Customer Reviews

Juicing the Orange: How to Turn Creativity into a Powerful Business Advantage

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There's always a whiff of Agency Manifesto hanging around any book that emanates from Madison Avenue - a sense of self-justification perhaps. But where Kevin Roberts' self-delusional SiSoMo smacks of Saatchis agenda to repackage the concept of moving pictures in the cyber age, Pat Fallon's "Juicing the Orange" is a much more laid-back affair, recounting some big stories from the last 25 years of his agency's work. The central argument is that in the current media environment, the winning strategy is not going to be about media tonnage (how much you can spend) but on the creative leverage you can attain through a truly hot idea.

Is this really a new idea? I don't think it is, but the stories, well told, show great examples of creative thinking in the services of winning against the tendency for brands to commoditize, of reaching customers when there is very little media budget (BMW's internet camapign) of rescuing a laughable brand from extinction (Skoda, a Euro car brand the equivalent of American Motors' Gremlin, became sexy again through great creative and solid product development from VW).

What gives this book extra clout, and puts it on the "deserves to be read" category is its call to management of companies to unleash the creative potential within their own organisations. Each of the stories may reflect a good campaign, sure, but the kernel of each campaign comes from the creative essence of the client.

This calls for the ability to attain truly deep insights about the organisation, its culture and its marketing challenge. In the end, the story isn't just about a hot agency - it is about visionary, sometimes risk taking management, and incisive truly effect market research.

In the end the authors transcend the 'agency manifesto' syndrome, and issue an important challenge to business people. The timing is good, the message is right on.

True or false: is advertising obsolete? Fallon and Senn say true---unless it changes. And they go about showing how it must change in recounting their best campaigns(with some intellectual honesty in mentioning their losers). The Big Ideas: don't steal a competitor's emotion, find your own; ads must bear an A to B connection in more revenue generation; take risks to survive because incremental change will kill you. The chapter on Lee Jeans is one of the best: trust the focus groups when they have passion(here, teenagers want to feel indestructible in their jeans); don't ape the competition(the strong desire to be sexy like levi's); don't be afraid to go to your roots(here, bring back a doll icon from the compnay's past); and know, above all else, that emotions drive decisions---the reason is tacked on later. They also talk about how they run their shop---fire prima dona employees or unreasonable clients; understand what is worth fighting over; undertstand that creativity is team driven; believe in a few core idea and push them over and again.

I found this book as enlightening and delightful as sitting and having a drink with a great leader in advertising. Personally, it has reinvigorated my own perspective as an agency Account Manager and I'm excited and motivated all over again about the accomplishments and contributions we can all make in marketing.

I was thrilled to get this book and was looking forward to getting real step by step insights on how to create better advertising or move audiences. Instead what I got was a cursory overview of watered down ideas and then an agency review of their big name campaigns. The good ideas in this book would have made a good magazine article.

And, they spend a lot of time hanging their hat on United Airlines which is still losing money and experientally has some of the worst customer service in the history of airlines. Yet they laud them as an amazing company and one of the most successful campaigns they've run.

For me what would have made this book better is a breakdown of exactly how they created several of the campaigns. Looking at it in detail for example "This is how we came up with this idea and these are the steps we applied in detail that you can use."

I know these guys do good work and create great ad campaigns, it is just too bad that they didn't pull back the curtain and show everyone else how they can use some of the best techniques that they've refined and developed to create their own great ads.

Have you ever wondered why some ad campaigns soar and others thud? It's definitely not the amount of money thrown at them. In Juicing the Orange: How to Turn Creativity into a Powerful Business Advantage by Pat Fallon and Fred Senn, they argue that it comes down to creatively solving that one key business issue the client has.

