Rodney Raftery on right

When Rodney Raftery leaves his pristine, white desk at Mullen, he heads straight to the dark confines of a black box theater in Cambridge where he’ll be rehearsing for the next three hours. He won’t get home until close to midnight and he’ll be lucky if he has time to grab a granola bar for dinner.

Rodney has been doing this for the better part of two decades. An active member of the Boston theater scene, he does about three shows each year on top of his full-time job as an associate creative director. He says he’s slowed down a lot recently; he used to do seven or eight.

“You wouldn’t eat,” he says. “You would basically get up at 6:30 and you wouldn’t be back into your own house until after midnight. Then you’d get up and do it all again the next day.”

Six weeks of rehearsals. Four or five nights each week. After opening night, he performs up to eight times per week for the run of the show.  “It’s basically like having a second job,” he says.

You might think that the amount of creative energy Rodney expends on his characters coupled with prolonged periods of severe sleep deprivation might have a negative affect on his career. But over six years at Mullen, he’s risen through the ranks and become a crucial part of the Stop & Shop and JAMRS teams.

“It actually opens you up creatively,” he explains. “When you’re so busy that you don’t have time to be creative, that’s when you are most creative. It gives itself momentum. If you just go with that momentum you are constantly creating.”

Rodney Raftery on left

Nicole Berard agrees. She’s spent five and a half years in the pop rock group, Mercy James Gang, holding rehearsals each week, writing songs, singing and playing synthesizer. They’ve performed frequently at clubs like the Abbey Lounge, Great Scott and even the Somerville Theater. Nicole is also a visual artist, working primarily in collage and shadowboxes.

“The more I do, the more I can do,” she says. “The more fired up I am about stuff outside of work, the more fired up I am about work.”

She sees a direct link between performing for an audience and presenting to clients. “Music is a huge confidence builder,” she explains. “I’ve presented work at the Pentagon. I don’t think I could have done that if I hadn’t sung at the Abbey Lounge first.”

In the same way, Rodney sees a connection between acting and copywriting. “As an actor, you have to think creatively. You have the lines, but how you deliver them is what makes your character. [In advertising], it’s not really what you’re selling, but how you sell it. How you spin your character or how you spin your product is really where success or failure lies.”

In his novel, Then We Came to the End, Joshua Ferris writes that every copywriter has a screenplay in his desk drawer. And to some extent, that’s the way it ought to be. In fact, Mullen’s original creative chief, Paul Silverman, was a prolific writer of short fiction, described as “a real writer” who just happened to work in advertising.

Just as professional athletes need to hit the gym and exercise different muscles in order to excel at their sport, writers and art directors should exercise their creative muscles outside of advertising. Both Rodney and Nicole agree that their extracurricular pursuits sharpen their skills, stretch their imaginations and ultimately make them more successful in their work.

Street teams promote the Men's Wearhouse National Suit Drive in Times Square Aug. 31

Only in New York City would a group of shirtless, pantless men walking the streets be considered commonplace.

Men's Wearhouse street teams promoting the National Suit Drive outside the CBS Early Show

Still, the street teams you see here garnered a great deal of attention in the Big Apple (including a spot on the CBS Early Show), and in the other four cities where Mullen coordinated a guerilla marketing and public relations campaign for the Men’s Wearhouse National Suit Drive.

In New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., teams of men – wearing only dress shoes, socks and ties – held signs encouraging any passerby to “Give the Suit Off Your Back.” The promotion kicked off the third annual National Suit Drive Aug. 31, which Men’s Wearhouse boasts is the largest suit collection in the country.

Throughout September, the more than 1,000 Men’s Wearhouse locations will accept men’s and women’s gently used professional attire that they will donate to more than 200 regional charities throughout the United States.

The drive aims to help those struggling to reenter the workforce by suiting them up with a great suit for his or her next interview. Men’s Wearhouse hopes to collect more than 100,000 items in the month-long effort and there are just nine days left to donate.

To give the suit off your back, visit the nearest Men’s Wearhouse location. For your generosity, Men’s Wearhouse will give you a tax receipt and a 25 percent off coupon for your next purchase (restrictions apply). And for every suit that’s collected, the company will donate a dress shirt to the cause.

At Mullen’s Winston-Salem office, employees are holding their own collection of business attire – but luckily for all of us, nobody has taken the “Give the Suit Off Your Back” call-to-action literally … yet.

Nexus is divided  into 12 key categories starting with the consumer’s overall technological aptitude and then digging deeper into their mobile, social, video and mainstream media behavior. The study will get at some of the key questions keeping CMO’s up at night:

• Is my target using their console system as their primary entertainment device?

• Does my target listen to more terrestrial radio or has this been displaced with entities like Slacker, Pandora and LastFM?
  

