Copacino & Fujikado is a mainstay in the Seattle agency world.  If you’re a marketer in or around the Pacific northwest, you’ve heard of them, or at least their work.  They were REI’s agency of record for years and years.  For the Seattle Aquarium, the agency created the saga of Leonard, a disgruntled pet store goldfish who isn’t cool or exotic enough to be on display in the Aquarium. The campaign was designed to spark a grassroots, viral movement to “Let Leonard In.”  There’s a lot more where that came from, once you start looking into this long time Seattle shop.

Their approach is solidly aimed at using marketing as solutions to business problems.  “We think of ourselves as creative business people and businesslike creative people,” says Copacino. “We’re all about using imagination as a strategic tool to solve real-life business problems.”

The approach is working. The agency has had 47 consecutive profitable quarters since its inception—and has never had a nickel of debt.”  Says Copacino, “If we can’t run a smart, profitable business, why should our clients come to us for business advice?”

Hard to argue with that.  And 47 consecutive profitable quarters with zero debt?  What business wouldn’t kill (ok maim) for results like that?  Don’t.  Just hire Copacino & Fujikado.

I asked Jim to give me his answers to my 7 questions:

What was the aha-moment when you realized “our company needs to be doing things differently than we have been.”?

The Burger King “Subservient Chicken” phenomenon opened my eyes to the possibility and power of interactive digital communications. For me, it snapped everything into focus—technology, community, experience, engagement. The fact that it was a brilliant digital interpretation of the 30-year-old “Have It Your Way” positioning vividly illustrated the difference between 20^th and 21^st century communications.

What books are on your nightstand or great blogs on your Google reader?

My nightstand is piled high with magazines: The Economist, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone. I’m not an avid reader of business books, though I just finished A.E. Hotchner’s In Pursuit Of The Common Good—the story of how he and Paul Newman ignored every rule of business to build a multi-million dollar food business, with all profits going to charity. The most powerful thing I’ve read recently is Rodeo in Joliet by Glenn Rockowitz, a Seattle copywriter.  It’s a harrowing account of his battle with cancer. I like Seth Godin’s blog because his entries are short, smart and useful. Plus he doesn’t allow posts and feedback—which spares his readers a lot of idiotic commentary. AdFreak.com is on my reader as well; Tim Nudd is a terrifically droll commentator.

Give me an example of marketing you think is brilliant and why?

The Obama campaign. He started with a compelling message of Hope and Change. He branded it elegantly. Then he segmented the marketplace and skillfully integrated the message using every relevant medium to win hearts and minds. Whether it was a Facebook post or a direct mail piece, everything was on brand. The whole vibe was one of controlled urgency—staying one step ahead of the 24-hour news cycle, but never appearing to be frantic or ruffled. He surrounded his prospects with the message and always respected their intelligence. By contrast, John McCain looked like a confused old man standing on the corner wearing a sandwich board reading “Vote for me.”

We’ve all read that the pitch/RFP process is broken. Many agencies aren’t even interested in competing in pitches. Do you see an alternative to this process?

There’s a very bright guy in British Columbia named Blair Enns who runs a company and website, Win Without Pitching. He has some helpful advice as to how agencies can avoid the RFP gauntlet.  At Copacino+Fujikado, about half of our new business comes from existing clients and non-pitch referrals—which is an efficient, cost-effective way to grow.  That said, few agencies have the luxury of spurning competitive pitches requiring spec work. And let’s face it, the agency victory parties are waaaay better when you’ve won a hotly contested pitch.

What does the agency of the future look like?

I think it’s going to be less about size and footprint. Instead it’s going to be more about leveraging imagination to solve thorny business problems and getting paid handsomely for it. Increasingly, you see big marketers turning to smaller companies in search of specific, discreet, creative solutions. It’s a return to what the essence of the ad business: big ideas versus big organizations. The best idea wins.

One other observation: The agency of the future will be more in control of the intellectual property it creates. There will be more emphasis on developing proprietary ideas that can be licensed.  We have a big push on at our agency to develop IP that we own and control.

What do marketers need that agencies aren’t giving them?

Leadership. Somewhere along the line, agencies stopped working with people in the c-suite and started working with people in cubicles. It’s the whole consultant-to-vendor syndrome we’ve all read so much about. Much of the fault lies with agencies that ceded the role of advisor because there was a lot of money to be made in the Eighties and Nineties as vendors. At the same time, too many marketers stopped believing in the power of ideas and vision, and started bargain shopping for marketing vendors through their procurement departments. Our challenge as an industry is to get off our knees and lead.

