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“It can’t possibly be all ones and zeros!” I’ve heard that phrase many, many times from my wife. After so many years of putting up with my passion for technology, she still doesn’t buy it. “If it’s all ones and zeros, why does it cost us a couple hundred bucks every time some new gadget comes out?”

For as long as I can remember, my passion — that thing that makes me happy — has been technology. And it’s not just hardware and gadgets, it’s software too. My God I love a good text editor. A woman I once dated called my laptop my mistress, but that’s a story for another day. Even a cursory review of my finances will show that I’m willing to put my money where my love is. A quick review of the gadget graveyard in basement is even more telling: an Apple Newton, a Garmin handlheld GPS device, three generations of Palm Pilots, a Compaq/HP iPaq, two Blackberries, an Apple Macintosh SE (two, count ‘em, two floppy disk drives and zero hard drives), and more cell phones than I care to admit. Check out my bookshelf at home and you’ll see it is littered with titles like Agile Web Development with Rails, MySQL, and Shell Scripting.

These days I spend a lot of time trading up for software that makes my technical life easier. I already mentioned my love good code editors like TextMate. Years of accumulating files and source code are easily searched and indexed by tools like Quicksilver. Google Reader allows me to easily keep up on the 30+ blogs I follow to make sure I’m on top of the quick pace of change. My technical team here at Barefoot and I have been developing using Ruby on Rails because it allows us to get from idea to prototype to production much more quickly than other platforms. We all work on Macs because, frankly, Macs allow us to be more productive. Does an individual Mac laptop cost more than than an individual PC laptop? Very likely. But how valuable is my time? How many hours have I saved in the past week alone because I trade up for tools that make my life easier?

OK, fine. I’ll admit it. I think the gadgets, machines and tools are cool, too. It’s not all about productivity gains, it’s more about where I find happiness. To thine own self be true, and technology is what I rocket for, whether or not that makes me a geek.

So I’ll continue to spend my tens and twenties making all the ones and zeros do what I want them to do: convince my wife they’re real.

At Barefoot, my symbol of happiness is “outsider art,” art that’s been created by those who are self-taught and who must overcome mental handicaps of one sort or another, such as autism or schizophrenia. I spend less on other items in order to afford the luxury of owning some outsider art.

Outsider art is a true passion of mine because it speaks to the creative spirit and urge that’s inside all of us, regardless of our social or educational circumstances. I find outsider artists inspiring because they don’t concern themselves with convention or what’s expected. Instead, they express themselves in a pure, uninhibited fashion.

One of my favorite outsider artists is the late Raymond Thunder-Sky. You can get a glimpse of his work and spirit by visiting the website we created for him. Thunder-Sky had a vision of the world and shared it unabashedly with all who would open their minds to it.

I and other advertising creatives at Barefoot can learn a thing or two from these outsider artists. When it comes to “Marketing the Pursuit of Happiness,” we need to be willing to put on our metaphorical hiking boots and trudge through rough terrain to get to the fringe. It’s tough work, but the rewards can be remarkable, whether that be a great print ad, a viral interactive experience or, better still, something not yet imagined.

No, not like Jack’s golden egg in Jack and the Beanstalk. He stole that one. But I think our goal is the same. Happiness for our family’s future.

Jack wanted to ensure his mother was cared for. Jack wanted food on the table. And importantly, Jack was looking for a way to ensure his own financial security in the future.

It’s that future that my golden egg represents. You see, I’m a worrier. What does the future hold? Will everyone stay healthy in my family? Will Barefoot continue to grow? How will I pay for college for my three boys?

When Barefoot began looking into Marketing The Pursuit Of Happiness, my biggest challenge was trying to determine what I rocket for. As a worrier, you can imagine that I’m a bit tight with my spending. Used golf clubs. Last season’s Nikes. And don’t even try to get me to put all the bells and whistles on my new car purchase. Those kind of purchases are actually painful for me to make.

But then, it came to me. My happiness is financial security. And the golden egg represents the security that I rocket for it.

