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Chapter 9: How to Move a Group to Action

Overview

When I was the management supervisor on the Whitehall Laboratories account for the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency, I was a participant in the most successful presentation designed to move a group to action that I have ever seen. Let me describe the situation so that you can feel the reality of it. We will stop at various points to draw lessons from what was accomplished.

Whitehall Laboratories was a division of American Home Products. One of the products we created advertising for was an antacid named Bisodol. It was a second-tier brand, but it had potential, we thought.

One day just before noon, I was working at my desk at the advertising agency when I got a phone call from the senior vice president responsible for marketing and advertising at Whitehall, Hank Peterson.

Hank said, "Kevin, I know there is no good way to say this, but we are unhappy with the creative product your agency is putting out. Bisodol sales are not growing. We feel it's because of poor advertising copy, so we are putting the Bisodol advertising account out for solicitation by other agencies."

We Were Fired

I said, "Hank, what you're telling me is crushing news. I need to hear more. I'll be over there in fifteen minutes. Will you see me?" He said that would be OK. So I hustled over to their Third Avenue office to find out what was going on.

Simple enough. No animosity. We were out. Fired. Some other agency was going to get the business. Four other agencies had been invited to make a presentation. But being pushed aside on this small product meant there was danger we might lose the whole account, which was worth about $10,000,000 - a pretty big account in those days.

I decided I'd better call an account team meeting to discuss the situation, so I charged down to Alan Gilburne's office. Alan was the copywriter on the account, and a darn good one at that. We called in the head creative guru, Dave Boffey, and the head media man, John Sisk. I told them the story.

Step 1: Identify assignments. Pick your team. If you're planning to move a group to action, you're not doing it alone. It's a big job. The final step is standing in front of the assembled group and motivating them, but a lot of setup work precedes it.

We spent the rest of the day analyzing the brand's marketing plan, its sales, the media plan, and the creative approach. Our immediate goal was to identify the problem and reach agreement that we could correct it. We all concluded that the creative approach was the problem. If we could solve that, we had a beginning. Our ultimate mission would be to make a presentation that would change our client's mind. We wanted the account back.

Finally I said, "We have two jobs. My job is to get Whitehall (the client) to invite us to participate in the solicitation process. Your job is to develop a showstopping creative approach that will win the shoot out and let us keep the account.

"Assuming we get the opportunity to present, we will be trying to persuade the entire group of client people who are in that room to rehire us. They won't want to do it because we have already failed in their eyes.

"We have to move them to action as a unified group. So if there are ten of them, then all ten have to vote for us. That's the only way we'll get it. It has to be unanimous. If we do well but not great, we'll lose. If there is a lot of discussion, we'll lose. We are a long shot, no doubt about that. But, hey, I'm pretty sure I can do my part. Can you do yours?"

"No question about it," they said, "we're eager to get started."

Calendaring the Meeting

The next day I sat down with Hank Peterson and said, "Hank, I understand that we have been fired. We are no longer your agency for Bisodol. I am not here to argue that point.

"But an amazing thing has happened. The head of our creative department has taken this personally. He has given an assignment to five copy teams to come up with a - and I'm using his words - ‘breakthrough campaign idea for the brand.' He's establishing a contest. The winning team goes to dinner at Lutece." (This was true, but it was mostly window dressing. I was working with Alan Gilburne, who was my number-one copywriter, and I was confident that he would solve the problem.)

I continued, "Here's my question. If we come up with something that's truly a breakthrough, do you want to see it?"

"Of course I do," he said.

"Hank," said I, "if I can come back here and look you in the eye and say we have an idea like that, will you allow us to compete for the business and present to your committee?" He agreed and went so far as to say that he would schedule us for next Thursday, a week hence, 10:00 a.m.

"I'm doing that," he said, "because I know full well you are going to tell me you have a great idea no matter what you come up with."

Since I was on a roll, I asked for the eleventh-floor training room instead of a conference room, because it was a bigger room and I hoped to generate a large audience. Hank had said we would be the last agency presenting. But his final words were killers.

"Understand," he said, "this is a courtesy only. You have no realistic chance. You are really wasting your time."

Meaning we could make a presentation but it would be to a mostly empty room. All the people who mattered had already written us off. In all probability, none of the bigwigs would come. I would have to correct that, and it wasn't going to be easy. But, first, we needed content. We needed a great message, a story line.

Step 2: Make sure the message is finely honed and finely crafted so that its promise exceeds the audience's expectation. The group must be lifted to move in the direction you want. Only the most eloquent message will accomplish that.

