blog

Overcoming the "No" Mentality

by Will

I'm a newcomer to this industry, but I'm not a marketing neophyte, so I know that no one got into this field without having the desire to be creative. To be a marketer is to enjoy the creative process -- that wonderfully non-quantifiable x-factor that can make a day in a cubicle fun. But to work in this industry, I have quickly learned, is to be bound by rules, and nothing thwarts creativity more than rules. Or so most people think.

As the son of an attorney, I can't bear a grudge against compliance officers and their desire to keep us all out of jail. Jail is probably a worse place to try and be creative than a cubicle, so staying out of it is definitely a handy thing. But how can you be creative when you feel you're boxed in on three sides with a precipice on the fourth?

I've heard several interesting compliance stories since coming on board at kasina, and there's one that pops up in my mind pretty frequently: a marketing director had proposed an idea for his group and it got rejected by compliance. A few months later, this director was talking with another marketing director from another group and found out that they had just had the same idea approved.

Now, I'm going to ignore the fact that there are two marketing groups so out of touch with each other that they're coming up with the same idea separately, months apart, and focus on the success of the second group. Why was the second group successful with the same idea in the same company? It's unlikely that the compliance office had simply rethought the matter. What's more likely is that the second group put together a list of questions around compliance issues and set out to answer them before they sent it off to their compliance office. With a list of concerns addressed, the compliance office may have had the ground softened to be a bit more open-minded. After all, the easiest answer for compliance is "no." "No" means we all stay out of jail. It's the mentality of "if I just sit here quietly, I won't get into trouble."

So what you're up against when you've got the next great creative marketing leap, is overcoming the "no" mentality. You need to soften the ground so the person reviewing your idea is a little less inclined to say "no" immediately. I'm not suggesting you try to become mini-compliance officers or fight the compliance office with your thoughts about compliance. What I am suggesting, though, is that by showing that you thought about the issues carefully, perhaps showing some internal or external examples of similar ideas being successful, and allaying the concerns in your proposal, you can take away the knee-jerk rejection of a good idea and get a good dialogue going with an important business partner -- and perhaps even get a great idea off the ground and closer to your audience.