  Slacker Personal Radio

• Is my target moving away from reading magazines on paper to reading them on tablets?

• Does my target look for information on their smartphone via search or apps?

• Where can I reach my target with TV commercials when they are not hitting the fast forward button?

• Does my consumer spend more time on the web via a desktop or a smartphone?

• Is my consumer starting to enact in commerce via social, mobile and/or their TV?

This is just a small sample of the kind of insight we can provide clients that will have a profound effect on the trajectory of their overall campaigns and we truly believe we are the first marketing (media) company to unearth this type of crucial intelligence. In an environment where consumers are galloping and marketers are chasing consumers, we believe this insight will provide our clients with a distinct and unfair advantage. What do you think are the key media questions that should be asked?

It’s that time of year again. When we start thinking about Austin and ribs and digital friends and panel nerd badges. But first, we have to take care of business and do our job influencing, or at least commenting on, the submitted panels and talks.

Granted there is no shortage of great panels up at SxSW this voting season. In fact there are more than I’ve had the time to plow through. So, just in case you’re in the same over extended situation, I thought I’d share a few that Mullen colleagues and I have either submitted or been invited to join in hopes that they meet with your approval and ultimate vote. Of course, in the spirit of honest engagement, don’t vote for anything you wouldn’t actually want to attend. I’m not a big fan of the popularity contest approach to anything.

Ad Agencies Need A New Mindset To Survive

Submitted by Edward Boches:  read more and vote

If the advertising agency is to survive in an era when the reigns of media have been transferred from a few professionals to 2 billion individuals, it will have to revamp its entire way of thinking. The mindset will have to shift from thinking about target audiences to communities. Strategy will require more insight about a consumer’s relationship to media and technology rather than just how she feels about the brand. The team will change entirely to include production, mobile, and experience design in addition to art and copy. And the consumer will play an active, rather than passive role, in the creation and sharing of everything. What does an ad agency have to do to survive? What are the practices it must unlearn? What new skills will it require? This panel, comprised of agency leaders, each in a different stage of evolution, will explore the challenges and offer ideas.

Radian6 and Mullen Hijack the Superbowl

Submitted by Christian Madden: read more and vote

In 2010 (and again in 2011) Mullen and Radian 6 turned the Superbowl, an old media event, into a new media event. With a simple website, a hashtag, and real time sentiment analysis, Brandbowl2010.com analyzed Twitter conversation to rate the game’s commercials in real time.  Find out how sentiment analysis can fuel a creative idea and how an analog event can be converted into a digital experience. It’s a model that anyone can replicate.

Augmented Reality and the Launch of the Olympus Pen

Submitted by Michael Bourne: read more and vote

Augmented reality usually sucks. But this example is pretty good, (note it was done by Mullen). The agency, Total Immersion and Wired collaborated to create and run the first ever augmented reality camera demo.

What were the challenges in creating a fully functional “digital” digital camera that shot videos and still images using a computer webcam and what did WIRED learn in the process of activating the creative in its first iPad edition? Interested?  Give this panel a vote.

To see the rest of this post and some other panels we all agree are noteworthy, click here.

For those of us who’ve lived it, the Institute is more than educational… it’s transformative. We learned about a variety of topics from leaders across different agencies – our own chief media officer John Moore and Arnold’s chief digital officer Troy Kelley.

But, there’s a beast behind the weekly lectures… the pitch. A client is invited every year to brief the group of young, inexperienced, unseasoned admen and women for a 3-month-long pitch process. This year’s client was Converse. It was a tough assignment, but I’ll spare you the details.

Instead, I will leave you with some insights my fellow Mullenites and I were able to pull from getting thrown into a pitch setting with teammates from eight different agencies across the Boston area:

• You’re not the smartest person in the room. You won’t always be right, and your agency’s process isn’t right – just different.
• But you might have the big idea – so speak up! Insights don’t always come from the planner, or the creative, or the (scoff) account guy. Don’t ever discount yourself before you’ve been heard.
• Be bold. Not so much in your work or your words, but in your strategy and ideas. You can’t always present campaign platforms like “F*>k the rules” or “balls out, gentlemen,” but be balls out and f*>k the rules when it comes to conventional marketing. Cliché, I know.
• Always do what’s right. Don’t put your client somewhere where they shouldn’t be. Nor should you put the brand somewhere that’s inaccessible to your consumer. Converse isn’t best experienced on the iPad, or on Twitter (though they’re dabbling).

Perhaps the greatest insight, however, is that title means nothing. I’ve had the pleasure of experiencing a true industry phenomenon. Traditional roles are quickly disappearing. And when the account guy can write an ad, your media pro can come up with the campaign platform and the project manager develops a killer guerrilla strategy, you know that you’ve achieved something great.