So, I know, you’re asking yourself, what does that have to do with rocketing. I think a lot. I spend a disproportionate amount of my time exploring ways to ensure future financial health for my family. I also probably invest a disproportional amount of my earnings into investments to build toward that security. That may include the amount I invest or what I pay for investment advice. However, while the item I trade up for is not as tangible as others, the emotional reward is the same.

As you can imagine, I really enjoy working with our clients at Fisher Investments and Yahoo Finance is an important bookmark for me. All because I rocket for the golden egg, not the golden handcuffs.

Happiness as described in the dictionary is “the quality or state of being happy, good fortune; pleasure; contentment; joy.” So when asked to describe the happiness icon I chose for my business card, it turned out to be harder than I thought. See, my icon is jeans, I chose jeans for several reasons. The first reason was that we each had to pick our own personal icon to represent happiness (and our kids were off limits), this wasn’t because Barefoot is anti-kids (take it from me, a working mom, nothing could be further from the truth), but we realized that if everyone who had kids here chose their kids that would make for a very cute but not necessarily accurate letterhead design for our new positioning. And being charged with figuring out how to bring the new position of Barefoot to life visually, I thought we ought not risk looking like we were the best kid photographers ever.

So, that being the case, we were asked to pick one other thing that we rocket for, something that we’re passionate about and after much thought and a happy cleaning accident, mine ended up being jeans. I knew I loved jeans and had always been (and still continue to be) in search of the perfect pair. My quest for the holy grail of denim had begun when I was fairly young. Can you imagine how happy I was when I grew up and realized that being a creative in the advertising world meant that I could wear jeans (all the time!!)? How great is that? Talk about happiness…not only was I passionate about designing and advertising since I was little, I realized that the industry that I so wanted to be a part of not only embraced the divine denim but also embraced wearing them to work. Pinch me, I must be dreaming.

Anyway…as for the second reason I chose jeans for my icon, I was cleaning out my closet one day and trying to decide what clothes I should keep and what clothes I should donate. Apparently, jeans had been the hardest for me to part with over the years, I made the discovery that I owned over 50 pairs of jeans. I had no idea I had that many. As I was sitting on my closet floor, I came to the realization that every time I’m at a store, I head for the jeans first (whether I needed a new pair or not), in most cases I didn’t. I went in for socks, I left with jeans, I went in for a coat, shirt, undies…I always left with jeans. I’ve even found myself paying more on jeans than I would on anything else for myself (the exact amount I’ll keep between me and every sales person that I’ve ever purchased jeans from). So, after my closet was cleaned and my donation box was full (of everything but jeans I might add), I came to the realization that what I trade up for is jeans. I love them, I wear them almost everyday and apparently I have enough that I can go to work everyday for over two months and wear a different pair each time.

In September of 1964, my dad was anxiously awaiting two imminent events to happen. Two events he had longed for, the birth of a son and a World Series Championship by the perennial losers, The Philadelphia Phillies. His beloved Phillies were carrying a huge 8 game lead with a handful of games remaining. The City of Philadelphia was all abuzz. World Series tickets were printed. My dad worked extra hours at a second job to buy $12 Deluxe Box World Series seats for games one and seven (just in case it went that far). On Sept 15th, I was born and the Phillies defeated the Colt 45’s of Houston. For my dad, money was tight, but everything in the world seemed so right.

Then the unthinkable happened. After I was born the Phillies lost 12 of the next 15 games including 10 straight games. They lost the division lead to St. Louis Cardinals. St. Louis, led by Bob Gibson, went into the history books as the ‘64 World Series champions. By contrast, the laughable Phillies became the biggest chokers in baseball history. My dad and his dad commiserated and debated the reason why?

The Phillies would not return to the World Series for 16 years. At that time, we were living in the NY area. I was a big Yankees fan (still am) but I had heart for the Phillies and perhaps always will. My dad’s loyalty had remained steadfast. World Series tickets were a hot commodity and to my dad’s absolute surprise outfield tickets through a broker were $300 each. The amount made him pause. After a long night of contemplation, he bought two. So, 16 years after the famous Phillies collapse, my dad got to see Steve Carlton win game six against the Kansas City Royals and the Phillies finally become World Champions. The best part was that he got to see it with his son. You know maybe that is why the Phillies lost in ‘64.

