Who the hell ARE you??

Ahhhh, Halloween.

Such a fun time of year to be a kid, or an adult for that matter.  It's the holiday that offers the best opportunity to use our imagination and creativity to create a new persona, a new identity if you will.  Or take on the persona of someone else, like we did in our office today, doing our best impression of our company president Pam (4th from the left) or her husband Ron (second from the right).  I am proud to say I tied for first place in the guys category!

(L-R) Julie, Clarice, Alice, Pam, Lindsay & Delores

(L-R) James, Michael, John, me, Tony, Paul, Ron & Charles

All this dress up got me thinking about being yourself.  I think in business and in life, there is often times a temptation to become something else, or to try and emulate what we think others want us to be.  Take for example a big new business pitch I have been part of over the past few weeks.  Its a piece of business that means a lot to our agency, so we spent an incredible amount of time and energy preparing for the meetings we've had with our prospective client.  I am talking about dozens of slides, charts, budgets, samples, timelines, creative strategies, media plans, market research... weeks of preparation to present a plan that we hope to execute in 2011.  All along, there was an opportunity to deviate from "who we are" instead to "who we think they want us to be."  It's a huge piece of business...  we want to win at all costs, right?  

But in the end, we stuck to who we are.  We presented what we felt was the best possible plan, using our best team and our best resources.  We stuck to the things we know well, and didn't add things "just because they'll want to hear it" or because "our competition will be talking about that."  Our projections for ROI and estimated costs were very conservative - leaving lots of room to impress with results should we win, not with empty promises up front that can't be fulfilled later.  What would you do if you were in our shoes?

We will find out next week if we'll get a chance to work on the business.  Regardless of the result, I am proud of our team and what we put together.  I believe in our people, our ideas, and our strategy.  We didn't make any suggestions or promises we can't fulfill 110%.

I am not sure about other firms, but with us, what you see is what you get. 

Except maybe on Halloween...