Crazy

Crazy

This is a story that illustrates the basic precepts of my personal thinking and what I teach and believe in. That is that the key to success is to stay focused on the goal and never worry about how you may get there. The reason this is true is that once you start worrying about the “how”, all of the obstacles show their ugly face. So by believing that somehow you’ll get where you want to get as long as you stay concentrated on the end result is the high ground in my view.

A CASE IN POINT: I’ve written a great deal about relationships here in these pages over the last year or so and here is an example of just how powerful they can be in helping one reach their goals even if they work out in an unexpected way. In the 90’s I worked for a client called Aircoa, later named Richfield. They managed a wide variety of branded hotels across the United States and other parts of the world. Our agency was in charge of providing the local marketing and advertising for hotel brands from Hilton to Sheraton to Clarion and Holiday Inn. Consequently I traveled a bit and developed a positive and lasting relationship with my client counterpart, Laura. One of the favorite stops included a hotel on Kona Island in Hawaii named Kona Village. I was fortunate enough to be able to stay with my family at this exclusive high-end resort all under the guise of market research.

It was a busy business and sometimes the stress levels got a bit high but after a couple of years working together Laura and I became fast friends. She eventually left the company and moved to Hawaii and I moved on to start my own agency with another former client. We kept in touch and she told me about the place she was working and suggested that they could use an agency like ours and was going to try and make the introductions.

We would talk about how great it would be to work together again and set the intention. Of course these types of things aren’t always a slam dunk but eventually Laura arranged for me to meet the owner in Honolulu. I have to say that she had worked really really hard to make this all happen and so when the day finally arrived and I showed up at the corporate headquarters of Crazy Shirts I was really excited. I checked in at reception and I was announced to Laura. It was great to see her again and I could only imagine the fun we would have working together again.

After a hug and handshake the first thing she said was that today was her last day at Crazy Shirts. WHAT!? It was a long story but Rick; the owner would still meet with me. I had never met Rick, the creator of Crazy Shirts, nor knew much about him and figured that this would be a great episode of the Twilight Zone and my days on the islands would be numbered. After we talked for a while I realized that I was there for a reason and that somehow this would all work itself out. And it did.

Over the next few months and a number of trips back and forth to Hawaii our team and the Crazy Shirts people created a bond and eventually decided that we would create a new commercial for the brand. The trick was that it would have to work in multiple languages, mostly for the Japanese, a key target audience segment that had purchased huge amounts of the Crazy Shirt brand from Tokyo to Guam. To that end we prepared a number of story boards and concepts to accomplish the goal. Rick and his team though had trouble deciding which one to go with. To make the final decision required that we bring the Crazy Shirts team to our place where we could limit their distractions and hopefully close on a viable concept.

After a wonderful dinner at my partner’s home I escorted Rick to the den and started my presentation with a simple pitch: You can’t leave this room until you decide which concept you want. About an hour later we emerged with the blessed idea. A TV spot that eventually would work in multiple languages and net our firm a CLIO award. The name of the spot was GET CRAZY and so it was.

The point of this story is so embedded in my psyche that I call upon it often to remind me that things happen for a reason and even if they don’t’ conform to how you think they should unfold they unfold nonetheless in a wonderful, splendid and all together perfect way – just like you intended. So don’t give up on your goals even if you don’t know how they will be achieved. You never know when a friend may intercede and connect the dots. Crazy!