Jujitsu and Karate are two different fighting styles. Although both methods originated from the same area in Japan, they represent two distinct ways of approaching a problem. One is a direct attack and one is flexible.

Karate is about landing one big blow to end the fight. You combine the correct timing, technique and strength to disable your opponent from continuing in combat through one hit. At the higher level, you demonstrate this through breaking boards. Cracking bricks. Feats of strength.

Jujitsu looks to use your enemy’s momentum against them. To go with the flow. It’s more about grappling and throws than overtly offensive maneuvers. You let your opponent in close and then use their strength to accomplish your goals.

In pitching ideas, some people try to use karate. Teams will work hard and try to bully their ideas into being bought. They assume that their expertise in the field or the brilliance of their ideas are enough to get them sold. They view stubbornness as a weapon. They think that if they just push, push, push, the idea will be bought. That’s not the case.

You have to approach the sell like jujitsu. You need to work with the your client’s momentum to get the right ideas sold. Get in close. Use their motivations, their energy, their opinions to get your ideas made. You need to adapt. Stay flexible, listen and deliver. Don’t waste your energy trying to change things that you are not able to affect.

The might of a river flows around a rock. It doesn’t try to punch through it.

- Christian

I saw this quote a couple of days ago. It’s amazing how most of life’s most valuable lessons are all taught in books that we read before we are 12 years old.

- Christian

In Toronto, the Toronto International Film Festival has taken the city by storm over the past week and a half. I was able to snag some tickets to premiers and screenings due to the fact that I helped out with this year’s ad campaign. Anyways, this resulted in me attending the premier of Ben Affleck’s second directorial effort – The Town.

Going into this movie, I thought what everyone else thought. Ben Affleck is a douche. Why the hell was I going to listen to this guy talk about his movie? I should have picked the Matt Damon film. Damn it. But with only a few words before the film, he was able to totally change my perception of him.

It wasn’t so much about what he said, but more about how he said it. He spoke openly and honestly about his struggles to make a movie. He talked about losing the confidence of Hollywood. He thanks the people who believed in him and gave him the money to take another shot at creating a full feature. But most importantly, he came across as genuine. He was honest. He demonstrated vulnerability. All of this worked to transform my perception of him from a douchey movie star to a human being.

People respect honesty. They like it when you tell the truth. Even if it isn’t exactly what they want to hear, people can’t argue with the truth. It’s something that we occasionally forget in the pace of business in creative industries. Sometimes we are so concerned about selling a concept or changing someone’s mind that we forget an open and honest conversation is usually the best way about it.

- Christian

When it to comes to pitching, it’s all about confidence. Whether you’re selling yourself in an interview, presenting an idea to a client or convincing your friends to see the movie that you really want to see. People need to believe that you can get it done. That you can deliver. That you trust yourself.

Like Johnny Drama, everyone goes through periods where they doubt themselves. Times when the market is interested in a different look. Times when people don’t consider your skill set as valuable and unique. Times when people tell you that you’re too old to compete.

But as long as you have the drive and believe in yourself, you have a shot. You may face rejection, but if you are willing to persevere, adapt, and improve yourself then you’ll succeed. You’ll sell your idea, you’ll get the job and you’ll find success. The key is to remain confident and learn from your failures.

And remember. You are the fucking game.

- Christian

Great ideas are just that. They’re just great ideas. They’re not real. They don’t exist in the real world. And great ideas are scary. They’re tough to sell. Because they’re different. They’re stuff people haven’t seen before.

Sometimes, they’re actually unsellable. And that’s where the difference is made. When people do it themselves. They take them from being ideas to being tangible things in the real world.

It’s easy to give up. It’s easy to outsource a task to someone else and then just give up when they can’t figure out how to do it. But chances are that when you get a proxy to do something, they won’t have the same level of passion that you do. They’re just looking answer the question “Can it be done?” with a “Yes” or “No”. They’re not trying to answer “How can this be done?”

In advertising, there are two types of creatives. There are those that come up with a concept and then farm it off to the production department to figure out how it gets done. This happens most of the time. And it does produce great work. But most of the time, it’s prone to hitting roadblocks. And dying a slow death of a thousand paper cuts until someone eventually gives up and produces something mediocre.

Then there are those that have an irrational passion for producing their ideas. And they’ll do anything to get it done. They’ll cast their friends and family to bring their concept to life. They’ll buy an HD camcorder from BestBuy and return it after they shoot stuff with it. They’ll cut the videos themselves in iMovie. Who do you think gets the best work done?

If you want something to get done, do it yourself. Because the only person you can count on to have the level of passion required to get it done is you.

- Christian

Image found on I Can Read.

That’s right. I said it. The world need more fights. More bare knuckle brawling. More punches to the face. Why? Because compromise kills ideas.

We live in a world where people are too willing to play nice. Nobody wants to offend the other person. And what suffers is ideas. In order to get a concept sold through the proper hierarchy, you make compromises. They’re just small changes, gradually pulling your idea back in the realm of the familiar. And the concept dies a slow death as a result of a thousand little paper cuts. The idea that had the potential to be great and earth-shattering suddenly looks a lot like a lot of the other stuff out there. But just a little bit different.

People need to stand fiercely behind their ideas, concepts or principles. If you’re willing to punch someone in the face for something, I respect you and your idea that much more. It shows passion. It show commitment. It shows you’re not a pussy.

