Lee Clow’s Beard

You cannot become the person or agency you wish to be by doing the type of work you wished you never had to do.

Dearest Client, We’re not asking you to gamble on a coin flip. We’re asking you to take a calculated risk on the skills, wisdom, and creativity of the people you claim to have hired for those very things. Love, LCB

The easiest things to scale are often those you really shouldn’t. What’s quick to grow is often quicker to regret.

It is a rare brand that can jump on the bandwagon without throwing its relevance under the bus.

“How fast can you get that ad I’m going to ignore out the door?” asked no consumer ever.

When it comes to brand differentiation, saying the same thing in a fresh way isn’t saying the same thing at all.

If you want the work to be more than the sum of its parts, use fewer parts. 1+1=3 feels like magic while 36+47=84 just feels like math.

There are agencies that are partners and agency-partners that are vendors. A hyphen is cold comfort when your alleged equal holds all the power.

Sanding down every edge in the work, no matter how slight, will leave you with a highly polished piece that is painfully dull.

You were today years old when you learned meme-based marketing can generate junk clicks and cheap LOLz but never build lasting relevance or brand equity.

A click is the weakest connection your brand can and should ever make.

It doesn’t matter how many impressions you get if you can’t manage a decent impression of an interesting brand.

Knowing your worth is good, but knowing your ideas’ worth is golden.

Some clients don’t want great work. They’d rather feel smugly disappointed in new and creative ways.

Great branding is the most ethical unfair advantage any company can ever have.

If you’re continuously expected to exceed expectations with no expectation of reward, chances are you’re being exploited.

If the work you present doesn’t feel like a present, it will be promptly relegated to the past.

Hey, guys. If that’s your greeting, we’ve already said goodbye.

The worst clients believe that exceeding their expectations is failing to meet their expectations.

The point of branding is to establish a presence in the minds of the audience, not to merely announce one’s existence to the void.

The phrase “back and forth” does not mean the client sends something back with changes and you obediently go forth and make them.