I’m often asked about why we decided to tie my military experience to Clearly Creative’s service differentiation in the marketing industry.  In fact, I’ve even been “constructively criticized” by some during our initial meetings who’ve suggested that I rethink such verbiage on our website.  Their image of the military doesn’t sync with the word-of-mouth accolades that caused them to seek out Clearly Creative in the first place.  However, after hearing the logic behind our messaging, it all becomes clear.

My guess is that those initially critical of this concept have an image of a platoon of our employees, dressed in ACUs (Army Combat Uniforms) with camouflage paint on their faces, assaulting, seizing and capturing our clients’ target markets.  As much fun as that does sound, that’s not quite how we serve our clients.  In the military, using creativity to make the most of limited resources is paramount to survival – let alone success.  Soldiers have to apply a deliberate mix of experience-driven traditional methods, synergistically amplified by novel ideas, and execute in a high-stress and time-constrained environment to outpace competitors.  This is what I did for the ten years I served in uniform, and what we do at Clearly Creative every day.

Discipline, accountability, punctuality and “grace under pressure” are traits not often associated with the marketing industry. As a Tank Platoon Leader in Iraq, however, the Soldiers I led, the people we protected and the leaders I followed demanded that I abandon any left-brain / right-brain tendencies I may have had, to do what was required with my complete brain to achieve our mission.  Much like today’s internet-based, social media-confused business world, where marketing, advertising, public relations, and business development (should) blend together to achieve a unified message-delivery goal, the military required me to utilize and synchronize a complex toolkit to achieve our mission or risk grave results.

At Clearly Creative, our clients experience this military-style approach via our incredibly diligent work ethic; the accountability we demand from ourselves and our clients (e.g. when they owe us feedback on work they hired us to perform, we continually follow up until the task is complete since we see ourselves as partners in their success); the directness of communication (we don’t use “smoke & mirrors” to confuse our clients into hiring us but explain in clear detail what we propose and then provide progress reports as they desire);   tailored solutions to each client’s unique needs (we don’t require a minimum client engagement period and we allow our clients to choose hourly, project or retainer fee structures); and the level of creativity and ingenuity expected from a firm acting as a lifeline to the marketing world, instead of one just struggling to meet a deadline.

We don’t only hire military veterans. In fact, those of us possessing a military background only make up a fraction of our team.  We enlist talented professionals that demonstrate the aforementioned traits and I insist that all leaders in our firm apply a key principle that I learned from some of the most impressive commanders under which I’ve had the privilege to serve: We take care of our “troops.” A tailored approach to nurturing the success of our employees’ personal and professional ambitions translates into a team with whom our clients love to work.

This is how we use a “military-style” (not to be confused with “military-entrenched”) approach to provide cutting edge and reliable services to our clients.  Although you may think of some aspects of the military that may not be conducive to success in our current line of work, the tenets of that culture are proven, unique and extremely beneficial in this culture. That’s just one of the reasons why we’re Clearly Creative.