Friday night at the Bible conference. There’s a couple that live there at the conference grounds, Mr. and Mrs. Yourgi. Mr. Yourgi was a college school mate with Jim Elliott and Nate Saint at Wheaton. They all sang in a quartet together.

Anyhow, we talked Mr. Y into playing some piano, while a bunch of us sang. He can really play the keys off the thing. So, we were singing four part on all the old songs. Just about a half-dozen or so of us. The piano was incredible. But our singing was a little thin—by Friday some people had gone home. Then, suddenly, we heard a whole other choir come up from behind us…the reinforcements had arrived.

It was seven kids—average age about 20—who had come over from the Buckit conference to spend the night at Greenwood Hills before heading home the next morning. Buckit is an intensive Bible study conference for young men and women—under 24. It had let out late Friday afternoon. Boy, could those kids sing! What an encouragement for us old folks to see this group of young, beautiful, thin, fresh-faced Christians lighting the place up! A real treat to these ears.

We were away for the week at a Bible conference. It was awesome. Drove nine hours in a 12-passenger van full of lovely Christian ladies (five ladies—Anne being one of them—and me…woo-hoo!). The trip up was good. Singing. Talking. Stopping at Greencastle Coffee Roasters. The teaching was excellent. One guy talked on Joshua and Revelation. The other guy was all about evangelism, from Acts. The trip back was sort of bitter sweet. You know how that goes. Great week. Relaxing. Invigorating. Spiritually thrilling. Then, the long, slow drive down the mountain…back to the real world.

It’s been a little tough. I can’t believe how fast things move. I can’t believe that I normally move fast enough to keep up with them. It’s a blur, really. I wonder how many things I miss in the frenzy. I’m sure I’ll be velocitized before long.

A friend of mine, Bill Reynolds, who is a big-time media guy, once laid out this conundrum that media guys face. The big wins often come from cutting edge ideas—using media in a way that has never been done before, using things as media that nobody ever thought of as media before, stuff like that. But the long-term win for media comes from nailing the numbers and delivering the best cost per….

Lately, we’ve been working on some edgy media tactics that have to do with email and text messages. It’s gotten me thinking about all the stuff I saw developed as cutting edge media in my day.

Fantastic finishes. Remember those. It was a 2-minute feature at the two-minute warning of NFL games. Partnership between ALCOA and NFL films. The first minute was an NFL films set-up. Then there was a 30 second ALCOA spot. And then the conclusion to the NFL short. It was invented by John Friend Waldron (my first Creative Director) and Ira Bass (the head of media for my first agency).

Checkerboards and consecutives. This was a magazine tactic that worked like Bermashave (which was a pretty cool thing in itself). Each ad played off the previous ads, for a single cumulative message.

Public restroom stalls. I always liked this one. Of course, it was better for editorial than advertising. So technically, it was a PR medium.

Island on the stock page. Back in the day, before the web, daily papers ran an entire page of stock market results. My pal, Bill Reynolds (so I’m told), came up with the idea of buying an island in the middle of that page. The stock market content guaranteed a level of interest and a demographic profile. The fact that it was an island in the middle of this gray pretty much guaranteed that we owned the page. This was for Carolina First Bank.

The other day, we went to a ball game and sat in our friend’s corporate box (we can’t afford a corporate box, so it’s good to have friends). I looked down on the crowd and saw what I think is an opportunity. Bald heads as logo placement space! For TV, you could just paint the bald heads green-screen green, and sell the space by the inning (CG a different logo every inning—seventh inning stretch is a 15% premium). Could be huge.

We’ve been talking to some retailers who are thinking about expansion. This isn’t the first time we’ve talked to clients in this position. The difference is that these folks seem to have a rare ability in the area of operations. The fact is, if you can’t operate profitably, there’s nothing marketing can do for you—except hurt you faster.

If you can’t make a profit with one store, with three employees, and with 1500 square feet, chances are you won’t be able to make a profit with two stores, six employees, and 3000 square feet. That’s not how the economies of scale work.

The better model is to figure out how to deliver your product with two employees and 1000 square feet, if you can’t make money with three employees and 1500 square feet. Once you have the “unit model” working at a positive margin (operations/accounting talk for “profit”), then you can scale it (expand to a larger space and more people as the demand grows) and port it (recreate the model in a new location. This is the art and craft of franchises.

One mistake mom-and-pops make is undervaluing the time, skills, commitment, and round-the-clock presence of mom and pop. This is a huge factor in the portability and scalability equation. If you ARE your business (as far as your customers are concerned), then you are only portable to the extent that you can be two places at once. I don’t have that down yet, but I’m working on it.

One of my favorite measures of productivity is a little index called MPMH (margin per man hour). You can run it across the board. You can run it per group or unit. You can run it per location. You can run it per product group. It can tell you a lot. It’s as close as I ever come to really “running numbers.”

I did know a guy who was a numbers runner in Wheeling, West Virgina, back in the 1950s. But that’s another story.

Every time I get into the middle of an RFP, I think about how unnecessarily burdensome the whole process is. It sometimes seems like the purchasing types want to make preparing and submitting the proposal a sort of right of passage by which you “earn” the business. I don’t think that’s the case, but it sometimes seems that way.

It’s very common for an RFP to be 10-20 pages long, and require a proposal of that length or more. Generally, this expensive response process weeds out agencies it would be helpful for the client to hear from. I know we have declined to present proposals in the past, for business we were qualified for and might have been a great choice for.

Here’s my idea for a really good RFP.

1. Do not call us. Do not pitch us. Do not send anything other than what we ask for, or we will disqualify you out of hand.

2. Send us work samples and a three paragraph (no more than one page) case study for your three best campaigns, branding projects, direct mail campaigns (whatever the client is RFPing for).

3. We will look at all the work samples. Based on the work samples, we will select three or five semifinalists (I had a creative director who was obsessive about always needing odd numbers), whose work looks like they might do a good job with our project.

4. Conference call each of the semifinalists. Get a sense of them. Get a feel for them. If one jumps out at you as a clear fit, get them to estimate on the actual work you need (not an RFP, in which they have to guess at what you might need). Unless the estimate is outrageously high, sign it and get to work. If it is outrageously high, consider your options. Negotiate. Or go to option B.

5. If no clear winner emerges from the phone chats, hire two or three contenders to work on a real problem (same assignment for all agencies). The winner gets the business. The other two get paid for their work, and go home (with their intellectual property in tact).

This approach will get the client the best agency for them. It will get more agencies to participate, because it’s not like doing back flips through flaming hoops. Good agencies are rewarded. Good clients are rewarded. Everybody wins.

I’d love to talk more, but I have to get back to the RFP I’m writing.

I’ve just been thinking about this. I knew a guy back in the 1980s, who talked in headlines. He thought Chiat Day was a national holiday. The guy lived to do great advertising. Problem was, he burned himself out. And in the end, he didn’t really have much of a body of work to show for it. Last I heard, he was working in a bike shop in Atlanta.

Knew other people who had the “show up and do your job” approach. On any given day, you’d say they were hacks. But at the end of the game, when the fat lady sings, they’ll have some good results, some happy clients, some war stories, and more than their share of awards.

So, does great work come from a passion for great work. Or does it come from the minds of able professionals, who want to get some work done…and maybe do some good for somebody? Jury is still out as far as I’m concerned.

Not that it’s relevant to the post, but Peter Drucker said the only reason for a business to be in business is to create value…for its customer.