Brady Media Group

Passion. Purpose. And a lofty plan.
One leads to the other.
And without all three, your business is doomed to mediocrity.
If it survives at all.

That’s the gist of a new book I’m reading called It’s Not What You Sell, It’s What You Stand For by Roy Spence.
He’s the big boss at GSD&M in Austin. It’s a marketing and branding agency that has helped BMW, Wal-Mart, Southwest Airlines, Whole Foods and the University of Texas come up with some of the ad industry’s most powerful concepts.

“You are now free to move about the country.” (Southwest Airlines)

“Don’t Mess With Texas.” (State of Texas)

“The Ultimate Driving Machine” (BMW)

And a bunch of other clever tag lines that speak to a higher purpose or – yes – even a calling. Spence maintains – with a little help from his buddy Jim Collins (business leadership guru and author of Good to Great) that life is too short and talented workers have too many options to even consider working for a company that doesn’t inspire a thrill – a “joie de vivre” – in its employees – who then inspire the same fervor in customers.

And I think he’s right. Spence uses one of my favorite quotes – from Irish playwrite George B. Shaw, “The true joy in life is being used by a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one.” So that – for Whole Foods – you’re not just selling gorceries, you’re “selling the highest quality natural and organic foods… and putting the customer as the most important stakeholder”. CEO John Mackey – according to marketing whiz Spence – is on a crusade to offer “conscious capitalism” and change the world along the way. Pretty heavy lifting for a little Austin grocer.

Bot honestly, I believe the same thing. I’m really trying to inspire a tiny team of co-workers and journalists to step outside of mainstream, old-school, died in the wool, big-box media institutions and join me in re-crafting how great stories are created and delivered to the marketplace.

I want to create digital newsrooms for all of our clients, so that they can employ us to create the storyline – the digital message in text, audio and video – to communicate their distinct story to the world. Instead of hoping that the traditional PR team can convince mainstream media to write or shoot the story, why not have a team of specialists create it directly? Launch it on the internet, and thereby speak directly with clients, shareholders and employees?

I call it the democratization of media messaging and journalism. Everybody has as story to tell, everybody has something to say about how they distinguish themselves from competitors. So everybody should be able to tap the skills of a journalist.

Heck, who knows?
One day we might see a journalist in a C-Suite office as the “Chief Storytelling Officer” – in the same way that big companies employ a CPA as a CFO, an HR specialist to manage personnel and an IT guy handing the computers as CTO.

Why not?

According to Roy Spence, everybody needs a big purpose.
Mine happens to be re-employing journalists.