From Poop To Gold: The Marketing Magic of Harmon Brothers
by Chris Jones
Your voice matters to us, and we value your input and your contribution to our company. I speak my opinions, even if they’re contrary to the direction of the company. No–1–2–3–4–5–6–7–8–9–10–Yes I voice objections or disagree with my coworkers on projects without someone getting offended. No–1–2–3–4–5–6–7–8–9–10–Yes I can prove I’m accomplishing my work without a time card. No–1–2–3–4–5–6–7–8–9–10–Yes Our company’s meetings are valuable to my particular job. No–1–2–3–4–5–6–7–8–9–10–Yes I will definitely be staying at this company for another year. No–1–2–3–4–5–6–7–8–9–10–Yes Our office space makes collaboration and asking questions easy to do. No–1–2–3–4–5–6–7–8–9–10–Yes When a problem arises on a project, people focus on solutions rather than blame. No–1–2–3–4–5–6–7–8–9–10–Yes I feel like my work is valued. No–1–2–3–4–5–6–7–8–9–10–Yes I feel like I am progressing in the company, both personally and within my career. No–1–2–3–4–5–6–7–8–9–10–Yes This company accommodates my personal situations without risking my job. No–1–2–3–4–5–6–7–8–9–10–Yes My coworkers are honest with both money and time on the job. No–1–2–3–4–5–6–7–8–9–10–Yes What is not working here at the company? (This is your chance to help us fix anything that needs fixing.) What is your favorite number between No and Yes? No–1–2–3–4–5–6–7–8–9–10–Yes Of course, the higher the scores on this survey, the more flexible and attractive your company culture is to smart creatives, and the more likely they’ll stay. Interestingly, it didn’t seem to hurt the brand that people had to wait—people will wait a good while for a truly outstanding night’s sleep. There is actually research on this—people value things they have to wait for. Acquiring something instantly is great fun (and addictive, thank you, Amazon), but for something special, the anticipation is part of the enjoyment. Think of Christmas here—counting down slowly increases the impact of the day itself. Haunted houses (to cite just one example) have learned that people are more satisfied with the experience if they have to wait before entering (about twenty minutes is optimal). They will sometimes even hold people at the front gate so they can get that anticipation working, even when the place isn’t busy. I once ran a haunted house. We may or may not have done this. Purple certainly didn’t make people wait on purpose, but it didn’t kill the business when people had to wait as long as six months for their beds to be delivered. It was worth it, and they knew it would be.
Everyone has a take. Opinions fly—and these people are far from shy about expressing them. All the while, off to one side, Mike is working on photos. He’s not part of this discussion, but no one seems troubled that he will hear it. He, himself, is blithe as a butterfly, doing his thing while an apparently haphazard group of people make decisions about a half-million-dollar project ten feet away.
In the first week, internet searches of Squatty Potty were up 600 percent. And then the orders started rolling in. Retail sales quadrupled. Internet sales exploded to six times the previous volume. It’s a radical idea to make your spokesman a faux-English prince backed by a pooping unicorn, but radical is the only way to get results like this—and a culture of creative freedom can get radical
Jeffrey: “Sharing the money is smarter. There’s more for everyone. We make sure the bills are covered and share out the rest.” Me: “Is that not dangerous? Not keeping more of the profits in the company?” Jeffrey: “It’s a lot more dangerous to lose the best people in the industry. The people are what make Harmon Brothers work. There’s always more money. But how do you replace the people?”
With the footage in the can (film term for “finished shooting,” and also the canning term for “putting something in a can”), they move along to the editing process, and here is where the bulk of the team is put to work. A huge amount of work goes into chiseling terabytes of 4K or 8K video into two to five minutes of clean perfection. Sound is added, both music and effects.
The first team, Admin, has ongoing work, so most are paid traditionally, hourly or salary. The second team, Funnel, are bonused on ad spend (the amount the client spends to promote the video). And the last two teams, Growth and Creative, have people who work on a specific project, and the bonus can be worth more—potentially far more—than the billable hour sheet.
"Your voice matters to us, and we value your input and your contribution to our company. I speak my opinions, even if they’re contrary to the direction of the company. No–1–2–3–4–5–6–7–8–9–10–Yes I voice objections or disagree with my coworkers on projects without someone getting offended. No–1–2–3–4–5–6–7–8–9–10–Yes I can prove I’m accomplishing my work without a time card. No–1–2–3–4–5–6–7–8–9–10–Yes Our company’s meetings are valuable to my particular job. No–1–2–3–4–5–6–7–8–9–10–Yes I will definitely be staying at this company for another year. No–1–2–3–4–5–6–7–8–9–10–Yes Our office space makes collaboration and asking questions easy to do. No–1–2–3–4–5–6–7–8–9–10–Yes When a problem arises on a project, people focus on solutions rather than blame. No–1–2–3–4–5–6–7–8–9–10–Yes I feel like my work is valued. No–1–2–3–4–5–6–7–8–9–10–Yes I feel like I am progressing in the company, both personally and within my career. No–1–2–3–4–5–6–7–8–9–10–Yes This company accommodates my personal situations without risking my job. No–1–2–3–4–5–6–7–8–9–10–Yes My coworkers are honest with both money and time on the job. No–1–2–3–4–5–6–7–8–9–10–Yes What is not working here at the company? (This is your chance to help us fix anything that needs fixing.) What is your favorite number between No and Yes? No–1–2–3–4–5–6–7–8–9–10–Yes Of course, the higher the scores on this survey, the more flexible and attractive your company culture is to smart creatives, and the more likely they’ll stay."
