Photography: David Bowman The Idea: Even companies that say they want an edgy campaign often balk when it’s pitched. Fallon describes how his team assesses whether clients are really open to something unconventional—and then persuades them to take the leap. I graduated from college in 1968 with a degree in philosophy and the humanities, so I was prepared for absolutely nothing that might align with making money—and I didn’t like being poor. So I took a job in the training program at Leo Burnett in Chicago. I fell into advertising, and then I fell in love with it. After a year in Chicago, I moved to Minneapolis and worked at a couple of other agencies—one for seven years, one for five. In 1981 four partners and I founded Fallon McElligott Rice (shortened to Fallon after Nancy Rice left, in 1985, and Tom McElligott followed, in 1987). We got off to a fast start with some edgy and creative projects, and in 1984 we were named Ad Age ’s Agency of the Year. Later on we sold the agency to a big company, bought it back, and then sold it again to Publicis, in 2000. Today we have offices in Minneapolis, London, and Tokyo; our largest clients are Škoda (for which we have full global responsibility), H&R Block, Arby’s, and Travelers insurance. So I’ve worked in advertising for four and a half decades. During those years I’ve spent a lot of time persuading clients to run advertisements that feel risky—maybe even dangerous—the first time they see them. Taking risks is part of our business. Often it’s imperative. One of the most important things we do is assess each client’s risk appetite: It’s a moving target, dependent on the emotional makeup of the decision makers, the state of the company, the industry, and many other variables. We’ve had new clients come in like a hospital patient on a respirator: They feel they’ve tried everything, nothing has worked, and we’re their last gasp, so they’re predisposed to something unconventional. But some industries and categories, such as pharmaceuticals and airlines, are inherently more risk averse than others. One key to persuading clients to take a risk is tightly aligning strategy with the creative approach. Although some observers think advertising comes down to crazy people sitting in a room brainstorming, strategy is the rigorous, behind-the-scenes part of our process—it’s driven by research and consumer insights, and it helps to precisely define what the company is trying to accomplish with a campaign, who the campaign is meant to reach, and why it’s going to trigger a specific response that drives sales. An idea that may seem risky during a presentation will look less so when it’s clear that we’ve thought it through. The client realizes, “These guys understand my business. They understand the flow of money. They are putting my success at the forefront of decisions.” That creates enough trust for the client to say, “OK, I’m going to hold my breath, hold my nose, and jump into the water with you.” “Live Richly” When it comes to persuading clients to take risks, the first campaign I think of was for Citibank. In the late 1990s Citi’s CEO, Sandy Weill, had been building the company into a “financial supermarket”—a new concept. But as a brand, Citibank had trouble differentiating itself from competitors. Retail banking is difficult in that regard. Historically, banks relied on free toasters to lure customers away from competitors; now, even if a bank creates some extraordinary new financial instrument, within 90 days all its competitors can have it too. We weren’t sure we could find a way to make Citi stand out—just like its customers, we saw it as sterile and corporate. Citi’s CMO and head of advertising made a presentation that changed our minds. The bank had completely altered the way it did business internally, and now it wanted to communicate that change externally. Ordinarily, when prospective clients say they want a radical creative campaign—“Show us something that scares us” is a typical line—they don’t really mean it. So despite Citi’s invitation, we expected to have to work hard to persuade its executives to follow our recommendations. Like many large companies, Citi had done tons of research. It needed fresh eyes to discover the insights within the data. We found them by looking at the larger cultural context. The dot-com boom was in full swing, and magazines were featuring 23-year-old millionaires on their covers. Everyone seemed to be getting instantly rich. The research told us that a lot of people were skeptical—even disdainful—of that ethos. They wanted life to be rich in a holistic sense and were less concerned with financial gains. We called this segment “balance seekers.” The data showed that they constituted almost 50% of banking customers. We created a campaign to target balance seekers. Its tagline was “Live Richly.” We recommended launching the campaign on outdoor billboards, and we wanted to flood the market with images and words that evoked a more realistic sense of what it means to succeed economically. “Remember, the people you are working for are at home right now,” said one ad. “He who dies with the most toys is still dead,” said another. We explained to Citi that we wanted its image to be unbanklike, and we suggested that it use “Live Richly” not only as an ad slogan but on all its internal branding—including employment applications. “Live Richly” Citibank It made sense to saturate big markets with multiple versions of “Live Richly,” which would create much more awareness than TV ads. Photography: Courtesy of Fallon One challenge in selling an idea like this to a large bank is dealing with the internal politics. Even if the primary decision makers like an idea, their bosses may veto it. The CMO and the advertising director brought two other senior executives to our presentation to get their buy-in, which was smart. When we first presented some of the “Live Richly” executions, I could see from their faces that they found them jarring. But as we kept talking, they began to relax. At one point, one of the executives started shaking her head no, and I stopped immediately. “What’s the matter?” I asked. The problem wasn’t the creative, she said; she just couldn’t imagine launching a large ad campaign on billboards instead of on television. I explained that for a brand like Citi, it made strategic sense to saturate New York City and other big markets with many different versions of “Live Richly”—that would create much more awareness than TV ads. It was the right way to throw our arms around the balance seekers. As I explained the strategic rationale, she came to agree. At first the Citi executives found our ideas jarring. But as we kept talking, they began to relax. The campaign was extremely successful. Product differentiation is perishable, but we believed we could own a fresh, authentic attitude—one that, properly executed, could never be copied effectively. The essential truth of “Live Richly” created meaningful differentiation in a category that had defied differentiation. Citi’s marketing became part of the cultural discussion. Newsweek picked up on it within three months of its introduction. So did Forbes, Money, and BusinessWeek. But that was nothing compared with the consumer response. Overall interest in Citi increased, as did key brand and business measures. After a year of the “Live Richly” platform, unaided awareness increased by 20 points, brand relevance by 17 points, and differentiation from other banks by 14 points. Bank traffic and sales increased significantly, with 189% more home equity loan applications and 150% more new checking accounts. Years later, some critics said our Citi ads had played a part in the burgeoning