Or, as they say in the advertising business, we needed a dynamite creative product. It took a while. Great ideas always do. But we only had a week to come up with the idea, put the television commercial in storyboard form, and put the whole presentation together. After studying the product, the competition, talking to medical consultants, and a top-notch chemist, Alan came up with a copy claim we thought was a winner:

Bisodol turns burning stomach acid into a harmless water solution.

It was strong, it promised a benefit, and it contained both the problem and the solution. It was short, simple, and understandable. We did a quick research test to see if it played well with acid indigestion sufferers. It did. We were happy.

There is a lesson here. If your goal is to move a group to action, make sure your message is worthy of the moment you have created. If it's competent, but not great, you are a loser. It must be startling, unique in its perspective, exciting. Otherwise the audience won't be excited.

Visualizing the Message

Next we needed a way to visualize, to dramatize, the statement. We were talking television advertising here. The visual demonstration was all-important.

Alan said, "Well, if the product does what it's supposed to do, we could get two beakers. Put stomach acid (hydrochloric acid) into both, then put Bisodol into one of them and stir it around so that the chemical reaction takes place and neutralizes the acid. Then we could put a daisy into each beaker, with the petals sitting above the glass."

One of the daisies would wilt and die; the other would be fine - we hoped.

We got the beakers. We got the stomach acid. We got a dozen daisies. In Alan Gilburne's office we went through the whole thing. And, by golly, it worked.

We had a winner. One piece of the puzzle was in place. I met with Hank and told him we had a breakthrough. He said he looked forward to seeing us on Thursday.

Step 3: Decide what people you need to be present and take steps to get them there.

A great presentation to the wrong audience is like a tree falling in the forest with no one to see it or hear it - it has no significance. We had to be sure we had the right audience. We carefully handpicked the people we wanted in attendance:

Chairman of the board - William Laporte

President of the division - John Culligan

Senior vice president, marketing manager - Hank Peterson

Corporate vice president, creative consultant - Florence O'Brien

Corporate marketing guru - Ken Byrne

President of the in-house ad agency - Dan Rogers

How to get them there? "It's impossible," said Henry Schachte, the president of J. Walter Thompson. "The only meeting you could get all six of those people to attend would be their company's annual meeting."

"Good point," said I, "but we have to try. If only half of them come, we'll still be ahead of the game." My reasoning was that if I could get half of that austere group to attend, the lesser lights (though still very important people) would knock down the doors to be there.

Two people on the list were a must - John Culligan, the division president, and Hank Peterson, the senior vice president of marketing - because they were directly involved in the decision-making process. But, ideally, I wanted all six because they represented power and, if they leaned our way, the others would as well.

How Do We Get Them There?

Our team met to discuss what our options were to get them there. Here is the list we wrote on a chart:

The last strategy won the day. Since I knew each of the people on the list, it was decided that I should write the letters of invitation. Here is what I wrote:

The Letter

Dear (Name),

I am writing to invite you to attend our agency presentation for the Bisodol account on Thursday morning, March 16th, at 10 a.m., in the eleventh-floor training room.

I am writing you personally for two reasons.

First, I know you admire great advertising and recognize it is one of the factors that has helped make your company so successful. The advertising we will show is bold. It's revolutionary. It's dramatic. In my opinion, it's great advertising. But you be the judge.

Second, four other agencies will make presentations, hoping to be awarded your business. I know the decision-making process is not an easy one. You would prefer it if one agency really stood out from the others.

With that in mind, I will make you a promise - on Thursday, the 16th, you will see a creative presentation that stands out above the four - that stands with the best you have ever seen. I'm not boasting, though it may sound like it. But I am profoundly impressed with the work we have done for you. It will make your decision an easier one.

Henry Schachte, our president, backs me up on that promise. He will also be in attendance at the meeting and looks forward to seeing you, if you can attend.

Since we are expecting a full room, I want to have name cards at the main table for you and a few other senior people. To that end, I will call your office on Tuesday to see if you are able to attend.

Sincerely,

Kevin Daley

Results of the Letter

I followed up on Tuesday. All six said they would attend.

Eureka!

We spread the word throughout Whitehall, the client company. Before long, our meeting became the hottest show in town. On Thursday we had the six I personally invited, plus six others, a total of twelve Whitehall people - the highest number of client attendees for any of the presentations. The most any other agency got was eight.

Additionally, there were four of us from J. Walter Thompson. Dave Boffey, the creative guru; Alan Gilburne, the copywriter; Henry Schachte, our president; and me.

But before we get to the meeting, let's look at some of the little things that would help make it go smoothly.

Step 4: If possible, unite the audience with some kind of unifying symbol so that anyone who sees the symbol knows that person was there.

We were lucky in that we had a visual symbol that was integral to the presentation. The daisy was going to be the star of the show in many ways. All of the audience's attention would be focused on the daisy during the demonstration. One daisy would die, one would live, demonstrating the efficacy of Bisodol.

