Adam Ritchie
Adam Ritchie

You’ve heard the mandate to “be a partner, not a vendor.” After decades in the industry, I’ve seen enough to know partnerships only last as long as priorities, people and resources align. As wonderful as it is when they do, the legs of that tripod don’t stand forever.

Every notable brand and organization’s PR history is a story of people taking their turn. Account wins should be celebrated, but also seen through a pragmatic lens that acknowledges it’s simply your turn to take a crack at it.

So what do you do with that time? I make sure the brand or org makes an interesting mark. They don’t have to call me a partner. There’s plenty of respect in being a vendor of good ideas. You don’t get there by servicing an account; you get there by coming up with things nobody else would have thought of, and bringing clients places nobody else would have taken them.

Last month I moderated a panel called, “Credit Where It’s Due – Driving Big Idea Creation.” Yes, credit. Because PR’s directive to work in the shadows is something we need to rethink for the health and the future of our profession. Because the powerful campaigns of this generation’s PR minds deserve to be examined, taught and given an opportunity to inspire beyond the night or two a year we allow ourselves to publicly recognize them.

(L to R) Mike Rush, 360PR+ Partner; Michael Kaye, ARCHER and OKCupid Director of Brand Marketing & Communications; Cristin Barth, GYK Head of Creative; Adam Ritchie, Adam Ritchie Brand Direction Principal; Darlene Hollywood, Hollywood Agency Principal.
(L to R) Mike Rush, 360PR+ Partner; Michael Kaye, ARCHER and OKCupid Director of Brand Marketing & Communications; Cristin Barth, GYK Head of Creative; Adam Ritchie, Adam Ritchie Brand Direction Principal; Darlene Hollywood, Hollywood Agency Principal.
Photo: Angelica English, PR Club Programming Committee Lead

PRSA Boston and PR Club co-hosted this panel, I moderated it and Researchscape sponsored it. The participants were GYK Head of Creative Cristin Barth, Hollywood Agency Principal Darlene Hollywood, ARCHER and OKCupid Director of Brand Marketing & Communications Michael Kaye and 360PR+ Partner Mike Rush. Each panelist was asked to bring a piece of work they created, where an earned-first Big Idea drove an integrated campaign.

I asked Researchscape Customer Success Officer Tony Cheevers to share a key insight from each panelist. Here’s what Tony captured:

  • Cristin Barth presented GYK’s campaign for Sallie Mae called “Sound Mind,” which spawned a lo-fi music album designed to help students study for their final exams. Cristin spoke to the team’s excitement of helping a student loan organization do something cool and engaging.
  • Darlene Hollywood presented a newsjacking extension of the Hollywood Agency “Hello South Shore!” campaign called “The South Shore Bear,” which turned a real-life bear spotted in the campaign’s territory into a social media personality inviting people to visit nearby businesses and participate in activities. Darlene said, “Big Ideas can come with small budgets!”
  • Michael Kaye presented a campaign from ARCHER called “Solicited D*cks,” which highlighted an in-app feature that automatically blurred out nudity before recipients were confronted with it. Michael spoke to the tough ROI questions you encounter when attempting a campaign idea that’s never been done before, and said, “I always lead with data. When I first pitched ARCHER House, our now-annual event on Fire Island, I brought in stats on Fire Island’s summer foot traffic and showed how closely that audience overlapped with our users.”
  • Mike Rush presented a 360PR+ campaign for Dramamine called “The Last Barf Bag,” which used a range of activations to mark the end of a ubiquitous item Dramamine rendered obsolete. Mike said, "Creativity takes discipline. You need a defined, repeatable process to uncover the best insights, guarantee even the introverted voices are heard during brainstorming and solve the right problem.”
  • Adam Ritchie shared his latest PR invention, the “Carry the Round Kit" for Worried About A Veteran: coffee packaged in a gun safe to help Veterans' loved ones start challenging conversations and reduce Veteran gun suicide. Adam identified the core, teachable “moves” in each of the evening’s campaigns, discussing how each timeless move has been applied in the past, and how it can be adapted in future work, as taught in his newly-launched “Mission Control” Big Idea training for brands and agencies.

After speaking with this formidable collection of campaign creators, one thing was clear. The people working at these brands and orgs will never forget the chapters in their careers when this work happened, even after they’ve moved on. And that is a mandate any of us can achieve.

We need to make sure our turn at the controls yields Big Ideas that stand on their own as defined works, whose audacity in simply existing makes the spreadsheets on which they were evaluated seem downright silly.

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Adam Ritchie is the principal at Adam Ritchie Brand Direction and author of “Invention in PR.” He is PRSA Boston’s most recent Diane Davis Beacon Award recipient and a multiple PR Club Bell Ringer winner.