reality want to walk safely down the middle of the road, shadow-boxing with the competition and veering to avoid the truly original and innovative.

Is that bad? I don't know. In marketing, anyway, certain much-derided practices are returned to again and again because they're proven to work. (I can tell you exactly which five elements in a direct mail letter 95% of people read, and in what order.) In the case of the news release the client was happy, the CEO was happy, the editors were happy, and in a perverse way the competition was happy. While the client was indeed introducing a new product, the competition saw that in doing things the usual way our client wasn't going to garner too much attention, not differentiate too much, and thus not, in the end, alter the status quo much.

I once recommended to that client, by the way, that they paint every one of their products blaze orange, their signature color. They manufacture scientific test and processing equipment, hulking boxes that stand shoulder-to-shoulder with competing products in laboratories and manufacturing facilities. Everyone's boxes are painted light industrial gray and differentiated only by the logos that are visible when you get within arm's length of them. I had seen a company in a similar market get a huge boost in awareness simply by painting every one of its products its corporate color, a brilliant royal blue.

The client nodded, my idea noted. Their boxes are still gray.

With that, I release the following into the public domain:

"COMPANY is well-known in the industry for many front- and back-end applications like APPLICATION, APPLICATION, and APPLICATION," said NAME, COMPANY president and CEO. "Our product development efforts now are on innovating and furthering our reputation as the 'no-compromises' choice. The PRODUCT solution is further proof that no one can equal our expertise in PROCESS."

In this I hope you will be utterly conformist: Come out to St. John's tonight for hoops. We tip off at 6:30, as usual. Please let me know if you will or will not be playing.