And when you know you’re going to have to throw down, you show up a lot more confident, researched and prepared. Because nobody wants to get knocked out in the first round.

- Christian

Inspired by this post.

I stumbled on some sneaky wisdom from Seth on how to better sell stuff through:

If you need to get your audacious proposal/clever ad/new project past your boss, go ahead and add some gratuitous brackets here and {there}.

“Hey, what are these weird brackets doing here,” she might say.
“Oh, I like them. I think they add drama to the headline.”
“Take them out!”

Giving in early makes it easier to keep the important stuff in later.

- Seth

I’ve definitely heard about this technique a bunch of times from creative teams, but I’ve never been in the room with someone who has actually had the balls to use it. I think people are either so confident that the “work” will sell itself and they don’t want to muddy it up, or they are afraid that someone is going to call them out on using a blatant selling technique.

But I’m all for it. You need to do what you need to do in order to sell your ideas through. If it’s manipulating the situation so that people are in a favorable mood to agree with you, why not? People do it all the time. One thing that I try to do is always have food at a meeting when I’m trying to sell. People are happy when they’re eating. And happy people buy ideas more easily that grumpy people.

It’s not sneaky. It’s smart.

- Christian

It was during one of these discussions that I started to think how picking up girls requires a similar skill set to selling ideas. Selling ideas isn’t always about the ideas, but it is always about selling yourself. Here’s the seven that came to me at the bar:

1. Confidence. Women like confident men. It signals success and stability. The same applies to the people that to whom you are pitching your ideas. They don’t want to throw their money behind someone who doesn’t believe in himself. And confidence is contagious. It reassures people that they are choosing the right person.

2. Smile. This ladders up to the previous point. Smiles show that you’re relaxed, happy and confident. And they make you likeable. Nobody like a brooding individual. To have a strangers invest in you, you have to get them to like you. And it’s human nature to like someone who smiles.

3. Practice. On Saturday, it was safe to say that I was out of practice. There were definitely some errors in conversation and judgment. But that’s why we practice. To get better. To become more comfortable. To be so familiar with your material that you simply execute and tweak the details while your pitching. To know your ideas so well that they could ask you any question, and you would know the answer.

4. Stand Out. Dating is competitive. Women have so many options and can meet a ton of new people in a night. The key is to be memorable and stand out from the crowd. How do you do that? Be different. Look different. Act differently. Don’t ask them what they do for a living. Get in to an argument about obese people should be charged for two airplane tickets. The same applies to pitching your ideas. Don’t try to appease the person that you’re pitching to. Have an opinion that’s different from everyone else’s. Make them notice you and give them something to talk about when you leave the room.

5. Demonstrate Value. Why would someone talk to you? Are you interesting? Are you making the people around you laugh? Are you a good storyteller? When approaching a new lady friend, you have 1 minute to demonstrate value. And then the politeness ends. You have to prove that you can add value to their night within that 60 seconds, or you are out. The same applies for pitching your ideas. The people important enough to jump start the execution of a great idea are usually busy. Demonstrate value in the first 5 minutes, or don’t bother. Value can be enthusiasm, knowledge of a category or even interpersonal skills … whatever! Just demonstrate your value quickly.

6. Timing. If you wait until a girl is leaving the bar to approach her, she’s not going to give you much of a conversation. Why? Timing. She’s already decided what to do with the rest of her night. You’re working against momentum. The same thing happens if you are pitching ideas. If your boss is too busy with work to be properly receptive to you ideas, it’s not going to sell-in. Take them out to lunch or coffee. Get them away from the distractions of the office. Then pitch your ideas uninterrupted.

7. Avoid The Drunk Girl. She looked pretty cute from across the room. She smiled at you, so you went over to talk. And then you find out that you’re talking to the token drunk girl. Unless you are a complete dirt bag, nothing good ever comes of the crazy drunk girl at the party. She’s loud and obnoxious. She scares off other prospects. But most of all, she wastes your time. In pitching your ideas, the same thing applies. A prospect can look very optimistic until you get involved with them. And then you find out that they just like talking about making decisions, but don’t actually have the power to execute them. If things aren’t moving forward, don’t waste your time. Cut your losses and move on.

I always find it interesting how lessons from the real world can apply to the business world. Until I realize that they really are one and the same. So, whether you’re using this to sell yourself or sell your ideas … good luck!

- Christian

There is a traditional Japanese soda called Ramune. They use a different way to seal the bottle. A glass marble is wedged in the neck so liquid can’t escape. You press the marble inside when you want to drink. Then you shake the bottle and the expanding gas held the marble back in place again. A beautiful one piece recyclable unit.

Simple.

- Christian

The article brought up a question that he was gracious enough to answer for me:

Christian: What’s the most recent “crazy” thing that you’ve done to get an idea sold through?

Dave: We won a pitch with an idea I got out of that George Lois book. We were pitching for a newspaper account at 9:00am Monday morning. So Sunday night at 11pm we got a copy of Monday’s paper. We wrote the script overnight, from the stories in the paper. We shot it 7:00am Monday morning. And at the pitch we were able to play a commercial based on what was in the paper that had just gone on the newstands. We won the pitch, so the book works.

I can’t wait for the next pitch that I get to work on, so we can try something impossible, impactful and awesome.

- Christian