of home equity loans that eventually led to the financial crisis, but that view totally misreads history and misunderstands the message in those ads, which were firmly based on consumer insights. We helped make Citi human, competitive, and relevant, and encouraged a healthier, more realistic approach to money. “Just the Right Amount of Wrong” Another risky campaign that the clients accepted was for the Cosmopolitan, a hotel that opened in Las Vegas in 2009. The Cosmopolitan hoped to attract guests who ordinarily wouldn’t visit Las Vegas. The city has a reputation for being raunchy, with cheap meals and a “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas” mentality. And the Cosmopolitan opened just a few months after The Hangover premiered, so this image was in everyone’s mind. In theory, these were clients who would embrace risk—they’re real estate developers, so they work in an extremely volatile field. But real estate developers are beholden to their lenders, who are very conservative by nature. The Cosmopolitan was effectively owned by Deutsche Bank, which had financed the hotel. In the pitch, we succeeded in selling the top executives at the Cosmopolitan on our ideas partly because of chemistry. They reacted instantly to our people, they quickly understood what we were trying to do, and from the moment the meeting ended, we felt like we’d been hired. The bigger challenge was for Fallon, working in partnership with the Cosmopolitan, to bring the German bankers on board with the idea. The fact that our TV ad featured waiters who didn’t wear pants, old ladies pinching people’s butts, and a bondage scene only increased the challenge. Traditional Las Vegas hotels appeal to the masses, whereas the Cosmopolitan would be more for a niche—as BMW is in the automotive market. We needed to find a new audience to target. We called it the “curious class”—people who like to discover new things, who like the spirit of the Strip but want something more refined. We came up with the tagline “Just the Right Amount of Wrong,” which I still love. It played off the city’s naughty image but tempered it and made clear how the Cosmopolitan is different. The TV spot used humor, but it also highlighted the provocative, unexpected attributes of the hotel, which has a Mexican-Chinese fusion restaurant and an incredible art collection in the lobby. The Cosmopolitan appeals to high-energy, high-taste guests; it keeps them guessing and keeps them discovering. “Just the Right Amount of Wrong” The Cosmopolitan Ads like these, from the hotel’s website, hinted at Las Vegas’s naughty image but emphasized the property’s refined, upscale positioning. Photography: Courtesy of Fallon The campaign helped bring the Cosmopolitan some of the strongest occupancy rates and average daily rates in the category, so taking the risk paid off. “Never Settle for Less” A third campaign that involved a lot of risk was for H&R Block, currently our biggest client. We received a call from the company in the summer of 2010, after its CEO resigned. We’d worked with the CMO and the VP of advertising when they were at other companies, so they trusted us. They were looking for a new agency because they were facing a huge business challenge and they wanted to move quickly. They wanted to create an entire campaign for the 2011 tax season in just a few weeks, instead of the six to eight months they’d traditionally spent developing one. H&R Block’s challenge was attracting new customers. It’s a hassle to switch tax preparers, which is why 86% of filers use the same preparer (or software program) year after year. The company’s share of new customers had been declining for five years straight, so H&R Block needed to do something to disrupt this inertia. The company was also frustrated because its previous campaigns had failed to get across the message that its preparers’ expertise can make a real difference in the size of refunds—a key selling point. Several years earlier H&R Block had launched a free program called Second Look, in which its preparers would examine a tax return that had been prepared by a competitor (or by the filer) to identify overlooked ways to save money. But awareness of the program remained low. Instead of doing traditional, scripted, ignorable TV ads—the kind the company had relied on for years—we wanted to do a real-life stress test of Second Look—and not just for a few strategically chosen consumers. We proposed to redo the taxes for an entire town and film the event as a documentary. We’d then turn that real-life footage into a series of commercials to run during the tax season. We would show, not tell. The risks were huge. It was a costly undertaking with no guarantee of success. The whole idea depended on the premise that Block’s preparers could find money that others had missed. If the results didn’t match the claim, we’d be in big trouble. We chose a town in Tennessee that had an apt name for the effort, Greenback, and invited all the residents to have H&R Block professionals take a free second look at their tax returns. The event was held in the high school gymnasium. In all, 97 households accepted our offer, and Block’s preparers found nearly $15,000 in additional refunds. Film of the event provided the backdrop for a series of commercials carrying the tagline “Never Settle for Less.” We conducted a similar event at the Nickel Diner, in downtown Los Angeles, where nearly $8,000 was found for patrons who chose to participate. The season’s work drove Block to its best performance in more than a decade. We reversed the five-year decline and garnered 375,000 new customers. We also achieved higher retention of existing customers and increased Block’s overall category share from 15.6% to 16.4%. The “Never Settle for Less” campaign continued into 2012, when nearly $250,000 in overlooked refunds was returned to the people of Detroit. In 2014 we launched “Get Your Billion Back, America,” a campaign inspired by the previous work and validated by an extensive national study showing that each year a total of more than $1 billion is left on the table by inaccurate tax returns. Risk Is Our Friend Not every pitch goes as well as those did. We’ve all given presentations when we didn’t really know what the hell we were doing. Sometimes we can’t find a market-moving consumer insight on which to build a great campaign. Sometimes we have a great idea but we can’t make the client comfortable with it. If a company takes a conceptual risk and it doesn’t work, the CMO could lose his or her job. And, of course, we’d lose the work. These risks are even more apparent now than when I started out in advertising. In the age of social media, a company is much likelier to face backlash if it chooses provocative advertisements, and the power of a single blogger can be astounding. Social media are a tremendous boon to our business when ads go viral, but they make the business much more complex than it was even five years ago. All anyone needs to communicate with the CEO is an e-mail address. Companies have to be ready to counterpunch when ads are criticized. People are less patient for results than they used to be. And relationships tend to be more perishable. Risk management has gotten tougher, so earning clients’ trust has become even more critical. But when we’re training young people in our firm, we try to teach them that risk is our friend, not something to be scared of. Our clients’ end goal is not to be comfortable with their ad campaigns—it’s to buy advertising that achieves their strategic aims. Sometimes we need to persuade clients that an approach that strikes them as risky is in fact safer than continuing to do what they’re doing.