Contents: Redefining Creativity in Today's Marketing Environment; Outpacing the Commoditization of Your Brand; Fighting for Your Brand's Voice; Establishing and Leveraging a Category Advantage; Overcoming a Serious Branding Problem; Reviving a Mature Consumer Brand; Reenergizing a Mature Business Brand; Choosing the Best Media for the Message; Marketing a Network of Businesses Under One Brand; Rethinking Customer Engagement; Lessons Learned; Notes; Index; About the Authors

Fallon and Senn are co-founders of Fallon Worldwide, a global advertising company. They use a number of real-life client examples to show what it takes to run a successful advertising campaign. Much of it starts by listening to the company and also to the people who buy (or don't buy) the products. These insights, coupled with an examination of the industry and competition, often points to the business problem to be solved. It may be an attempt to "uncommoditize" your offering or an effort to re-educate the buying public as to what they should or shouldn't be doing. For instance, Purina Dog Chow was a respected brand, but sales were slumping. After listening to pet owners, vets, breeders, and trainers, it became apparent that the brand wasn't the issue. The buying public had mistakenly assumed that variety was good for a dog's diet, where the professionals knew that consistency is more important. Instead of trying to push the brand, they started educating the consumer on dietary best practices. Once informed, the consumer reverted back to a single brand of dog food, and Purina was able to once again capitalize on their strong branding.

I think the thing I appreciated most about this book was the honesty. Not all their efforts were stunning successes, and they didn't try to gloss those over or deflect the blame. There's risk involved in many memorable campaigns, like Skoda's ads making fun of their horrible reputation after they had reversed their engineering failures. Even the winners were not always a sure thing or nearly got axed before they were executed (like the EDS cat herder commercial). But after reading these stories and the underlying principles, you'll come away with a much greater appreciation for what goes into a successful marketing effort.

A fun read, and one that I really wish had been longer... I was enjoying it!

I loved this book. I found this fun and entertaining while providing specific, salient, concise and actionable ideas on managing a business while being driven by creativity. I'm a recovering business executive just starting my own entrepreneurial enterprise and I found this work enormously helpful in helping me define and launch my business. I can't recommend this book enough. GET THIS BOOK!

This is a book that talks about advertising/branding creativity. It's not about product design or R&D creativity.

Advertising creativity has a particularily difficult sales job because while people say they want creativity in their ads they tend to look at a group of ads or ad campaigns and select the traditional. After all, if you get too creative you get outside of what people are accustomed to seeing. And since 'everybody' is an expert on advertising the managers with the budgets select the ads.

A case in point was trying to sell the Skoda (automobile) brand name in England. The proposed campaign made a joke about how bad the Skoda brand name was in England. The boss from the factory says 'You want to run ads telling people the Skoda is crap? I won't approve it.' The British managers went around him, bought the program, it yielded great success.

This book is mostly a book of stories of ad campaigns that were successful. The other kind don't get written up. The lessons to be learned are in the research they did into the brand images, etc. of their clients.

I am not going to not recommend this book. However, if you have't read many books on marketing/advertising, there are much better authors in the field: Scott Bedbury, Al Ries, Gerald Zaltman, and Sergio Zyman, and Harry Beckwith, to name just a few.

To me, this book from Pat Fallon felt more like a me-too in the category, rather than a heart-felt effort. It comes across as a quickly written attempt to capitalize on a genre. The book has some insights into specific campaigns, but lacks any true depth. And quite frankly, there is nothing new here, unless you are new to books on this subject.

Then there is the name. Hm. "Jucing the Orange." It isn't very creative, is it? It seems like a poor attempt at trying to create a mémé, a phrase, that will catch on. I sincerely hope it doesn't, as it truly lacks any ingenuity. It is banal, at best. Yeah, I get it: squeeze until you get something - everything - out of it. But, really, juicing an orange isn't that difficult, so does not fairly reflect the late nites, the stuggle for the killer idea, and the stress involved in this field.

Do yourself a favor, and pick up Scott Bedbury's "A New Brand World" before bothering with this fluff piece.

Length:: 1:11 Mins

In a 60-second review, Jurgen Wolff, author of "Creativity Now!" reveals a few of the key points in "Juicing the Orange." Creativity Now: Get inspired, create ideas and make them happen now!

I read a book recently called, Juicing the Orange, How to Turn Creativity into Powerful Business Advantage, by Fallon Senn. Of course it is about marketing.

This is a book by people for ad agencies and engages in a lot of self-congratulations about the brilliant marketing they have done. (although I have to admit, some of it is brilliant). Most books written by ad agency people have a degree of this.

One suggestion they make that is totally valid is hit the road with customers. That is not only to visit customers but to look how customers use your specific products.

Senn tells the story of how BMW put on a mini-Utube type video on the internet that ended up with thousands of downloads and had huge impact.

A good read if marketing interests you.