Alan suggested we pin a daisy on the lapels of the attendees when they came in the room. They wouldn't understand the significance until later, but that was all right. "It would sort of bring them together," he said. That was a big idea in its own right. We decided to do just that.

Alan was given the responsibility for buying the daisies and being sure they were on site on Thursday. He also was responsible for knowing how to snip the stems and insert pins so that we would have sixteen lapel flowers, plus a dozen full-stem ones, enough for the demo plus spares.

Step 5: Get there early. Rehearse on site.

We made arrangements for the Whitehall meeting room to be open for us at 8:00 a.m. - two hours before the scheduled start time. We arrived right on time with all our paraphernalia. It was important that we get everything done ahead of time, including an on-site rehearsal. Nothing was more important in our lives right now than this meeting. No sense cutting corners and letting mistakes slip in. Here's what we did:

Then we rehearsed the entire presentation. We left nothing out. Alan and I both flubbed some of our dialogue the first time and had to go over it again. The demo worked flawlessly. I practiced pinning daisies on the lapels of my three cohorts so that my fingers would know how to do it when the Whitehall people came in.

We felt confident. You may wonder why we rehearsed again. We had already gone through this a number of times in our office.

This entire process of doing a run-through on site is called "taking the news value out" of what we will do. We don't want news during a performance; we want routine.

One of the things that causes nervousness is a physical unfamiliarity with the setting in which you are forced to operate. Little things come up that you don't expect, such as dry Magic Markers or not enough paper on the flip chart. There is no substitute for physically doing everything in rehearsal that you will be doing for real later.

Providing Nametags and Name Tents

We greeted each Whitehall person with a friendly handshake, a thank you for being there, an introduction to our team, a nametag with the name printed large and bold (I didn't want our president calling someone by the wrong name), and a daisy. I escorted each person to their individual chair, each marked with name tents.

You may wonder why both tags and tents. Name tents are easier to see when standing in front of the room, handling comments or questions. It's important to use the name of the client in any exchange. But at the end of the meeting, nametags let your team members say thank you with a name attached to it as they shake hands good-bye.

Pinning the Daisy

I did the "pin the daisy" honors personally for all twelve client attendees. I didn't want them to decide whether they would put it on or not. I wanted it on their lapels, front and center. I made a special point to show my appreciation to each of the six who had responded to my personal invitation.

Each attendee was intrigued by the daisy. "What's this for?" they asked. "It's a key part of the presentation," I said. "You'll see what it stands for as we go along. But, hey, it looks good on you, doesn't it?" Which it did. So, as the meeting began, all twelve Whitehall people and four JWT people were wearing daisies.

Step 6: Make sure your top person has a role to play in the presentation. Otherwise, his value is diminished, he's just a spectator.

Henry Schachte, our president, opened the meeting. Henry thanked the attendees for the opportunity to present to them. He said that Whitehall was an important client to JWT. Bisodol was an important brand. He said, "We put the Bisodol project out to five creative teams at the agency. We set up a contest. The advertising we will present to you was the unanimous winner. We are proud of this work, and we are proud of the creative team that did it." With that, he introduced the creative team of Dave Boffey and Alan Gilburne.

Discussing the Copy Claim

Dave and Alan discussed the copy claim and the creative strategy behind it. Then they presented a storyboard (schematic) representing the future television commercial. The concept of the wilting daisy was explained and discussed. The audience liked the claim. They liked the thinking, and they liked the daisy idea, but they were not at all convinced that the demo would work.

During the discussion of the storyboard, all twelve observers, from time to time, looked back at the assemblage of "stuff" on the table in the front of the room - the two empty beakers, a glass stirrer, a vase with a dozen daisies in water, a pair of scissors, an opaque pitcher with stomach acid written on both sides, a roll of paper towels, and a pair of rubber gloves.

All that stuff had been there since the meeting began. The attendees were somewhat mesmerized by it. The anticipation was palpable. At some point they knew we were going to do something with all that stuff.

The Demonstration

My role was to do the demo, which I had rehearsed six times back at the advertising agency and once more this morning. I told the group that I would re-create the demonstration for them in the same way it would be seen in the television commercial we envisioned.

I identified each item on the table, emphasizing that the pitcher contained pure hydrochloric acid, which is exactly the chemical known as stomach acid. This is what causes the burning feeling of acid indigestion when the stomach is acidic. What Bisodol does is cause a chemical reaction that turns burning stomach acid into a harmless water solution, thereby ending the discomfort of acid indigestion.

