Adam Ferrier, co-founder and chief national tinker at Thinkerbell, has said that the agency’s philosophy is not to be consumer-centric. Instead, its staffers do not try to guess what consumers think and listen to the brands the agency works with.
Speaking to The Growth Distillery’s B-Side vodcast series in partnership with B&T and shot at this year’s Cannes in Cairns, Ferrier explained that in order to stand out in a crowded market, marketer and agency folk alike need to understand that customers do not think in terms of brand, they think in terms of category.
“No customer needs your brand, they don’t need your brand, they just need a podcast to listen to. They don’t need your particular brand of car, they just need a car,” he said.
“Once they have a need for the category, your brand has to get stuck in their head. So the more you listen to the customer, the more you’re hearing category needs and you’ll be more and more like everybody else. If you can get that strong vision about your own brand and be true to that and meet customer needs with that brand, that’ll be a stronger way to build your brand rather than going ‘Right, what does the customer need, what do they want?’ because it’s more than likely that there are three or four other brands already servicing that exact need and they probably don’t need you at all.”
The B-Side’s host, Dan Krigstein said that Ferrier’s approach was “very counter to convention.”
“Yeah, everyone’s becoming chief customer officer and that kind of thing,” replied Ferrier.
“It’s not a pitch-winning strategy to go in there and say that but anyway… it’s kinda what we believe. Or what I believe anyway.”
On that count, Ferrier might be doing himself and the Thinkerbell team a slight disservice. The agency has been winning pitches recently. Just last week, it picked up the creative and strategy account for Chinese automaker GWM. In February, it picked up the Hort Innovation account.
However, by not thinking like the customer, it has certainly produced some of the most interesting work of any agency in Australia recently. Its “Nobody Beats Dan Murphy’s” campaign won B&T’s Campaign of the Month for May. The agency was also named Advertising Agency of the Year at last year’s B&T Awards.
Perhaps that work has stemmed from the agency’s different approach to professional and personal development. Ferrier said that professional innovation is all around “creating mental availability.”
“Within our organisation, we have things like mind expansion which is an extra week’s holiday as long as you promise to expand your mind, we have things like Hot or Gold where you can get $5,000 to go towards an idea you’ve got and various other things,” said Ferrier.
“But all those things are ways for us to be able to create something interesting to communicate to our clients as well about ourselves, so we just maintain mental availability. Innovation in the role of businesses is a means to just staying top of mind for consumers.”
Watch the full episode below:
