Hasta La Creative!

I’m living through a critical time in our agency’s nearly 50-year history. Brownstein Group is doing well, we have a strong culture and for the most part clients seem happy. So what’s the critical part? We need to change. If we want to grow, we cannot do things the way we’ve always done them. On the other hand, some of what we have always done is well worth preserving.

Back when my dad ran the agency, change came about when he said it did. One time Dad decided that the agency needed to expand to land larger clients, so he engineered an acquisition that surprised the staff, including some senior members of the agency’s team. Following that, by force of will, he shifted the kind of work they did, moving some creative talent off the bus, and new talent on it, and the scope of work they did moved as well — from mostly print/outdoor/radio to mostly TV.

That was a big deal for a small shop in the ’60s and ’70s. There was no internal communications plan. No articulated vision. No measurement or reporting to the staff on the results of the sudden moves.

Continue reading at AdAge.com