Who do you admire and why?

Two New Jersey guys: Philip Roth and Bruce Springsteen. They’re both sons of ethnic, working class families who became important American voices. What I admire most is how they’ve never stopped growing artistically. Roth is 76 but he continues to create deeply nuanced and imaginative novels. Springsteen is 60 and his craftsmanship has never been more impressive. Age has honed their skills, not blunted them.  As an old guy myself, this is important!

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Ad Industry Innovator # 10 is GamePlan, an experiential marketing firm with offices in New York and Austin.  It’s a special day for me because  I got the guy who inspired the series and it’s kind of like having Buddy Rich on to talk about drumming.

Tim Hayden’s firm was my own personal a-ha moment.  GamePlan proved to me that there were agencies out there who defied categorization and who were figuring out how to pull (rather than push) consumers and engage them effectively for marketers who wanted to participate in existing conversations.  What they were doing was more than permission based marketing it was involvement marketing.

In one of our conversations Tim suggested we come to Austin to attend SXSW this past March, in fact, I believe he said: you need to be here– he was right.  On the flight down the Southwest in flight magazine featured GamePlan in a story about how they were engaging audiences for marketers in ways traditional marketing had not been able to–and I learned a bit more about the unique position of GamePlan in the marketplace.  While in Austin Tim and I had a chance to talk shop and I was convinced again, that his was a firm that was changing the game and what it means to be a marketer.

What was the aha moment when you realized “our company needs to be doing things differently than we have been?”

In 2006, Dell hired us to execute its sponsorship of Justin Timberlake’s FutureSexLoveSounds 2007 tour. We were to execute an integrated campaign that touched fans outside the arena (street teams + SMS), at an arena concourse demo kiosk and engage fans within the “Dell Lounge,” an SRO-only area surrounding the performance stage…all to drive traffic to an online sweepstakes.

We learned early in the tour to build more excitement by “upgrading” fans by giving those in the nosebleed seats a chance to sit down by the stage (Verizon held the radio-promo ticket “drop” rights), and then engaging fans online by tracking “Dell” tagged user-generated photos and video that could have only originated from mobile phone cameras (no cameras allowed per tour policy). Manually, we identified thousands of image uploads with tags such as, “Katy and me in the Dell Lounge with Justin,” and we were successful with near 60% of those we invited to experience http://www.delllounge.com.

While these tactics proved to us again that guerrilla tactics induce and amplify buzz around a brand during an event, also opened were our eyes to the coming potential of mobile technology and social media.  A year later, we coined the “Live – Mobile – Online” engagement model as the key approach to driving offline experiences into online conversation, and vice versa.

What books are on your nightstand or great blogs on your Google reader?

My wife often starts that question with “when are you gonna read all of those…?”  in the stack now are (good friend) Richard Laermer’s 2011: Trendspotting for the Next Decade, Sarah Lacy’s Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good and Harlan Coben’s There Will be No Second Chance (my first Coben read sans Myron Bolitar, who has wasted many a day away with me on a beach on South Padre Island or in Tamarindo, Costa Rica).  I also always have the latest editions of Inc., Men’s Journal and Conde Nast’s Portfolio in the queue (or lou-side, ahem).

As for blogs:

http://conversationagent.com/ – I’ve read Valeria every day for the past 18 months…the longest of any blogger.

http://www.chrisbrogan.com/ – I read his post through http://otherinbox.com or click the posts he relays through Twitter.  Chris seems to post 1-3 times/day, and I always enjoy the way he reports his live experiences…proving live-mobile-online every day!

http://brainsonfire.com/blog/ – found it when tracking a stat that 90%+ of all WOM occurs OFFLINE.  Since then, I check in at least 1-2X/week.

http://adomatica.blogspot.com/ – run by my buddy, Robert Gilbreath, who pulled off the Enfartico online stunt.  There’s no better source for gossip/real scoop on the Austin ad world than can be found here.

Give me an example of marketing you think is brilliant and why.

I often talk with fellow marketers about “holistic” experiential/social marketing.  Hands down, I see Southwest Airlines as the best example of a brand that holistically markets (and exudes) a brand experience.

