Like any company, crayon is a living breathing organism – and like any living organism, change is inevitable. Today, I’d like to let you know about a number of changes at crayon and talk a bit about what the future holds.
crayon relaunches itself today as a conversational marketing company, specializing in helping its clients engage advertising-weary consumers through the power of community, dialogue and partnership. Think of crayon as a cross between a think tank and a strategic consultancy, with one major difference. Unlike most (if not all) consultancies, crayon won’t flee the scene of the crime once the 600 page report is dumped on the Mahogany desk of the CEO. Instead, crayon will stay the course, and if asked and required, will help bring the strategies and ideas to life.
To achieve this objective, crayon will focus its efforts on transforming prolific thought leadership and vision into cutting-edge, differentiated and prescriptive strategic solutions.
With this renewed and refined focus, several changes have been put into effect. They are – in no particular order:
A honing of the team to reflect a core of strategic and relationship leadership
- Our Chief Creative Officer, Steve Coulson, will transition into a freelance role and a “friend of crayon” best-in-class partner. We hope to continue working with Steve as often as is humanly possible
- CC Chapman is also heading out on his own to spread his wings. We wish him the best of luck – not that he needs luck, as CC has built a solid platform and strong community over time. We will be cheering him on from the sidelines and hope our paths cross as we move into the future.
- Additionally co-founder and CEO, Gary Cohen, has also decided that it is the appropriate time to pursue other opportunities. Both crayon and Gary are moving forward focusing on their core interests and will refer business to each other where appropriate.
This will be coupled with a rapidly expanding periphery of best in class freelancers, consultants, creative partners and mercenaries. This vision – to wrap our strategic core with an extensive network of partners that can help us activate our ideas and realize our vision with in-market programs – has always been part of the crayon plan. With these recent changes, we are putting that plan into overdrive.
We firmly believe this will be the working model of the future.
With all of these changes, where does crayon stand? Frankly, our refined core is solid. Greg Verdino, our Chief Strategy Officer, will oversee many of the aforementioned initiatives and together with Scott Monty, our Relationship Director and Consigliere, and the rest of our small but stellar team will bring these solutions to our clients and to life.
Over the past year, we’ve made some mistakes. We’ve underestimated how hard it is to run a remote and virtual company (although we will persevere) and miscalculated how long a lag there can be between pitching, winning an assignment, and getting the first payment in. On the other hand, we’ve overestimated the enormous leap between intent and commitment when it comes to change. The reality is this – talk is cheap. People want to change, but when it comes to actually changing they may be less aggressive about making things happen. We’ve been fortunate to partner with clients that are serious about change and not afraid to invest against new marketing innovation and experimentation.
In a nutshell, 2007 was a learning year for us. But it was also an incredibly gratifying year during which we found focus and built an incredible foundation on which to build for the future. As we wind down 2007 and head into 2008, we hope to play our part in continuing to build equity, trust, influence and business between our clients, their brands and their customers.
Joseph Jaffe
President and Chief Interruptor
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