I'm Lisa.👋 Every two weeks, I write to you about marketing, brand, and the messy middle where they intersect. It’s a love letter of sorts. If this was forwarded to you, subscribe here.

June 2, 2023

Hey there, Sunshine!

How was your week? How is it June?

These shorter weeks always seem to zoom by, as if we all took one day but lost three. The picture-perfect weather hasn't helped my concentration either.

Distractions aside, by 7:45 AM Tuesday, my butt was planted in my dentist's chair for my regular cleaning.

I don’t enjoy the dentist. Obviously. 

But at the dentist, I get Amanda.

Amanda is a burst of sunshine masquerading as a dental hygienist. 

She greets me like a best friend she hasn't seen in a minute, turning an otherwise sterile dentist's office into big laughs and good vibes.

We share stories as she gets to work, the way you do when someone's hands are in your mouth and you're pretending you've never been so relaxed. 

I learned she spent her holiday weekend getting the vegetables into her garden. She admitted the mental gymnastics tripped her up as she tried to configure which plants were best to buddy up and which needed to be separated, like quarreling toddlers or bickering marketing leaders on the Brand and Growth teams.

She spent days drawing diagrams, creating grids, and deciding on love matches.

By the weekend’s end, Amanda was so exhausted trying to map the PERFECT garden that she surrendered and started planting willy-nilly.

Brussels sprouts went into a flower bed. 

Broccoli got planted in front of the house rather than in the garden.

Kale was smooshed between the already-too-many cucumbers. 

I giggled over the magic and relatability of Amanda's story.  

There's a place for planning and strategy—for spreadsheets and doing it right.

And there’s an equal place for embracing the absolute chaos of throwing stuff in the ground and seeing what you get. 

Today, I am resharing a letter I wrote in June 2021 as a reminder that growth happens where curiosity lives. Sometimes growth sprouts from your best-laid plans, and just as often, it emerges in defiance of them.  

🍃 1. Roots Trump Branches

Walking out to my garden each morning, I’m looking for progress--a visible sign that everyone is okay.

Watching the forming of new branches feels impressive. These new limbs are growing out to transport nutrients to fuel more growth. Huzzah!

Yet, I know some of my most hearty plants won’t be the ones spreading their branches super tall or crazy wide. The strongest and most productive are investing their energy into developing deep roots. These are the ones with the strongest foundation. They will become the most established in their soil and able to produce more fruit. 

I remind myself that developing solid rooting is what matters, not the flashiness of the branches. I think about this a lot, applying it to a myriad of situations. 

As a business, will you:

• Invest your energy into going deep on a specific need, technology, or vertical.   -or-

• Adopt a more shallow root system to grow your services' breadth (rather than the depth) and cover more ground.

As a person in business, will you:

• Focus as a specialist with a deep understanding of your craft, becoming the Go-To on a particular topic.  -or-

• Develop as a generalist, proficient in many different things with lots of branches and spread to show for it. 

There is a need for both--roots and branches. How we choose to grow is just that--a choice for us to make. 

✂️ 2. Pruning is Self-Care

Early in my career, a much more experienced friend taught me to identify when the juice isn’t worth the squeeze. When the value of what I was getting wasn’t worth the effort to get it.  

In gardening, this reminds me to stay humble, not overcomplicate my plans, and to remember to pinch off those flowers and side shoots to help my plants focus on existing growth. 

It’s not hard to think of other areas in your life where this idiom applies. 

Spitballing here:

• Agencies or vendors who create work for you rather than alleviate it.
• The business/marketing activities you do because you’ve always done them even though they haven’t produced in years, if ever.
• Projects or clients you turn down because it's not worth the effort.
• People you leave off the email thread or don’t call so you don’t lose a day to nonsensical replies or posturing. (Just kidding! You would never do that!) 

If pruning your list truly is self-care (and I think it is), the opportunity to focus on what is MOST IMPORTANT in your day and prune back the rest is not only joyful, it’s crucial. 

At Overit, we’re starting to institute extended no-meeting work blocks companywide to allow our team to prune away some of the day’s distractions and focus on core work. It’s a little thing that’s a big thing. The more we self-prune, the more WE control our day vs. the day controlling us. Also, I think, the happier we are.

[2023 Edit: We're still doing the no-meeting work block, and it's been terrific!]

Thanks for reading. See you in two weeks.

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📅 June 20: The Future of Brand: Strategies & Trends From Leading Agencies

We've invited experts from local creative agencies to dissect the topic of brand and its place in today's digital-first, AI-obsessed, “do-humans-still-work-here?” world. Join us as we talk shop, share insights, and dish on the most exciting trends. You can attend in person or virtually. I hope to see your face. Registration is open.

Here are some hand-picked reads for the week: 

• Marketing Bandwagons: With AI, What's Old is New, Again: Ian Lurie calls for us to slow down the AI bandwagon long enough for a grown-up conversation regarding its value. Stop chasing a whirlpool of stupidity, people.
• A nurse's job is never finished: I absolutely love this healthcare campaign highlighting a nurse's never-ending commitment to care.
• Luke Martin ups sass level to Albany library's Twitter feed: If you're on Twitter and NOT following @AlbanyNYLibrary, you're doing Twitter wrong. Correct yourself. APL runs one of the most rockin' accounts out there.
• Matters of representation: Over 70% of Unilever ads will now have disabled representation behind the camera. There was initial concern about finding talent or slowing down productions, but no problems have been found. We love to see it.

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