FC NOW: The Fast Company Weblog
November 28, 2007
From Hip-Hop to Geek Wisdom
A couple of weeks ago I attended Advertising Age's The Idea Conference, the ad trade's respectable attempt to bring together a mash-up of interesting thinkers. The one day brain dump began with an exceptionally freestyle monologue by hip hop mogul Russell Simmons, the urban analogue to Richard Branson. Amid his ramblings on meditation, creativity, and name dropping some half dozen of his percolating new businesses (intriguing ones at that: i.e. a financial services company and bank card for the 70 million consumers who don't have bank accounts), he also dropped some street wisdom on how he's achieved maverick status:
"Speak with a new voice. My job is not to repeat."
"Every idea I've ever come up with, no one liked. Anything they did like I knew
was a bullshit idea."
"I have faith in silence. You ain't gonna get shit from the noise."
After Simmons came an impressive lineup ranging from Barry Diller to Jeffrey Hollender (founder of Seventh Generation) to the earnest Utah marketing dude from BlendTec, George Wright, who dreamed up the campy YouTube extreme blending viral sensation "Will It Blend?" (yes, some poor marketing chap in the audience actually donated his BlackBerry for a live blender obliteration, as the rest of the marketing folks in the audience drooled with envy).
But the most unexpected breakout star of the day was by far Robert Stephens, the black-and-white clad (think Revenge of the Nerds) founder of Geek Squad, the VW Beetle-toting tech fix it company he founded in 1984 with 200 bucks. Stevens, who was clearly born with mic in hand and should probably have his own Comedy Central special, enraptured an audience filled with ad agency and marketing folks who are trapped on the treadmills of reports, metrics, focus grouping, bureaucracy--not to mention obsessions with the marketing panecea of the minute, be it MySpace, Second Life, blah, blah, blah (yes, the air left the room when GE's Judy Hu did a tense PowerPoint where "SixSigma" was mentioned at least a dozen times).
Stephens cut through all of that--as Simmons would put it "noise"--with his own story of how he has built a thriving business (now owned by Best Buy) with over 11,000 employees on a very simple premise: the love of geek culture and making every touch point of the droning tech support experience fun. Where did he look for inspiration for the company logo? Old gas stations, to tap into the embedded emotional associations. What industry did he model his business on? Forget the tech industry--the hospitality industry. "We're a service." Where does he recruit talent? He throws Kung Foo Film Festivals--to attract the geeks. How does he advertise? Branded the company's inverted logo on his agents' shoe heels, so when they walk it makes an imprint in the dirt. Here's some of his geek wisdom worth passing along:
"Ramen Noodles. This is why startups are so innovative. Large companies want
to be nimble, that's why they go to "idea" conferences. I suggest starve
departments of money."
"If you look for ideas in your industry, you're stealing. If you steal ideas from
other industries, that's innovative."
...And my favorite one that every marketer should tape to their MacBook:
"I believe advertising is the tax you pay for being unremarkable."
Posted by Danielle Sacks at November 28, 2007 9:18 AM | Category: conferences |
9 Comments
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Stephens is on point. Love what you do and don't be boring. He made an unsexy company sexy.
Raza Imam
www.software-sweatshop.com
I think these types of conferences are the best. I LOVE watching footage from the TED convention on Miro. Lets see what fruit grows from the seeds planted there.
"I believe advertising is the tax you pay for being unremarkable."
Come on. Easy to come up with a "rebel" catch phrase but I don't buy it and taping the phrase to the MacBooks (priceless) makes total sense. The trendy names like Chairman of Ideas and Change Agent work well with the need to be hip and cool vs. smart and effective. The lemmings of the new millennium. Put your deposit down on your iGods and grab hold of the latest trend and follow it blindly until the next one comes along. Stay cool, you punk rock business people, you.
"I believe advertising is the tax you pay for being unremarkable."
Stephens is on point ? Really ?
How many employees of Geek Squad before Best Buy bought them ?
Anyone else catch that Geek Squad toiled in pretty complete obscurity for 20 years before Best Buy bought them and started advertising the brand ?
I mean shoe prints ? 10 years ago if I had saw those shoeprints I would have assumed they were from a bad shoe company.
Does Fast Company even edit any more ?
here, here ColinToal. Here, here.
I saw Robert Stephens speak at a conference pre-Best Buy, and he was walking the talk back then. He's not speaking this way now because Geek Squad is owned by Best Buy; he speaks this way because this is the philosophy he built his company around. Apparently Best Buy saw some value in a "toiling" company to purchase them and expand that brand.
I think the quote is right on.
"I believe advertising is the tax you pay for being unremarkable."
I agree with questioning whether Geek Squad really fell into the remarkable-and-don't-need-advertising category.
That said, the quote is great! Solid brands sell themselves.
-Ben Murphy / TheFatherLife.com
Geek Squad was started in 1994, not 1984. Editors need to do a better job of proofreading the copy.
And Geek Squad isn't anywhere near as good as they promote themselves to be. They've been dispensing hack advice for years, and now they have one of their so-called "Agents" once a week on a daily TV show, and that guy gets an awful lot of things wrong that are so obvious, and even worse, they constantly promote themselves rather than answer the question for the viewer.
I'd never use them; I'm smarter than they are and I don't go around trying to promote myself as knowing everything.
If Robert Stephens was so great for best Buy and the so called "Geek Squad" I am not iompressed. After taking my wife's computer to Best Buy four times since August 2007 and not having the computer repaired I am surprised the geek Squad is competent enough to know where the plug it in so it would work.
To top things off, the store is not permitted to give me the name and phone number of the District manager!
If I ecver get my wife's computer back i think I will take it to the local elementary school to see if one of their students can fix it. The so called experts in the geek Squad have certainly failed.
James Sanders