Congratulations, everyone! It was an amazing, and rough, three months. Keep the momentum, keep pushing the rules and together we’ll revolutionize this ad-game.

Senior Copywriter Kerry Shea leads an important brainstorming session

As the only girl in a large extended family, most weekends of my childhood were spent trying to keep up with the boys and defending myself. I took my fair share of teasing and got more scrapes and bruises than I care to remember. And though I occasionally shed some tears, I always brushed myself off and came back swinging. Little did I know that my boys—as relentless as they were—were actually doing a damn fine job of preparing me for a career as a copywriter, where being “one of the guys” is as big an asset as being capable of clear, thoughtful communication, or being able to present in front of a roomful of clients.

So how did my being on the losing end of a seemingly incessant game of “why do you keep hitting yourself” better position me for success as a Creative? It could be because the boys’ club mentality of Mad Men is still alive and well—aside from all that afternoon martini drinking and secretary ass-grabbing, anyway. But in my version, Don Draper and his team have been replaced by my brother, my cousins and that kid Peter who used to pull my hair in the second grade.

Before I dive deeper into that thought, let me cover off on some important housekeeping stuff. After all, I wouldn’t want anyone to get the wrong idea here. Being a female in a boys’ club does not mean that I am discriminated against in any way. I am given the same opportunities that any of the guys get. At least I think I am. It also doesn’t mean that I only get to work on anything and everything related to females. Although if we ever pitch a tampon account, I hope it won’t be assigned to a team of dudes.

What being part of this club means is that I’m a recipient of big-brotherly behavior. And I don’t mean the covert, government-sponsored kind. More like the kind where two people might conspire to scare you senseless by flickering the lights on and off while you’re working late in a building rumored to be haunted. Or the kind where someone might sneak up behind you and poke you, just to watch you jump out of your chair. That happens almost daily. Or even the kind where someone mimics you and repeats everything you say word for word, but with a sneer and a high-pitched voice. But I can take it. And I have absolutely no problem giving it right back.

Just to be clear, I’m not standing on a soapbox whining about the inequities of being a woman in a male-dominated world. This is simply one Peggy Olson’s account of how building forts from couch cushions and being a victim of the occasional Spiderman-web tackle with a fart-soaked blanket helped shape me into the Creative that I am. One who is equally comfortable talking about the improbability of a spontaneous pillow fight erupting in a roomful of hot girls, why Brett Favre should have stayed retired, or the horror that is the shart, as I am talking about rainbows and unicorns, babies and puppies, or the magic that is mascara.

intangibility makes marketing service brands especially difficult

When it comes to building and maintaining a strong and distinctive brand in any category, the marketing terrain has never been more challenging. Arguably, the challenge is even more daunting for service brands. In part this reflects the power of today’s better-connected, highly empowered consumer to use digital word of mouth to spread the news about a bad experience with a service business, in an instant.

But the steeper climb for service brands also results from a unique and interesting set of characteristics and challenges that they share:

• Intangibility – relative to products that we can hold, use, and consume, people find it far more challenging to attach meaning to an intangible service offering, such as a checking account, an internet connection or life insurance. This makes defining a relevant and graspable brand promise all the more difficult, yet all the more essential. The goal for most service marketers: make sure the brand promise can be expressed in terms – verbally and visually – that make the service feel real – if not tangible. Sun Trust is a good example of a financial services company that has tackled this challenge by demonstrating what life on “solid financial ground” looks and feels like throughout their marketing communications initiatives.
• Commoditization – sustainable points of difference based on unique benefits are especially rare in service categories. With today’s technological advances, competitors can copy a service offering in just weeks.  Meaningful points of difference that do exist tend to perish quickly, which reinforces parity perceptions in most service categories. One consideration to combat this commoditization: use relevance itself as a differentiator. Service brands that are hyper-vigilant about doing the things – big and small – that keep their services relevant to their best customers, often manage to rise above the commodity label. American Express has been steadfast in its commitment to understanding what’s most relevant to its card members at any given time, and then delivering on it with laser like focus.
• Complexity – to battle the commodity problem, service brands often seek to differentiate themselves by adding complexity and nuance to their core offering. Yet often times the added layers result in a service offering that goes beyond the consumer’s personal expertise and comprehension and they simply cannot see or appreciate the added value. Services marketers must put themselves in their target’s shoes when constructing multi-level or multi-dimensional offerings to avoid running the risk of over-engineering the service and under-delivering on ROI.
• Inconsistency – a service brand is by definition an “experience-based” brand which illuminates what may be the key challenge:  there is almost no way to replicate the exact same experience each time for each customer. A detailed description of the desired brand experience at each touch point is a must, but still it can’t eliminate human inconsistency. An added defense is to ensure that you have an extraordinarily consistent brand story leading up to and coming out of the experience. Hotels such as Four Seasons and the W often have been envied for their ability to “script” the desired brand experience — then stick to the script flawlessly.
• Real-Time – thousands of times a day service brands face moments of truth – real time consumer interactions that are opportunities to strengthen the brand by exceeding expectations or weaken it by under-delivering. Which is why service brands must look at their brand-building resources and efforts through the lens of “real-time brand-building” moments. To be true brand ambassadors, front line employees must be able to not only articulate the brand promise, but be able to translate it to the “brand-right behavior” in their day-to-day, moment-to-moment customer interactions.

