The Secret Ingredient of World Domination

If I were to host a panel at a marketing conference (preferably one by the sea) it would be titled “Advertising and Design: Hug It Out”.

Most of the great designers I’ve met have a wary distaste for ad folk while most ad folk I’ve met are blithely ignorant about anything involving design. This simmering tension has always seemed to lurk below the surface. The disciplines are like two girls putting on makeup in the bathroom who won’t acknowledge that the other one is there. There are exceptions, of course, but that is the general state of the world. 

When we started Lafayette American, we put design and advertising on the same plane, neither one subservient to the other. We weren’t an ad agency with a “design department” and we weren’t a design shop that could knock out ads. We believed they could all work as one. 

The good news is, we were right. But why did we do it in the first place? Because in today’s marketing landscape, with the myriad of platforms out there, any agency needs strong design at its core, for that is the beacon that will keep your brand from getting lost in the chaos. Design is the Keith Richards and Charlie Watts rhythm section that Advertising riffs off of, and it just sounds better when they all play together. 

When people ask “What makes Lafayette American different?” we often forget to mention this, because it is so fundamental to who we are. But our clients recognize the strength of this unique fusion and our work is stronger because of it. 

We increasingly live in a world of toxic divisions and rivalries. I hear even politics has lost its charms. But at Lafayette American we make this marriage work, not because we are trying create a more harmonious world (okay, we are, but that’s a different story) but because by binding these superpowers together, we’re forging something that is better, stronger, and more effective than what most clients are used to seeing. 

And that is how we are going to conquer the world.