Last night’s Mad Men episode was one of my favorites of the season. The content would still make my parents blush but the elements of business, client management and strategic direction are a lot of fun to watch. It’s noteworthy that Mad Men has more adult viewers aged 25-54 with household income greater than $100,000 of any show on cable. People in business love this show. I think anyone who has experienced landing or losing a large client can’t help but contemplate what the characters’ personal distractions might mean to their business and to a greater extent, the idea of managing clients on the merit of your work and the marriage of your creative vision and the client need. The big names are fun too. Jaguar. Heinze. Chevy. Vicks. One thing has not changed over the last 6 seasons; the creative vision of Don Draper.
It is important that companies have a defined vision. A previous Mad Men business lesson was knowing who you are, an apropos theme given the seemingly fruitless quest for identity demonstrated by Roger on the therapists couch and Don on the bed of half of the wives in Manhattan. But having a vision, and articulating that vision end where execution begins. Blogger Kelli Claypool maps out a good starting point for putting your business vision on paper http://drmommyonline.com/why-a-vision-statement-is-vital-to-the-success-of-your-business. Harvard Business Review writers James Collins and Jerry Porras take it a step further. In a dated article http://hbr.org/1996/09/building-your-companys-vision/ they talk about the importance of maintain vision in the midst of changing landscapes. The concept of core ideology and envisioned future is an interesting one. “ The Walt Disney Company’s core values of imagination and wholesomeness stem not from market requirements but from the founder’s inner belief that imagination and wholesomeness should be nurtured for their own sake.”
Mad Men are ad men. They are in a business that requires a deep level of understanding about human psychology and American consumer habits in an age where data and demographics have not come to inform the advertising game. Understanding a client’s needs and desires and those of the consumer are prerequisite to the creative drafting table. The irony of Mad Men is that a man incapable of understanding himself has an innate ability to understand the desires of others and that is a vision from which SCDP has rarely deviated and why they have been successful, despite themselves. Check out this clip from an early episode.
It crystallizes the creative vision of Don Draper, which is to say the vision of SCDP.
January 13, 2021
One definition of rot is the process of deterioration. Something that decays over time. By this standard – software rots like food in the Nebraska heat. It’s true. If your software isn’t regularly updated, it deteriorates and breaks down. Consider this – software is written to work at a moment in time…but time marches on. […]
January 4, 2021
OMAHA, NE, January 4, 2021 – In late 2020, Volano Solutions announced it has changed its name to Volano Software and launched a new website: www.volanosoftware.com. The name change was made to more accurately reflect what the company does, and the website was designed to be more informative and user-friendly to clients and prospective clients […]
June 2, 2020
According to LinkedIn technology (software) has a higher overall turnover rate than retail. With that, it isn’t a matter of if, but a matter of when. Volano has engineered a culture of “by developers, for developers” and this helps our retention. In fact, most of the folks that work at Volano have been here +5 […]
June 2, 2020
It is hard enough to build a successful business, and few want to invest time and resources into worrying about an Intellectual Property Assignment. But alas, you must do your homework. Fortunately, we make it easy for Volano customers. When asked – “Who owns the software and IP for my project?” – it is an […]
May 28, 2020
Many of us remember the grade school game Telephone. It was funny to see how a simple message would get garbled as it was passed along from person to person. But it’s not as funny when that message is a critical business requirement that will be turned into software that will power your business. Yet, […]
May 28, 2020
Volano’s first interaction with a potential client is about answering questions and evaluating alignment. The big question is obvious – “what’s this gonna cost?” Well, good news/bad news – Good news – we’ve built hundreds of software systems so we can give you a ‘round’ budgetary estimate in our first meeting. Bad news – we […]