Back in the fall of 1993, Datastream Systems Inc. was being co-served by James Gibbons Creative Consulting and Perimeter Designs (Anne Peck's firm), when they decided they needed an advertising agency. After about a ten minute conversation with Marketing VP, Amelia Fusaro, and an equally lengthy discussion between the principals at Perimeter Designs and James Gibbons Creative, the agency now known as Gibbons | Peck was born. And Datastream was our first client. As part of our series about things we've learned from our clients, this post focuses on the simple, yet brilliant philosophy of John Sterling, Datastream VP of…

Back in the early days, we worked with a couple of passionate ladies named Earnest and Vail. They were high-powered advocates for the cause of exposing and addressing domestic violence as an everyday issue in our society. Not all that long ago, it was very had to do anything about domestic violence, even if you knew about it. And because of the dynamics of the situation, most of it went unreported. Part of the work of Earnest and Vail led them to the narrow sub-issue of "battering during pregnancy." They came to us with about a ream of statistics and…

Both brands and individuals have personality styles. These are defined by methodology like Myers-Briggs, HBDI, DISK, and a whole alphabet soup of other instruments. But a big part of it comes down to sensitivity vs. insensitivity and emotional vs. rational. Everyone has the tendency to overvalue one's own personality and undervalue the personalities of others. Without getting into the argument over whether one personality is actually superior to another (even though I would love to got there some time), it is unfruitful to think of them in superiority | inferiority terms. It is, however, useful to know how to read…