Corporate Culture

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The White-Paper-Bag Job Application. Remember the challenge Amy Miller faced? Used to be, market niches were safe. All you needed was the best location. Or a distinctive product. Or a capability that no one else had. Today there are no safe niches. Make a little money doing something, and you can bet that competitors--often competitors with deeper pockets than your own--will show up looking for a piece of the action. That's what might have happened to Miller. She started Amy's Ice Creams in 1984. It wasn't long before national companies such as Baskin-Robbins and Steve's were setting up shop close by.

The thing is, as we've said, Miller wasn't just selling ice cream. Anyone can sell ice cream. She was selling entertainment. All that crazy stuff her employees do--the theme nights, the impromptu musical comedies, the costumes, games, and jokes--keeps customers coming back for more. And it keeps Amy's Ice Creams (now at $2.2 million) growing about 20% a year.

Miller sends her cultural message to employees--this is what we value above all, this is what makes us different--from the day they show up looking for a job. Instead of a formal application form, they get a plain white paper bag along with the instructions to do anything they want with it and bring it back in a week. Those who just jot down a phone number will find that "Amy's isn't really for them," says Miller. But an applicant who produces "something unusual from a white paper bag tends to be an amusing person who would fit in with our environment."

Unusual, indeed. Applicants use the bags to create cartoons, board games, works of art, and elaborate parodies ("The Amysburg Address"). One job seeker turned his into an elaborate pop-up jack-in-the-box--and became a scooper at the Westbank Market store. That store's former manager painted an intricate green-and-blue sphere resembling the earth atop a waffle cone on his bag. Later he could be found passing out $5 gift certificates to customers willing to do their best animal impression or otherwise act up in ways that, among the Amy's staff, pass for normal. Like any performers, employees of Amy's can't rest on their laurels. The half a dozen or so white paper bags that applicants turn in during busy weeks remind them that there are plenty of creative people out there--and that creativity, not just ice cream, is what their boss really puts a premium on.

The War Room. Customers used to be less demanding, too. Now their expectations have ratcheted up several notches. Manufacturers have to deliver near-perfect quality. Service companies have to--well, almost set up housekeeping with their customers. Because what the customers expect in today's market isn't just a service, it's a solution to their problems. That's why travel agents have started to offer full travel-management capabilities along with plane tickets and hotel reservations. It's why distributors have begun running clients' inventories instead of just shipping them parts.

And in advertising, as Roy Spence and his colleagues have figured out, it's why agencies can't just dream up clever ads and do the media buys. Clients don't want advertising. They want to increase market share. They want to better their margins. They want marketing effectiveness, as measured by the attainment of specific, well-defined objectives.

Spence's agency, GSD&M--also in Austin, as it happens--is a monument to that realization. The agency's billings have grown nearly sixfold in the past decade. It counts blue-chippers such as Wal-Mart Stores and Southwest Airlines among its 22 clients and boasts a 90% client-retention rate. Part of GSD&M's pitches to prospects: measurable goals. Goals are a subject of discussion at the start of a campaign. ("Clients let us know how they define winning," says one staffer.) Progress toward them is scrutinized carefully as the campaign progresses. The agency hands out bonuses when clients achieve their goals, not when GSD&M achieves its own.

The artifact that reinforces the culture of pure client-centeredness is called a war room, and GSD&M invented it six years ago. "We were working with a client and really needed to concentrate," explains Spence. "So we just took over an empty office and started posting urgent information on the wall."

Today the war rooms have evolved into a kind of command central. They're often painted in the client's colors. Red phones, exclusively for calls to and from the client, dot the tables. Up on the wall are the client's (and sometimes its competitors') earnings reports, stock price, newspaper clippings, competitive analyses, and weekly sales figures; along shelves are products, industry paraphernalia, and personal items that the client's customers might possess. In the war rooms, agency staffers prepare pitches or repositioning initiatives. They conduct conference calls, look at reels of past commercials, brainstorm, and debate. "War rooms raise the intensity level and give us a mental edge," says Spence. "They remind us to keep our eye on the prize," the prize being the client's success. Forget your office, the rooms broadcast to employees, this isn't about you. It's about the needs of the people who've hired us.

And is it any surprise that clients like the war rooms, too? (Think of the message sent about where GSD&M's attention is.) When the agency moves into new quarters later this year, there will be eight war rooms as opposed to the three in its current facilities. Says Spence, GSD&M's president, "Clients see that we're 100% focused. And as we build their business, they build ours."

Open-Book Wallpaper. Customer expectations aren't just higher; sometimes they change character completely. And that kind of marketplace volatility presents a challenge of its own: sometimes you have to turn your company on a strategic dime. Pat Kelly, CEO of Physician Sales & Service (PSS), based in Jacksonville, Fla., found himself in just such a situation a couple of years ago. Kelly built PSS into a leading distributor of supplies for doctors' offices mostly on the basis of top-level service. Surveys showed that was what his customers wanted. And the extraordinary service allowed him to charge a premium. When the Clintons took office, however, health-care reform was in the air, and suddenly doctors were worried about costs. In just a matter of months, price went from last to first on their list of concerns.

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