Cartoons are normally the last place we expect to find some sort of worthwhile life lesson but there is one series that I recently revisited from my childhood (Netflix FTW!) that made me think about how we as marketers have to sometimes take failure in stride and keep pushing through.
When I was a kid in the 90’s, I wasn’t overly concerned about providing graphic design and social media marketing services to clients. I know, it’s surprising, but instead of sharpening my creative chops I watched cartoons and that included A LOT of an animated variety show called Animaniacs. The Warner Brother’s, and their sister Dot, led a cast of outlandish cartoon characters who did pretty much whatever they wanted. Many don’t know this, but the Animaniacs were actually directed at an adult audience, which may explain why I was so confused watching it as a kid.
Pinky & the Brain were two characters from the show that had a determination, a drive to accomplish a very specific goal, and they let nothing, not even failure, change that goal. Every single episode was spent hatching some harebrained scheme to take over the world.
The most memorable quote from their skit is a mantra that marketers, or anyone who is tasked with providing service and solving problems, should live by. At the beginning of every episode Pinky would ask Brain one simple question: “What are we going to do tonight, Brain,” the answer? “The same thing we do every night, Pinky…try and take over the world!”.
While we don’t try to take over the world, we do have the responsibility to treat each day as an opportunity to get it right for our clients. At Fahrenheit we understand that we will not always have the perfect answer, and some of the ideas we provide won’t be exactly what the client was looking for. The one thing we can promise is that we will not let failure deter us from our goal of providing the most innovative, creative and engaging solutions for any client that comes through our doors.