Pat Fallon

The Idea: Even companies that say they want an edgy campaign often balk when it’s pitched. Fallon describes how his team assesses whether clients are really open to something unconventional—and then persuades them to take the leap.

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Reprint: R1410A
The author has worked in advertising for four and a half decades, and during those years he has spent a lot of time persuading clients to run ads that feel risky&#8212;maybe even dangerous&#8212;when they&#8217;re first pitched. A client&#8217;s risk appetite depends on the emotional makeup of the decision makers, the state of the company, the industry it&#8217;s in, and many other variables. Strategy is the rigorous, behind-the-scenes part of Fallon&#8217;s process: Driven by research and consumer insights, it helps to precisely define what the company is trying to accomplish with a campaign. Realizing that the agency has thought it through, the client becomes more comfortable taking the leap.
The author describes three highly successful campaigns: &#8220;Live Richly&#8221; saturated New York City and other big markets with provocative signs that proved much more powerful than TV ads and created meaningful differentiation for Citibank in a category that had defied differentiation. &#8220;Just the Right Amount of Wrong&#8221; developed a niche market for the Cosmopolitan hotel of Las Vegas&#8212;people who like the spirit of the Strip but want something more refined. &#8220;Never Settle for Less&#8221; helped H&#38;R Block expand its customer base by offering a free second look at tax returns in various locations. The company&#8217;s professionals discovered thousands of dollars in additional refunds, and ads created from film footage of the event raised consumer awareness of a key selling point.

Fallon&rsquo;s Chairman on Getting Clients to Take Creative Risks

Reprint: R1410A The author has worked in advertising for four and a half decades, and during those years he has spent a lot of time persuading clients to run ads that feel risky—maybe even dangerous—when they’re first pitched. A client’s risk appetite depends on the emotional makeup of the decision makers, the state of the company, the industry it’s in, and many other variables. Strategy is the rigorous, behind-the-scenes part of Fallon’s process: Driven by research and consumer insights, it helps to precisely define what the company is trying to accomplish with a campaign. Realizing that the agency has thought it through, the client becomes more comfortable taking the leap. The author describes three highly successful campaigns: “Live Richly” saturated New York City and other big markets with provocative signs that proved much more powerful than TV ads and created meaningful differentiation for Citibank in a category that had defied differentiation. “Just the Right Amount of Wrong” developed a niche market for the Cosmopolitan hotel of Las Vegas—people who like the spirit of the Strip but want something more refined. “Never Settle for Less” helped H&R Block expand its customer base by offering a free second look at tax returns in various locations. The company’s professionals discovered thousands of dollars in additional refunds, and ads created from film footage of the event raised consumer awareness of a key selling point.

Fallon’s Chairman on Getting Clients to Take Creative Risks

Summary.

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