"Interestingly, it didn’t seem to hurt the brand that people had to wait—people will wait a good while for a truly outstanding night’s sleep. There is actually research on this—people value things they have to wait for. Acquiring something instantly is great fun (and addictive, thank you, Amazon), but for something special, the anticipation is part of the enjoyment. Think of Christmas here—counting down slowly increases the impact of the day itself. Haunted houses (to cite just one example) have learned that people are more satisfied with the experience if they have to wait before entering (about twenty minutes is optimal). They will sometimes even hold people at the front gate so they can get that anticipation working, even when the place isn’t busy. I once ran a haunted house. We may or may not have done this. Purple certainly didn’t make people wait on purpose, but it didn’t kill the business when people had to wait as long as six months for their beds to be delivered. It was worth it, and they knew it would be."
"Recognizing that innovation is vital, they needed a system to encourage constant innovation and trying new things. Enter the Hypo Lab. The intent of the lab is that anyone throughout the whole company can brainstorm an idea to the hypothesis list. Then they meet (anyone in the company can participate as a tester), look over the list, and decide which hypotheses to test. A minimum of two and a maximum of eight ideas start out on the list, but usually only one or two make the cut for that week. After selecting one hypothesis, they figure out how to test it and what resources the test will require. They gather the data and lay out the results. Most ideas don’t test out, but even those are far from a waste of time. Week by week, Harmon Brothers is building a repository of ideas and research."
"After expenses are taken into account (hard costs, salaries, rent, LEGO decorations for the office, etc.), HALF of Harmon Brothers’ remaining profits are allocated as a bonus to the internal team members that worked that project. Half. You read that right. That’s 50 percent of both the remaining contract amount for the project and 50 percent of the ad spend for as long as that lasts. As clients continually spend money on ad promotion, everyone that worked on the ad gets paid for it. Compensation for the ad is divided into three phases, and that 50-percent bonus is allocated in thirds among the three phases: Phase One: Client Acquisition Phase Two: Script Writing Phase Three: Ad Production"
"2. Is there a real problem that this product solves? If there isn’t, then to be successful the product would have to be sold to people who don’t need it. That’s not a Harmon Brothers thing, for a number of reasons, the simplest one being that it’s really hard to sell things to people who have to be talked into wanting them. Being politically liberty-minded and frugal (you should see the rusty 1989 Hyundai Excel that Neal Harmon drives), they are highly reluctant to do any psychological strong-arming. If the product doesn’t make a case for itself, it won’t make it to the contract stage."
"Benton: “When I set up a job interview with Mandy, she had done a couple ads on her own, and I already knew she was capable. I was planning on hiring in a role where I wouldn’t manage her. So what I really wanted to uncover was how our company WHY aligned with her personal WHY. She may have been the only person I’ve interviewed who actually knew her WHY. And the moment she shared it, I immediately saw that she could help us fulfill our purpose, while we could help her fulfill her purpose. I was no longer worried with work style or anything because we were aligned to the same mission.”"
"It should be pointed out again that this is the last official meeting of the week at Harmon Brothers. All the team meetings, department meetings, even meetings like the team lunch, are packed into Monday before real work starts. It’s important to keep those meetings from interrupting the flow of work and breaking the creative focus. Compressing the time frame also forces the meetings to be conducted at warp speed and with maximum efficiency. Team relationships are vital in a culture so balanced on trust, and a culture that has meetings only one day a week is a culture of happiness."
- →Harmon Brothers is a place people want to be. The culture makes it so—because a successful culture is not just the people, but also the systems. And HB’s systems maximize productivity and the humanity of imperfect people. Both together allow the company to churn out hit after hit. And systems can be imitated—maybe even by your company.
- →Daniel: “But we’re thinking long term. We feel that this will build a better brand long term and create a more long-lasting relationship with the client. As the ad performs better, we’ll get more clients too. All parties are served better by us living by this principle. And we are more proud of what we create.”
- →The writers will spend a month to six weeks researching the company itself and then working through ideas. Harmon Brothers will spend tens of thousands of dollars on research and development in this phase to make sure the potential scripts will truly encapsulate the client’s unique selling proposition.
- →This Creative Process is effective because it balances creative freedom with productivity. All well and good, when you have something like a Squatty Potty that doesn’t have any competition but stopped-up bowels. What if you have to pit this creative process against a saturated market?
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