At every audience touch point (website – ticket counter – gate – seat – pilot’s/crew’s voice and smile…) a positive attitude and engaging brand experience seems to be present.  There is evidence of innovating that I experience each time I fly with them, because Southwest makes it a point to engage and educate each passenger on new developments, procedures and promotions that seem to be all about me, the passenger.

There is no other brand I’ve experienced that is as successful as Southwest with its culture and the warmth it delivers to a customer…and that’s the way it has been for more than 37 years. “Brilliant” is an understatement.

We’ve all read that the pitch / RFP process is broken.  Many agencies aren’t even interested in competing in pitches.  Do you see an alternative to this process?

Over the past three years, we have produced several “experimental” or “pilot” campaigns for brands combining events with mobile and social media.  I believe that this is a new way to sell confidence within a client, including both new client business and organic new business from an existing client.  Confidence is something we all must earn, and I do not believe we can redeem it with a sexy pitch or stating we have a certain experience or a global sphere of resources.  Certainly it earns a few points to demonstrate a strong network and happy past clients…I just know that “proof of concept” will rule the foreseeable future.

What does the agency of the future look like?

The agency of the future will be smaller in size, enabling it to be more agile and more responsive to client needs that change near daily.  And, for all I see BIG today as fallible, I also see challenges with the proliferation of the smaller, independent agency.  I’m seeing a ton of “snake oil” being sold today across all media types (OOH, social, mobile, traditional…) and marketing services (SEO, SEM, direct mail…), and I don’t know how we might safeguard against wasted investments in such.  Buyer beware…make us prove we can successfully execute that which we claim.

What do marketers need that agencies are not giving them?

I believe we must all see our service to clients as a partnership solution, no longer just as a program or campaign.  For this solution to be successful, I see three requisite ingredients:

a. Accountability: It should never be about the agency portfolio or the stable of ADDYs behind the receptionist’s desk.  Who cares if our peers judge us as “creative”?  Are we putting measurable (and qualified?!) numbers up in terms of traffic and sales, and/or are we truly delivering a net-positive solution to the client? And, while executing this solution, are we ready to address the miscues and then switch gears to go an extra mile in ensuring the solution is ultimately successful?

b. Innovation: Even within an existing client, no two marketing challenges are the same.  Agencies must acknowledge that they don’t have all the answers while learning about and incorporating advanced media, methodology and technology into each new solution.  At GamePlan, we have never executed the same exact solution for a client more than once, and we constantly scrutinize new technology and media that may we identify as emerging in relevancy to online conversation and offline experiences

c. Collaboration:  For too long, agencies have allowed (and embraced) “media” to define what channels can or cannot be leveraged to reach an audience.  As engagement (the “impression” is dying, dying…dead) is now the ultimate goal of that reach, agencies must look beyond in-house competencies to engage and involve partners.  If an agency has confidence built with a client, there is no reason why we cannot bring partners to the table as part of the total integrated solution…with disclosure and transparency being key.

Who do you admire and why?

My Grandad, Art Hayden, who is 93 years young this year, has survived polio, cancer and he can recall the names of/stories about every person he has ever met/place he has been here on Planet Earth.  I can only hope to one day emulate his disposition, sense of humor and appreciation for life.  Also, too many entrepreneurs to list.  Mark Cuban: because he pursued his passion, basketball, became a successful technopreneur and…you know the rest of the story; Michael Dell, because building computers in his dorm room bathroom is a beautiful story of hope; and too many more who’ve Sinatra-like “done it [their] way.”

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Third in the Ad Industry Innovators series is Alain Thys from Futurelab in Brussels.  Very smart marketers in Brussels–and the beer’s not bad either.  Futurelab also has offices in Moscow, Munich, Hamburg, Shanghai, Athens, and Kiev.  

I first heard of Futurelab by stumbling on their blog.  Then through Google searches I kept finding these wonderfully insightful slideshare presentations and PDFs and quickly realized that many were coming from Alain’s company.

In Alain’s words

Futurelab is a marketing strategy consultancy focused on profit, customer-centricity and innovation.  We help marketers get a higher ROI, CEO’s to get their business focused on the customer and innovators to build innovations that make a difference in the market.

