what if: whatever you do for the least of my brothers, you do for me

A comment I made about breaking the competition sparked the above quote from Matthew 25:40 in my head, given by Senator Obama at mr Warren's debate last week. That in turn lead me to think back to a comment made on the blog I commented on.

"Droga5 had the chance to lift the norm of Aussie adland" was in essence the comment.

What if, the responsability was put in the hands of the client, instead of the agency? Speaking as a client, I know that customers don't care.

They don't care that I have a 10.000 papers bigger circulation or that the competition has more display points. They base their decisions on emotional associations we trigger in them and the amount of interestingness we can offer in a fresh and original way. The only thing that they do care and share is their loathing of those who sell advertising space. So it's a question of getting them to a point of " I hate all of you as a category, but I like you personally..let's do business".

Because customers are tainted by experiences with others, you pay a price.

So why not as a client do the following:

Write a brief to your agency to do work for your competitors (off course presuming you got a good agency). It's like opposition research in politics, but in reverse. You do not want to be better than your competitors, you want them to be better for the sake of all.

You want to lift them to new hights and the category as well. Knowing off course that the better the competition get's the better you've got to be.

I am aware of category strategies that have been applied in the past, think Juan Valdes, but that was out of co-operation between competitors.

But has there been a client who actively demanded that he be surpassed by his competition, and even helped the process along? I hope so..