Each of these challenges weighs a bit differently on any given brand. Conducting a thorough assessment to clearly define and understand which of these challenges most impacts your brand and business is at least half the battle. It will make the task of building actionable strategies all the more manageable and set the table for a more successful outcome.

• What’s your plan for branding from the inside out? Are your employees steeped in the brand? They better be, because the strongest service brands today are built on an employee base that can consistently articulate the brand’s promise and values.  If that’s not the case, ask how your company can do a more effective job of engaging, activating and instilling pride in your employees.  By developing a unique online photo mosaic of employees that recognized their contributions and connected their work values to the brand’s core values,  CSC made huge strides in galvanizing it’s global workforce.

• Have you moved from a marketing in isolation to a multi-functional marketing mentality? When your best customers’ “enterprise-wide experience” is so central to business success, it’s all the more critical to realize that the entire company – across all functions – is on the marketing team. Have you taken down the internal walls and invited your HR and IT folks onto your brand management team?

• Have you scripted the desired brand experience at all points of contact? It’s one thing for employees to be able to articulate the brand promise it’s another thing for them to bring it to life consistently. Your brand “lives” (or not) with each customer at each touch point, everyday. Scripting the experience is key to brand consistency and can help transform a negative service experience into positive long-term outcome.

• Are you effectively pre-selling the desired brand experience? Given the inherent inconsistencies of delivering the desired experience, are you appropriately managing customer expectations as to what the experience can and should be? Are those same expectations being used to motivate your employees? Managing both sides of the expectations and experience equation is key to narrowing the gap between the perception and reality of your brand experience.

• Are you listening to and appropriately participating in your brand’s online conversation? The exploding social marketing landscape enables your customers (past, present and future) to have an influential voice on what your brand is or isn’t and whether your brand can be trusted or not to live up to its promises. Leveraging new communication channels to both listen to and engage in a proactive brand-building dialog is no longer optional. And the real-time earning, restoring and protecting of “brand trust” is increasingly essential for on-going service marketing success. Say what you want about Starbucks
  

  Are you actively participating in online conversations about your brand?

  challenges of the past two years, they have done a tremendous job of listening to and appropriately participating in the online discussions about their brand.

Now more than ever, service brands and businesses are being confronted by heightened customer expectations and frustrations, new customer empowering technologies, fragile customer loyalties and unexpected competitive offerings. Asking the right questions now just might be the difference between future success versus failure.

Embarq: 1 of 3

Challenge: Begin with deteriorating economic realities, add telecom price wars and a redefined consumer target (families with kids under 18) and you’ve got the conditions for a smart new messaging platform – one that acknowledges the changing times and target audience.

Solution: Leverage the reasons that families are spending more time at home together—changing lifestyles, life stages and new economic pressures—and demonstrate how EMBARQ fits in.

From morning to night, communication providers play an active role in nearly every activity in the household: Checking the weather online or on TV. Helping kids research a history project. Connecting with family and friends. Planning travel. Watching movies together. So we created a campaign around our new messaging platform, “It’s a big world out there. EMBARQ brings it home,” positioning EMBARQ as the provider who brings the world into your home through the Internet, phone and television. Through engaging imagery, we showed consumers that planning a trip to Easter Island and researching naval history for their child’s project were only a web page away, and family movie night was right in their living room.

We’re thrilled that the “Bring it Home” campaign generated over 1.6 million calls from January–June ’09, while core service (Phone/Internet/DISH) direct mail within the campaign generated 25% close rates for Q1 ’09.

Embarq: 3 of 3

That nutty Blendtec guy is at it again stuffing expensive cameras into his blender to see what’ll happen. Confession:  Mullen made him do it. It’s the focal-point of an all-out social media launch for the Olympus E-P1, a snazzy new device that is the world’s smallest digital SLR and HD video camera all-in-one. Get the blender joke, now? Watch Tom the blender guy as he grinds-up digital cameras, voice recorders, lenses and even a piece of lovely, fruity still-life.   The integrated campaign takes advantage of Olympus’s growing social media network, connecting  Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and a little social bookmarking magic to help generate attention and stimulate consumer participation.  If you want to do something in the social space, it helps to have a community.