Adrian Fuoco is VP of marketing at Pizza Pizza.
By Adrian Fuoco
It’s been a slice!
I don’t know if there’s going to be a party (unlikely), but I’ll soon be celebrating 25 years of Canadian marketing contributions of varying quality and impact. I’ve been fortunate to work at one great agency – Wunderman – and three fantastic Canadian brands – Canadian Tire, Boston Pizza and, now, Pizza Pizza – home of the “Fixed Rate Pizza.”
And with that said, here are a few thoughts from my experience for your consideration.
The power of positivity
Good work is difficult if people aren’t getting along and having fun. Putting as much effort (as you put into budgets, strategy and creativity) into building a team with the right attitude and ensuring harmony within the department will pay off in the long run and life won’t be miserable on the way there!
Do more of what the brand does well
Call me lazy (most do), but if something is already working, why not put even more effort and dollars into doing more of it? We sometimes get sick of our own stuff way before anybody else does, and the odds of the next thing working as well as the thing that is working now aren’t great. My formula? I like to set aside 20% of time and money for shiny new ideas and the rest for optimizing and accelerating the tried-and-true.
Make noise
In our high-paced data-driven world, making noise still makes a difference. Just try not to drive people up the wall and keep it interesting. It’s critical to have great insights, strategy, creative and all the rest, but ultimately if that’s all packaged up into two to three campaigns a year with long quiet periods in between, while someone else is out there with a steady stream of consistent activity all the time, it’s going to be an uphill battle to win more customers.
Try new (sometimes “out there”) things
Credit goes to one of my great agency partners for instilling this idea years ago: If you’ve got your fundamentals in place, start putting effort into taking risks on smaller or sometimes “out there,” low-budget, creative-driven ideas and see if something sticks. They inspire your team and creative partners, the risk associated with failure is low and if you hit something it’s a low-cost victory for the brand. At BP we made it to Cannes with the Mini Pizza Patio Chairs, which was one of those “add-on” ideas at the end of a creative presentation.
Clever advertising is art, and a privilege to create
I’ve always loved ads. When I was a kid, I was obsessed with TV commercials, infomercials, radio jingles, product placements and Consumers Distributing catalogues. I’d stay up all night considering the virtues of the Ronco Food Dehydrator even though I can’t stand beef jerky, turkey jerky or even dried watermelon. To this day, a clever ad is a free, fun escape, and while enjoying one, you may actually find something you really want or even need. They’re an art form we get paid for, and I consider myself very lucky to do this for a living – something to always remember.
And lastly, make the logo bigger
Just kidding (kind of).
