People always told me growing up, both in business and in life, that all companies simply wanted one thing: ROI.

They insisted on it. Both my friends who have never started a business in their life and the mighty business moguls from above.

Maybe I was naive but I never thought this was a satisfactory answer.

I thought to myself: Is that all that life in business is? Is that all that people care about?

When you look in the world and spot people that truly care in business – you can see that this ROI principle doesn’t quite withstand scrutiny.

That clients aren’t simply buying something from you to get one more percent of engagement rate or yet one more customer.

More often then not, they are buying an insight from you. They are buying a feeling. They are buying a form a status. They are buying a story that they can then go tell their friends and their boss about.

Some groups of people coldly are just in the pursuit of ROI, but I find if you look closer and realize that these customers are not robots trying to optimize performance but rather humans that feels things – it makes you realize where the true value of marketing comes from.

To not sell numbers but to connect with humans.

Are you approachable?

Most businesses aren’t and that’s why they struggle.

Marketing in a lot of ways is simply the pursuit of making your business more approachable to people.

Once it’s more approachable they will engage more. They will be able to understand it. They will feel comfortable taking action.

Getting attention feels great. It’s like a drug because it well in fact is.

It feels great to have our followers and likes up. It feels great to be talked about in a positive and sometimes negative light. We like the roller coaster. We like the drama.

But what about paying attention. What if instead of craving attention, we seek to generate it in ourselves and other people?

What if we noticed things in the world proactively instead of reacted to it?

Marketing is built off of attention. You need to get it and pay it.

When someone considers your product or service – there is a potential exchange in momentum.

There is a potential exchange in momentum because people can’t just adopt your product or service out of nothing – they have to replace in the process to do that.

They have to stop using another product. They have to change their setup. They gain time over here. They loose time over here.

Each product or service creates this cause and effect type of situation.

The clearer we can get about these cause and effect relationships – and ask: What do they have to change or give up to use my product or service?

And: when they start using the product or service – how do they change?

The creative process is about about embracing the creative process.

Once you understand that ideas aren’t original – they are recombination.

Once you understand that you don’t create a big idea but you discover it.

Once you understand that the big idea does come from inside the agency but from the outside.

Once you understand that there is no bad ideas.

Once you understand that it’s not even about the amount of ideas you come up with but how many you execute on.

Then you start to embrace the creative process.

Marketing takes your customers to the future because it changes them.

It takes them from the past: the center of their fears and desires to the future: everything they ever wanted.

Your ideas and marketing efforts is what acts as the catalyst for this change to happen.

Solving problems for customers is great.

But it what also matters is how they got to solving that problem.

People talk just as much about the solution as they do about the process to that solution.

Great advertising and marketing must be measured at the end by some type of salesmanship standard. Not from an entertainmentship standard.

It always has to come down to: how did the piece of marketing and advertising influence or change that person.

How did that then translate into business impact?

Last week I felt a lost.

It felt like I couldn’t come up with a good ad or even a decent idea but I figured out my problem.

My back was against the wall. I felt like I lost the ability to produce great work. But then it came to me. I knew exactly what I lacked.

I lacked full immersion.

If you want to learn a language at a fast and high quality rate, then you go to where they speak that language and immerse yourself in it. Into the culture and into the people.

That’s how you learn a language fast but it’s also how you come up with a quality idea fast.

You have to read, watch and observe the industry, competitors, the client and most importantly the customer with precise (and obsessive) detail.

Only though the full immersion can you create successful big ideas.

Do you lack full immersion in your advertising?

What are people expecting?

To many people fail to ask this question in advertising. People have seen all of you bad advertisements before – don’t do the same thing or you will be put into a box.

You can either match patterns or break them. Pick which patterns you want to match and which ones you want to break.

This combination if done correctly will allow them to remember you.