Wade's Juicing the Orange Review

I read Juicing the Orange recently and thought it was a great book. It celebrates the success of Fallon Worldwide, while serving as a reminder to us why advertising is a great business to be in. Below are insights from the book. Enjoy.


Imagination is the last legal means of gaining an unfair advantage over the competition.

The 7 Principles of Creative Leverage:
1) Always start from scratch.
If you don't start from scratch you can get caught up in the mind set of those
went before you.

2) Demand a ruthlessly simple definition of the business problem.
You have to find the one consumer insight that forms the basis of a solution for the client.

3) Discover a proprietary emotion.
Emotions play a crucial role in coding, storing, and retrieving memories, which in turn form the foundation of decision making.

4) Focus on the size of the idea, not the size of the budget.

5) Seek out strategic risks.
If you don't take risks, your competitors will.

6) Collaborate or perish.

7) Listen hard to your customers (then listen some more).

-When conducting focus groups, listen even when people are bad mouthing the product. Passion is often a far better indicator of a potential insight than optimism is.
-When research keeps pointing back to the same place, you've likely found an essential truth about the brand.

-Agencies must accept their client's crises as their own to really understand them and produce their best.
-Brand conscious consumers actively seek brands that reflect their values.
-You need strong strategy and strong execution: execution without strategy is irrelevant; strategy without execution is invisible.
-Global strategies should always be executed locally. One message rarely is able to reach the whole world and have an equal impact everywhere.

-Subbrands or line extensions can give a fledgling subsidiary some valuable name recognition and credibility, but it often comes at the expense of its own brand clarity.
-Always look for influential groups that aren't being paid attention to. Can your client meet their needs?
-Big budgets just make your voice louder; to really reach people your ads need to make a genuine connection with the audience and invite them to participate in your message.

-Problem-solving in advertising is similar to the medical profession; you can't execute properly if you've diagnosed wrong.

-If a brand is faltering, ignore current associations and look to the past for something that might still resonate with the audience today.

-If you don't position yourself in the marketplace your competition will do it for you.

-Always discover the perception & the reality of your client's business. If you can address a fundamental misconception you can find a message that closes the gap between the two.

-Emotional marketing doesn't require melodrama, it only needs to be human & genuine.
-When engaging in guerrilla marketing in another market, use locals who’ll know what works best in their area.
-Rational positioning is rarely sustainable; an emotional connection is necessary to maintain a message's strength.
-Share of market isn’t determined by share of voice. The idea is king, not the budget.

The survival if the fittest doesn't mean the survival of the strongest; it means survival of those who are most capable of adapting to change. If you can't adapt, you can't survive.