Three things I learned that make for a perfect business.
Careless Paymore has a great strategy. One size fits all, served to you in unfinishable portions. Careless Paymore understood that there was no need for knowing people, as long as you could find them, you could serve them anything. Careless Paymore knew not everyone will eat what they serve, however as long as they reach enough people, they will find the ones with appetite.
Careless Paymore makes good business, Careless Paymore has a great strategy.
I don’t like Careless Paymore, and I don’t want to work with him any longer. Not that I don’t like his product. His approach just isn’t right for me.
Where Careless Paymore pays to get attention, I’d rather pay attention to make sure we earn it in return.
Ever since I started working I was fascinated by people and the way they communicate amongst each other. My first agency was called ‘Human Media’, as I believed nothing communicates a brand stronger than real people’s opinions. I mean, a brand only truly exists in the mind of the consumer. Our identity is just what we want others to think of us, it’s their perception what matters. My current agency is Likefriends, founded with the mentality that the best work is created when you treat each other like friends.
I launched Likefriends in 2012 and it took me five years to clearly articulate our approach. And as every business should, we’re only at 75/80%. And that’s a good thing. The drive to improve our business and do better should never fade.
Likefriends started out as a creative social agency with a big ambition: make work that shows an understanding of the people we work for, the user. As the agency grew organically and became a global creative agency, I realised we were creating too much brand centric work. Work for the Careless Paymore’s. Work that didn’t contribute to the culture we participate in.
So I took a step back to write down my vision. I presented my thoughts to the smartest people I knew or could find: my neighbour, a kid in school, strategists, CEO’s, investors, start-ups, creatives, agencies, artists, and entrepreneurs of all kinds. I asked them to break, decompose, deconstruct, tear apart, reset and challenge my vision, my story and my thoughts. And they did. It was the most painful and biggest learning experience of my life, so far.
This exercise made me realize that three things combined make for a perfect business:
- The business itself is founded in or created within the culture it’s active in.
- The people who work here are from the culture the business is active in.
- The product or service the business is offering need to add something to the culture it’s active in.
Like cultures a business should innovate on its users needs. To me, a perfect business is rooted in culture and follows a natural evolving pattern: it won’t strive for perfection, it strives to remain an accepted cultural player.
I see it happening in the start-up scene as well: Founders themselves are part of a culture when they realize there is a gap, an annoyance, something missing or simply something to improve. They then gather peers from that same culture, to start a project to solve this quest. This leads to a product or service that resolves the quest and adds to the culture they’re all from, and if they succeed this leads to the perfect business.
For big brands the connection with culture is the hardest to maintain. To truly understand what goes on within your audience requires an investment.
An investment in empathy.
Likefriends will be the agency that connects with the user and fights for relevant work. We’ll use your brand to reinvent your business before a 20 year-old does it for you.
With this principle in mind I’ve decided to reshape Likefriends and have worked the new learnings into our own brand.
As a creative entrepreneur, I started Likefriends to team up with brand leaders and help them connect their brand within culture. People and their culture have always been the backbone of our agency. Since this exercise however, we took an extra step and make the end user, our clients client, part of our creative team.
Over the past three months we have renewed our team, our approach, our clients, our office and our company profile. As a team we’ve been through a great transformation together. As a team we found our flag, and today we’re all running behind it.
People are open to connect with brands. But to become a true accepted cultural player, brands need to invest in understanding the culture they’re active in.
At Likefriends, we will no longer focus our efforts on brands that care less and pay more.
