I was born in Kentucky, left early and returned late. I can speak to some of the hubris that weighs us down without being accused of being completely an outsider. Of the many good reasons to live and work and raise children here, there are a few anchors that drag on us and deserve a brighter light. We see these issues affect clients and their companies. I believe they are cultural and can be overcome. †
The first thing that drags business plans and marketing thinking from stellar heights to handfuls of mud is our notion that nothing important happens here. Theater and financial acumen is in New York, innovation is found in the Silicon Valley, green thinking is in a two hundred mile radius of Ben & Jerry's, and ubiquitous cool is somewhere between Cupertino and Starbuck's headquarters in Seattle. Nothing, we assume, happens in Kentucky of much importance.†We are flaccid despite our mountains and without cool no matter how many George Clooneys and Johnny Depps jump into the international limelight from the limestone steppes of the Bluegrass.†
Over and over again, I've heard clients lament that no one would be interested in what they do or that what they make, sell, produce or distribute lacks interest, glamour or excitement. That may be because they're too close to it, or it may be that Kentucky perversion that puts lights under bushels and leaves great concepts unheralded. Just because your widget seems uncomplicated and ordinary to you or because you're just one of a thousand other providers of the same service doesn't mean that the readers of trade magazines have ever heard of it or that consumers are even aware you exist. You need to keep it simple, say it loudly and repeat it often as though the whole world is hanging on what your press release, blog or Web site has to say. If politicians can do it over and over again with nearly useless information that will have little or no impact on us, certainly Kentucky entrepreneurs and innovators can use a shot or two of chutzpah and cajones that are a tad beyond stem cell in size. †
That same shoulder chip of lowered self-esteem surfaces when clients come to us for corporate identity, product design, trademark or logo development. Quite often they come with someone else's concept in hand, pulled from a Web site or clipped from a catalog. "I'd like something like this," we often hear, "As though original design was akin to taking a photograph to the "Palace of Beauty" and asking for the same look. Kentucky entrepreneurs are good at developing, manufacturing, distributing and providing service to customers, but they so often lack confidence in homegrown, original innovation that they'd rather crib than take the chance of being truly original. †
We're occasionally asked to violate copyright law and simply plagiarize competitive literature. "If it works for the big guys, it'll work for us," we've heard once in a while, as though producing something original could not possibly improve on something already in print.†
We love it when clients show up with their profoundly new and paradigm-shattering concepts and let us provide original marketing and design thinking on a par with their product. It happens less than we'd like to see.†
Many of us are in Kentucky because of the quality of life possible here. Despite poor numbers in women's health, cigarette smoking, pulmonary disease and all the other thank-God-for-Mississippi statistics that make our commonwealth what it is, there are significant virtues that make being here worth trying to solve some of the staggering problems. But one problem we can do without is self-doubt and a kind of group self hatred comprised of equal parts aggrandizement and self-pity. Our businesses, like our children, need to feel that the world is their oyster not their master, and for that to happen, attitudes need some change.†
Ron Jackson is President of The Idea Farm, an international advertising, marketing and public relations organization based in Danville. Contact him at ron@theideafarm.net.