Juicing The Orange by Pat Fallon & Fred Penn
Andrea Learned turned me onto this book in her 9 Minds on Marketing book...which by the way I originally paid for but you can download it free via this link. When I read a book I try to get my mind around one or two general themes. I try to establish my own opinion in regard to a book's meaning. This is a challenge sometimes as I usually have the person's opinion who referred the book dancing about my brain. I tried to wall out Andrea's review but in the end came to the same conclusion as her.
Fallon and Penn along with a couple other folks founded what is now Fallon Worldwide in 1981. They built their agency on these principles:
- The single-minded devotion to, and the belief in, the power of creativity
- The belief in family as a business model
- Seeing risk taking as a friend
- Success as a business imperative
- The importance of remaining humble
- The necessity of having fun
From the authors...
Our goal was to help our clients outsmart rather than outspend their competitors, to leverage brains over budgets, to juice the orange rather than drain our client's wallets. We labeled this fledgling idea creative leverage, the daily practice of making creativity actionable and accountable for changing consumer behavior.
Fallon & Penn weave and describe the creative leverage concept in and out of ten client stories. While the stories depict the challenges, opportunities and success of the agency, I kept being pulled toward how Fallon Worldwide treats its employees. That and the company's ability to follow a moral and ethical compass throughout its history.
Taking into account the on board talent at Fallon, if I were a decision maker in a large company looking for an ad agency, I would choose Fallon simply for this reason...(and for me, this is the book's WOW factor)
Fallon had secured a gig with Domino's Pizza. It would be their largest account. The only thing that Fallon had to do was drop their pro bono work for the Children's Defense Fund to seal the deal. Apparently Domino's owner Tom Monaghan did not approve of this association and their mission to protect the rights of children. Fallon dropped Domino's. To be honest, I think I'd vomit if I ever tasted pizza from this company again.
As with Andrea, I am impressed with how Fallon cultivates its work environment and culture.
By the way, did you know it was Fallon Worldwide that came up with the Holiday Inn Express commercials..."No, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night." These commercials came out eight years ago. Man, where has the time gone?
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