We also have a – not so secret  - agenda to make our contribution to changing the marketing landscape.  We believe that the mass-marketing era is coming to an end.  The symptoms of this can be found everywhere.  Billions are wasted. Marketers have acquired a bad reputation as “frivolous money spenders”.  Consumers are tuning out.   As a result, we believe that – as a collective – business needs to “re-invent marketing” so it can actually make the contribution it should to both the customer and the bottom line.”

Pretty smart, huh?  Keep reading, it gets better.

1.   What was the aha moment when you realized “our company needs to be doing things differently than we have been”?

When my business partner (Stefan Kolle) and I realized that the message we were spreading on a new way of marketing was actually being heard and repeated by others.  We decided we had to grow from a two-man band to a movement hell-bent on encouraging a conversation on a new type of marketing.  And that this could be profitable for all concerned.

2.   What books are on your nightstand or great blogs on your Google reader? 

Right now I’m reading Character & Viewpoint by Orson Scott Card.  On the blog front, all the contributors to the Futurelab blog, but I also have a fondness for PresentationZen.  And of course Dilbert.

3.   Give me an example of marketing you think is brilliant and why.

The bakery in my street.  They only go for unique products, know every one of their customers, actually create products on customer demand, participate in every village event with an original little detail and in the 2 years they’ve been open have taken the market (like in people standing in line outside to pay a premium of 20% over the bakery 200 meters down the street). 

 I think this is brilliant because in contrast to many large organisations these people “get” what great marketing is about: truly understanding your customers, making a promise that is relevant to them and then overdelivering against this time and time again. 

4.   We’ve all read that the pitch / RFP process is broken.  Many agencies aren’t even interested in competing in pitches.  Do you see an alternative to this process?

I don’t believe that the RFP process is broken at all.  It’s just that people needs to re-adjust their expectations of what it can deliver.  In the mass-communication culture, big budgets went to big agencies which spent them at big media.  In those days an RFP that said “run my communications” made sense. 

But today, only very few agencies are capable of delivering against 100% of a brand’s needs.  If we would compare building a brand to building a house, each agency is like a “contractor” who specializes in one part of communication or the other.  So just like you wouldn’t ask your plumber to give an opinion about the windows in your roof, you wouldn’t ask a traditional advertising agency to have an opinion about the integral structure of your brand.   But I regularly see that some brands still expect this to happen (or agencies presuming they can do this).   That is where I think the disappointment comes from.

But just like when building a house this doesn’t mean the RFP process goes away.  It just means that it becomes more focused.  In short, brands need to be much more specific in their briefings to agencies and how they fit an overall picture (or employ “architects” like us to do it for them), while agencies need to let go of the illusion that the advertisements they come up with will “move the world” for the brand that commissions them.   

5.   What does the agency of the future look like?

I think the industry will evolve to resemble the movie or construction industry.

-       A large number of micro-specialists.  Forget about the PR agency or the digital agency.  Think about the Agency specialized in leveraging short message social media for spreading positive customer experiences in the banking sector.   Just like the guy who knows how to set up a particular type of solar panel which is government subsidized, they will be contracted on a project basis.  They can be creative, they can be production oriented, it all depends

-       A medium number of project management shops.  These probably best resemble the agency of today, be it without the in-house creative and possibly even production deparments.  They take the briefing of a client and ensure that the variety of micro-specialist implement this to excellence levels.  This may include creative, but mainly in a sourcing capacity (the role of art director in these environments is to ensure that the creative that is sourced meets the client need, not “come up with new stuff” inhouse).   Just like movie houses these project management shops may have privileged relationships with micro-specialists & creatives to provide them with a competitive edge.

-       A small number of strategy shops:  These will be the “architects” of the trade.  They will be a lot smaller than the project management shops and assist brands to formulate their strategy in a way that project management shops can implement it.   They are much more “numbers” based than most agencies of today and in style probably are more comparable to the McKinsey’s and the Bain’s than the McCann’s or Ogilvy’s.

6.   What do marketers need that agencies are not giving them?

The number one thing that marketers are looking for are solutions to business and marketing issues (grow sales, protect margin, ensure customer loyalty, …) while they typically receive “campaigns”.   For other examples I happily refer to our report Bridging the Brand Agency Divide.

7.   Who do you admire and why?

Muhammad Yunus.  For not only coming up with a theoretical concept to fix poverty in a structural way, but also pushing forward to making it happen.  In short, for making a difference.