Some Spend to Win an Account. At Extrovertic, We Tighten Our Belts

Recently, Extrovertic was given the opportunity to pitch the creative portion of an account for which we had already won the strategic part.

To ensure that our creatives truly appreciated the plight of those who suffer from the rarely discussed, but extremely disturbing and uncomfortable disease state that the drug treats, Planning Extrovert Laura Radosh had an interesting idea. On her invite to the creative briefing, she wrote, "Please wear or bring a belt."

At the briefing itself, Laura instructed everyone to take out – or off – their belt and to position it high up on their belly. Then to tighten it as much as we possibly could.

"Okay, now close your eyes and imagine you've just finished eating a big Thanksgiving dinner. How do you feel?" she asked.

"Stuffed," a writer responded.

"Do you feel like having desert now?"

"No," we all answered in unison.

"How about going to to the beach?" she asked.

"No, way," an art director answered. "I wouldn't be caught dead without a shirt on right now."

"And what about sex?" she asked, cheekily.

"No way." "Uh-uh." "Are you kidding?" "Uh, not right now, thank you..."

It was an interesting experience getting briefed in such a visceral way.  We really got a sense of what it feels like to suffer from the problem.

Says Laura, "We're talking about a condition that affects the sufferer in a deep emotional way. I felt it was important to try to have the creatives 'walk in their shoes' as much as possible. And the best way to do that was to have them try to physically feel like the sufferers feel 24 hours a day, 7 days a week."

The idea worked. Our work was not only great by creative standards, it demonstrated that we really understood how it feels to have this problem.

We won the account.  It was good to get that experience under our belts.

-Mark