Wednesday, March 04, 2009

Joe and Dave Herbert with Free Doritos!


By chance, I stopped by the Batesville Kroger store last Saturday for a few items before heading home where I found Joe and Dave Herbert signing “free bags of Doritos” as a promo. And I didn’t even need a crystal ball! (In picture: Dave Herbert, myself, Joe Herbert)

For those of us that did not see the last Super Bowl, Joe and Dave Herbert won the Doritos commercial contest and won big! Their commercial titled “Free Doritos” ended up being voted #1 on the USA Today Ad Meter, knocking off Anheuser-Busch’s 10 year reign of Super Bowl Ad Meter top commercials, and taking home the $1,000,000 grand prize. Two brothers from Batesville, Indiana (population a little over 6,000 people) rocked the world of advertising with this win, reminding us all that creativity can be found anywhere. The rest of the world may not be aware of all the talent and creativity found in Batesville, but locally it is common knowledge.

Despite living in this area all my adult life, I have not been fortunate enough to meet Joe and Dave until last Saturday. As I expected, both were extremely grounded, easy going and enjoying their moment of success. They are, as you can imagine, a bit busy with all that goes with their recent success however we plan on getting together again so I can ask them a few questions on creativity. I hope to share more on what I learn from Joe and Dave in a follow up post.

From a lean perspective, we teach creativity before capital and the importance of engaging all our associates (and others in our supply chain) to work together in kaizen. Why?

Joe and Dave are great examples of creativity before capital. A great commercial using eBay bought props and equipment, local actors and comedians and lots of creative brainstorming. They even make it a habit to keep notes on all their ideas even if they don’t end up using them right away.

We see a great 30 second commercial however what we don’t see are the months of work that were put into creating this commercial. As in kaizen, much of the hard work required for success is not readily seen by others.

Finally, creativity is not found exclusively with just a few key players, top executives or large companies. Creativity can be found everywhere, we just need to learn to see it and let it free. Look within our own companies for the Joe’s and Dave’s. If we really take a good look, we will find that everyone has creativity. Like the bags of Doritos, how are we going free our creativity? Please try this without using a crystal ball!

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