Nobody is stealing your ideas
Before we dive into this week’s Digest, I have to share two things.
The first: I recently launched Kit.ceo Enterprise, which is essentially positioning-as-a-service that allows you to scale and sell strategy without the department or hire. This is for agencies and studios whose core competency lies elsewhere, such as design, branding, or sales.
The second: here are two articles I wrote worth exploring.
1. What Ramp owns in the customer’s mind
2. What you, your kids and your customer believe and yet you deny it at work
Why do the people we look up to give away their best ideas?
David Ogilvy ran one of the most successful advertising agencies in the world, and then he wrote down how his agency made advertising and put it in a book that anybody could buy. Toyota let its largest competitor move into one of its factories, walk the floor for 25 years, and take notes. Rory Sutherland stands up in public and tells you exactly which channel is beating the one everybody else is using, and gives you the numbers to back it up.
None of these are careless people. They are not confused about competition, and they are not doing it out of charity. The easy explanation is that they were so far ahead it cost them nothing, which is possible and which I will come back to at the end. The explanation I think is closer to the truth is that all of them had already seen what happens when you hand a rival your best thinking: almost nothing.
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