Tell Them What They Are Going to See

I lifted the pitcher and filled both beakers. I removed four daisies and cut the stems so that each would be seven inches in length. (The attention level was remarkable. They stared as though I were doing an appendectomy.) I explained to the audience that the length was important because we wanted the flower to be two inches above the beaker while it was alive and then sag dramatically as it died.

I put a cut daisy in each beaker. The audience was silent to the extreme. Nothing in the room moved at all ._._. except the daisies, which wilted, sagged, shriveled, and died. The audience gasped.

Tell Them What They Saw

I waited almost a minute before taking the next step, because the audience was so absolutely taken by the death of the daisies, which certainly dramatized how unfriendly stomach acid could be. Then I removed the two dead daisies and said, "This is what we would expect, since the same acid that burns your stomach burned the life out of these two flowers."

I shook two Bisodol tablets out of their bottle onto the table and then put them in one of the beakers. I used the stirrer to crunch the tablets as I stirred the solution, explaining that both Bisosol tablets had to dissolve completely in order to turn "burning stomach acid into a harmless water solution." I put a Bisodol nametag on that beaker so that there would be no confusion. Then I took the two remaining cut flowers, one in each hand, and held them above the beakers.

Building Anticipation

I waggled the one in my right hand above the Bisodol beaker, saying, "This daisy should be fine because the stomach acid is now harmless." I waggled the other flower and said, "This one, however, doesn't have the Bisodol advantage." All eyes watched. Silence in the room. No movement.

I dropped the two daisies into the beakers. The Bisodol daisy stood tall and healthy. The other one wilted and died. I thought the demo was over, but the audience kept staring at the Bisodol daisy, the one standing tall in the beaker. The audience didn't move, no clearing of throats, no shifting in the seats, no sound. Nothing but silence.

One of the product managers was the first to speak. "How long will it stay healthy like that?" he asked. I was a little bit startled. I didn't expect the question, and I didn't know the answer. "Until long after this meeting is over," I answered. They chatted and joked among themselves. The mood was ebullient.

The Client Speaks

Bill Laporte, chairman of the corporation, stood up, shook Henry Schachte's hand, and said, "I've been in this business for thirty years, Henry, and I don't think I've ever seen a more dramatic presentation. I wish we could put it on television just the way we saw it today."

Then he shook my hand and said, "Kevin, thank you for pulling all this together. We saw some things today that we didn't think were possible."

I shook his hand and thanked him. I was even more grateful for the way he spoke his mind in front of all the others. What a lift that was. Now all the others would feel free to say good things.

But the meeting wasn't over. I asked Bill if he would sit down for just a minute, explaining that I had something important to say in conclusion.

In a meeting of this kind, it's important to ask for a specific action, a specific timeframe. Be clear. Don't assume they know what you want, even if it's obvious that they do. You still have to ask.

Step 7: End the meeting by telling them what you want. Be clear. You've earned the right.

I ended by saying, "We are confident that this advertising approach for Bisodol is unique and will impact the brand in a positive way. It's dramatic. It's attention-getting. It will lift Bisodol to the front line of antacid products. It will grow the brand.

"I want to add a personal note. We stand in front of you with great respect for Whitehall and great enthusiasm for what's to come. We want to be reappointed your agency for Bisodol. We want to continue to serve you. We feel we have shown you that we have the creative muscle to do the job. We want your business.

"I have one final question," I said. "When will you let us know?" Hank Peterson handled that one.

"Monday noon," he answered. They filed out with much glad-handing and conviviality. Each of them shook hands with Henry Schachte and thanked him for being there. I removed the nametags and shook hands with each of them myself. Each was complimentary. Some were effusive in their praise. I felt like I was running for office. Once the room was empty of clients, we babbled about how well it went. It was Henry Schachte, our president, who cut to the chase. "If they are still wearing the daisies at four o'clock this afternoon, we're in," he said. "And Kevin," he continued, "you better get over there this afternoon and see as many of those people as you can. We don't want to give them a chance to change their minds."

At three o'clock I went back over to Whitehall. I stopped in to see Hank Peterson. He was very complimentary, though he didn't commit himself, but he was wearing the daisy. I visited each of the special six whom I had invited. They were all eager to talk about how much they liked the idea and how they thought it would impact the brand. Most important, the daisies were still on their lapels. Now we just had to wait until Monday.

Whitehall's Decision

On Monday, Whitehall announced its decision. We were reappointed the official agency on Bisodol. The unofficial tally was twelve votes for us, no votes for any of the other four agencies. What a heady feeling that was. We had persuaded a whole group to act as one. We had done what seemed impossible.

The example above applies to an advertising situation. But the principles are universal and apply in any business environment.

Key Learnings for Delivering a Presentation to Move a Group to Action

Do:

Don't:

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