Blair Brady is CEO & Co-Founder of the award-winning WITH/agency, the only brand agency creating sustainable client-agency relationships.
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When the legendary Rolling Stones tour came to Atlanta recently, I was fortunate enough to get tickets and see one of my all-time favorite bands live for the first time in my life. Even more than I expected, it blew my mind. Mick Jagger was on fire and Keith Richards dripped of soul. I danced the entire time. Truly, I didn’t stop.
Guzzling my way through lots of coffee the next morning, it occurred to me that these guys are almost 80 and still killing it. They’ve been performing for 60 years — more than two decades longer than I’ve even been alive. But how? How does one create a body of work that transcends time and never goes out of style? How does one become unstoppable for decades? How does one become the oldest performing rock band in music history?
Naturally, I Googled, “What Makes the Rolling Stones so great?” One of the top results was an article published in — but, of course — Rolling Stone magazine, titled, “What Makes the Rolling Stones the Greatest Rock & Roll Band in the World.” Although it was published four decades ago — before I was even born — it still rings true today. Here’s the part that grabbed my attention:
“The Stones are special primarily because they understand that a great rock & roll band never takes too much for granted. A great rock & roll band gets the feel of an audience and then goes for the audience’s throat. A great rock & roll band plays the right songs and the right solos in the right tempo at the right time. A great rock & roll band rocks out. At the Fox, the Stones rocked so hard, they jerked you up out of your seat and kept you dancing for two hours, and made you like it. Only rock & roll? You could’ve fooled me.”
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And that’s when it hit me: What legendary rock ’n’ roll bands and marketers do is almost identical. Marketers exist to grab people by the throat with the right message and the right tone and the right visuals and the right energy at the right time. We’re trying to jerk people out of their seats, get fired up and buy what we’re selling. We’re trying to get them to love our clients’ brands and products and services as much as we do.
If marketers do the same five things that the Rolling Stones do, we can become legends too.
• Never take things for granted. We’re only as good as our last project, and each time we deliver something for a client, our relevancy, respect and trust are on the line. Never, ever phone it in. Work your tail off each and every day to keep earning the work and earning your place in the sun.
• Read your audience. This is everything. Are you really listening to what the client says and wants? Are you listening to all the other things they’re not saying? What are their pain points? What’s keeping them up at night? How is the marketing strategy going to support their broader business growth goals and keep them competitive? Are they in tune with their own customers and their changing needs? At our agency, WITH, we unite brands with their inherent humanity. We call it “read the need,” and it means we have to go deeper than what the client is saying so we can reveal their needs and wants. Listen first and everything else flows from there.
• Go for the throat. The Rolling Stones crush it because they play the right songs with the right solos at the right tempo at the right time, always and forever. Nobody reads a room better than those guys. Once they find the audience’s vibe, they lean into it hard. We do the same for our clients. We are partners who help them solve problems, and we uncover things that they don’t even know they need. We have a voice of authority and bring confidence and conviction, but we have to leave ego at the door. Our best work is their best work. When they win, we win.
• Rock out. The Rolling Stones shred guitars; we bring ideas to life. It’s really not all that different. They take scribbled-down lyrics and turn them into your favorite song that lasts forever. We lead clients from back-of-the-napkin ideas to brands with voices and personalities that people love. Our work helps people get promotions and cement their career paths. Our work impacts bottom lines and drives business decisions.
• Keep them dancing for hours. The Stones kept me dancing for hours. We keep our clients thriving and coming back for more. We inspire them to do their best work, and we have their back. We’re fun to work with. They work with us in perpetuity because not only is the work great, but the experience is too.
As I keep thinking about that show, this statement keeps coming to the front of my mind: “Don’t be the best. Be the only.” The Rolling Stones have earned their place as the only band with relentless relevance that never goes out of style and always keeps an audience dancing. Marketers must do the same.
At WITH, we want to be known as the agency that does the best job of uniting brands with their inherent humanity. We want to be the trusted creative partner and advisor that they call first. We want to be the most sustainable business relationship that endures forever. Can we become the greatest marketing agency in the world? When a couple of childhood friends reconnected at a train station one fateful day in 1961 and decided to start doing jam sessions together, nobody thought they’d become global rock legends either. And 60 years later, they’re still killing it. We intend to do the same.
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Author: Blair Brady, Forbes Councils Member
