Ayna Lorenzo
For David Coomer, great ideas are a form of creative currency. As the former chief creative officer with Cornett, Coomer helped shepherd many concepts from the germ of an idea into fully realized marketing campaigns during his 10 years with the agency. He recently launched a solo endeavor called Coomer, where he consults with larger brands and their teams to connect and build upon ideas for maximum impact. He’s also developing a really big idea—an application called Movement—that he envisions as completely transforming the way in which companies work with consultants, agencies and other creative partners. “The scale of it is lofty, but the application is very practical,” he said. Here Coomer explains more about his creative process and ways in which the world of marketing has changed.
A fast and furious start
Coomer has always been a “huge car guy,” he said. When he was 19, he launched a business selling automotive decals that he’d designed—with imagery like flames and tribal graphics—primarily on eBay. “And then the Fast and the Furious came out in 2000, and it just went crazy,” Coomer said. “I was responsible for the tackiest cars on the road. Like, thousands of them all over the world.” He licensed several of his designs to a toy company that made miniature cars outfitted with real parts, which led to packaging designs for retail. “I was just going to be an artist and learn design and liked car graphics, but it snowballed into this e-commerce company, which became this toy-licensing company, which became this packaged product,” Coomer said.
Coomer also began designing paint jobs for teams in the NASCAR truck series and found himself hanging out in the pit during races, talking with brand directors and other team leaders. “They’re like, ‘we need a new website,’ and I’d say, ‘I can build a new website. I can do the in-store promos,’” Coomer said. “It was like, ‘I can wash your truck. I can mow your yard.’ It just became a thing.”
Coomer also realized that he had an affinity for building brands and the growing business sense—including an understanding of distribution channels, patents, trademarks and licensing agreements—to make it work. He moved from Louisville to Richmond, Kentucky, in 2004 and started Coomer Media Group, a small branding and design agency, in addition to his automotive graphics company. “I had two businesses just to survive,” he said. “It would have been easier to do it differently, no doubt, but I feel like a different point of view has always been my biggest asset.”
The spark of an idea
Coomer brought his creatively business-minded point of view with him to Cornett where, as chief creative officer, he helped the agency expand its client roster and produce award-winning work for brands such as Valvoline, A&W Restaurants, and Tempur-Sealy International. “We grew from 12 people to 71 at one point; it was pretty rock and roll,” Coomer said. “It was a lot of really talented people in one place.”
No matter the size of the team or the scope of a project, the best concepts typically present themselves with a palpable urgency that quickly sparks other ideas, Coomer said. “It’s an idea that lights a room up, where everyone’s like, ‘What if this happened on social?’ or ‘This could make for a good piece of content we can add to it,’ or ‘This is a good media strategy if you’re talking about that,’” Coomer said. “If everyone’s inspired, that means everyone in that company will be inspired and their employees and their consumers. And then it turns into advocacy and sharing, because it’s this kind of systemic thinking moving through everything.”
Starting a Movement
Capturing and building upon those ideas as they happen in real time has become challenging however, especially as many larger companies increasingly choose to work with a dispersed team of specialists rather than with a traditional full-service advertising agency or with an in-house team.
“That’s the power of the agency of record. When you truly have a multidisciplinary AoR, it brings highly talented people to the table who can work together,” Coomer said. “But, even though people value that, you have the CMOs of big brands, VPs and directors of marketing and people like that, saying, ‘I get it, but I still want the best search engine marketing.’ Or, ‘she’s the best at content strategy,’ or ‘I have a buddy who’s a great copywriter.’ It’s normal for someone to want the most firepower they can get from each respective practice, and they’re all moving in that direction.”
While there are a number of online platforms designed to help organize projects and facilitate communication among teams, Coomer felt that a critical element was missing from these tools. His solution, Movement, is an application designed to help brands develop and manage their intellectual capital through a focused, cohesive process that also encourages real-time discussion among a dispersed network of creative collaborators. “How do you facilitate those sorts of activities so that, when those ideas hit, everyone’s lighting the room up?” Coomer said. “This technology is recreating that same action. It’s having a seat at the table for everyone and leading the conversation in such a way that, when the [creative] brief hits and people begin sharing ideas, they build on one another. And, when the avalanche breaks loose, you can see it.”
Outside of technology, how has marketing changed?
“It’s completely changed,” Coomer said. “I truly believe that people who are building brands and not thinking like a magazine publisher, like a network TV executive or like a Netflix executive producer—that are thinking about advertising strategy and not connecting with people—will not be in business very long. Those who are truly creating content, products and experiences that connect with people and that begin to permeate culture and become bigger than the media dollar invested—that’s where the brands of tomorrow are really crushing it.
"Those who are truly creating content, products and experiences that connect with people and that begin to permeate culture and become bigger than the media dollar invested—that’s where the brands of tomorrow are really crushing it." —David Coomer
“Everyone is a consumer, but I think targeting consumers is a weird way to think about things. They’re people who are choosing what to watch and what to engage with. Do they want to continually engage with what you’re creating?” Coomer said. “It’s not all about marketing on social and content marketing and things like that; it’s about building ideas that can truly move through culture. Then when you do both—when you use paid just to give it a push versus relying on it one hundred percent—now you’re really doing it.”