Disruptive is a miserable word. It’s a cliche. It’s been beat to death and when I hear it, I don’t think of anything positive. I think of an angry baby in the seat behind me on a long flight.
That’s disruptive.
So I won’t use disruptive to talk about what I do for a living… But it fits.
Companies hire me to come in and rethink what would otherwise seem obvious. And often when I’m done, they have that “why didn’t we think of that years ago” epiphany.
Companies new and old have brought me in hundreds of times to see if I can find that piece of magic that nobody else sees. They realize they’re stuck in amber and they need some new thinking. Bring in Greta they say and see what he comes up with.
This just happened again today. And actually, it’s the third company in three weeks to go through this process with me. It’s been a bit exhausting. One in Dallas, then one in DC, and now this one in Austin.
The issue here? New company being built by industry veterans. A new way of doing business for a relatively new market niche, accelerated learning bootcamps for technology skills.
While I can’t get into the brand solution just yet, I can say they realized it was the right approach within minutes. My goal was to be, sorry for the term, disruptive. I spent a long time digging through their offering and all their competitors. I looked at the potential clients, did phone interviews with them, talked to vendors and put it all up on a wall.
It didn’t look as crazy as the charts and graphs that Carrie created in Homeland, but not far from it. The timeline was short and the client was decisive. So basically, in a little over two weeks we went from first introduction meeting to finished creative messaging platform, website concepts and information flow, headlines, wireframes, merch designs, outgoing marketing concepts and an utterly unique approach to everything.
It’s what I live for. Now I write all the Web copy and the site will be up live in a couple weeks. A completely new brand, aimed directly at the right audience with the right messaging.
So now I’m bored. Who wants to kick over some tables in the temple?
