The Invisible Middle
Written by Steve Simoncic
I have a confession to make
To my brothers and sisters in the creative community. To my former big-agency self. I make channel ads. I make highly targeted, customer-focused, value-chain-optimizing, content and communications. And worse … I like it.
Yes, my confession is considered, but not contrite. I make no apologies. I have chosen this life because somewhere in my dark heart I knew I had to. Allow me to explain.
As a young creative person, you are programmed to do things that will make you famous, build your brand, and either enable you to keep your job or get another better job. Your currency is your buzz, your reputation, your link. And you spend years, sometimes decades, nurturing and growing and humble bragging about your link. And it is a ton of fun. And – as you may have guessed from my excessive use of the second person – it is all about you.
Now sometimes your self-interest aligns with the best interests of your client, and everybody wins – a lauded, awarded campaign that actually builds the brand and drives sales. When that holy trinity lines up – it’s magic. It’s also rare. Sexy, effective, award-winning work is lovely – but the orientation of the old model is – for lack of a better word – a$# backwards. Instead of aspiring to be brash, semi-celebrities in a sad attempt for validation from an industry that receives little regard or respect outside itself … we ought to be servants. Yep servants. We – the creative thinkers and makers - ought to be more blue-collar. Less black fitted jacket. More grinder than glittery.
My dad was a blue-collar guy. A machine repairman in factory in Detroit. And it took me about 30 years in the game to realize he and I do the same thing. We are called in to fix a machine that is broken. He had his tools. I have mine. We both serve at the pleasure of our boss and our role is to make the machine work better. Everything else is just noise. The goal is to be useful. To solve problems quickly, creatively, and elegantly. And to do it consistently over a career. To be a professional fixer. And that means waking up every morning knowing there will always be more broken machines than fixed machines, but still grabbing a cup of coffee and a lunch pail and keep trying to fix them anyway.
So, am I saying creatives are more like plumbers than sculptors? Yes. I am. And that’s a good thing. Everyone needs a good plumber. Everyone likes a good plumber. It is a useful, noble thing to do that contributes to a functioning society in a small but essential and meaningful way, which leads me to the invisible middle.
The Middle
You may have heard of the marketing funnel from … um… every quarterly planning meeting you’ve ever endured in your career. At the top of said funnel is communication designed to attract new users. Historically, this has been a $3 million commercial starring someone like Shakira, Ed Sheeran, Lil Baby, the USC marching band, or more recently a Twitch stunt involving Shakira, Ed Sheeran, Lil Baby, and the USC marching band… all designed to get the creative team noticed and get the brand noticed…. kind of.
Then there is the creative work at the bottom of the funnel. This is the dirty slugfest of programmatic marketing, instantaneous auction marketing, where an AI-written, algorithmically vetted headline is paired with a visual that data science proves elicits more thumb-stops and clicks. This is hand-to-hand, F-the brand combat where marketers will say and do almost anything to win at auction. Not exactly a creative panacea.
Then there is the invisible middle – a virtual creative Eden to the programmatic Hoth. The invisible middle is where brands are built and where sales happen. This is where market share is protected and/or stolen. And where success is either realized or squandered. This is the playing field. The pitch. The arena that I have chosen to enter in the September of my career. And it is fun as hell.
A Balanced Ecosystem
The invisible middle is the channel. It includes many audiences and stakeholders with myriad pain points and issues. For a car part the invisible middle may include retailers, shop owners and technicians. For a fancy piece of software, the invisible middle can include… well… retailers, shop owners, and technicians. The point is, virtually every product or service has some form of channel it traverses as it makes its way to the end user. This is the machine my team is often called on to fix.
And what you end up building is beyond a machine – it is a balanced ecosystem – a Performance Branding Ecosystem that both builds the brand and drives sales. It begins with brand purpose, activates the brand through brand activations and brand experience, and drives growth through performance marketing. All driven by the data that pulses through the ecosystem.
We use our creative tools to educate, inspire, entertain and activate the customers and stakeholders in the ecosystem. We create experiences and activations for these key channel stakeholders. It is no longer about campaign or clicks – it is about designing business solutions, turning complicated multivariate equations turned into exciting, fully-realized creative activations. It is about hyper-specific ideas for hyper-specific audiences. And that creative cocktail can produce some pretty cool work. And if we do our job well, we achieve a healthy, balanced ecosystem, and the channel stakeholders reward our clients with orders, loyalty and ultimately growth – which is the whole point of all this anyway.
And this kind of work puts me at the center of my client's business. I sit in SLT meetings. I know the C-suite because I am relevant to their business. I am no longer a little once-a-month comic relief for the kids in marketing. I am actually in the game with my clients, using my creative tools to help make their machine run better. It is no longer about me. It is about them. And my work has come to feel oddly and unexpectedly more substantial and, happily, more useful.
So yes. I confess. I am doing the work that doesn’t hit most stages in the rose-gold auditoriums of award land. I am doing humble work. Hard work. Meaningful work for my clients. Slugging it out in the invisible middle and helping businesses grow. And the dirty secret is … it’s kind of awesome.
About Steve Simoncic
Steve is Partner/CCO at Morning Walk. Steve takes a decidedly blue collar approach to the craft of solving business problems through data and creativity. A writer by trade, a creative director by choice, and a strategist by default, Steve has had the privilege to work on some of the most successful brands in the world including McDonald's, General Motors, Samsung and Disney. He spent his formative years at Leo Burnett and the last 13 years at MW where he is helping clients build healthy Performance Branding Ecosystems. Steve also writes plays, literary fiction and punk-country songs for his band Trickshooter Social Club.