My dad and I will never forget that moment. We still talk about it. From that experience, I learned that you can not put a price tag on everything and that some things are worth rocketing for. Baseball remains my passion because of the link it provides me to my dad and his dad (when he was alive) and my kids and my friends. I have taken the cue from my dad and have continued to rocket for memorable baseball experiences. See you at a game real soon.

I’m not sure how I became fascinated with water. Perhaps it was the fact that I grew up so far away from any of it. Well at least any water that you’d want to swim in.

Growing up in the Midwest in suburbs west of Cleveland, my exposure to the great blue sea was limited to occasional visits to my grandparents place in Fort Myers, Florida. And there, it was the early morning shelling on Sanibel Island that left an impression on me. The fact that the Gulf of Mexico would release such strange creatures as sand dollars, horseshoe crabs and jellyfish made me wonder—what was it holding on to? What else was under the surface, in the coral reefs or miles off shore?

This curiosity, coupled with my inability to excel at most terrestrial sports, drove me to explore ways in which could spend more and more time in or near the water. I quickly learned to snorkel and then became certified to scuba dive. In the first five years of my marriage, my wife Carolyn and I took numerous dive trips, exploring the waters of The Great Barrier Reef, the British & US Virgin Islands, Bonaire, Turks & Caicos, Honduras, and Cabo San Lucas.

When we were lucky enough to have kids (two boys who are now 2 and 5) the dynamics changed a bit. These guys weren’t gonna be diving for a long time. So I took my passion for the ocean topside. I learned how to sea kayak on a week-long expedition through Glacier Bay, Alaska. And came back all fired up to share this with my family.

Our next family vacation was to St. John in the US Virgin Islands. This was one of our favorite places but this trip was gonna be different. Having seen a way to make even more of our family time in the ocean, I began my research. We clearly needed a kayak — one that was portable so we could take it down dirt paths to any of the 16 or so beaches on the island. And we would need a GPS receiver, one that was waterproof of course, to ensure that I wouldn’t get lost at sea (especially with my 4 year-old son). We also needed life vests, collapsible paddles, a backpack frame for the inflatable kayak — the list went on and on.

So I began to return to some of my favorite online sources for such equipment. I read reviews, and asked questions in discussion forums. I wanted to make sure that I was buying good quality, reliable (and cool) equipment. I found myself conducting research both before and after the purchase — before to make sure that I bought the right thing and sometimes after to convince myself or my wife, Carolyn, that the purchase was indeed a good decision.

I found myself becoming an expert in inflatable kayak options and actually geeking out when friends were over who somehow stumbled into the topic of vacations, kayaking, or the ocean. There were even a few poor souls that I dragged into my garage to bore them with the stats on the inflatable “portable” kayak solution that we would be carting around on our family vacation.

So as I consider a category of purchases where I’ve invested a disproportionate amount of my income over the last 5-10 years, it’s one that’s driven by my drive to escape land-locked Cincinnati.

I’ve spent money on outdoor apparel and professional guides to support our weeklong kayaking trip in Glacier Bay, Alaska. Comfortable wetsuits and Scuba gear to make sure that we’d enjoy 4 dives a day for a week in Bonaire. And inflatable, “portable” sea kayaking gear to make sure my son and I could safely explore every nook and cranny of St. John.

In my pursuit of happiness, I have been trading up in the category of adventure travel and outdoor gear and apparel for some time. And with my eyes set on a 2007 sea kayaking and scuba diving trip to the Galapagos Islands next summer, it’s clear that I’ll need to be trading down in other categories in order to continue trading up in this one.

Hi. And welcome to the Barefoot blog. I get the honor, and the implicit pressure, of writing the first blog entry for our new website. First, I should probably tell you what to expect from the entries that I write. It’s very simple. I want to share information that I think readers will find to be worth their time. And when I say that, I imagine our readers to be those considering Barefoot as an agency partner, those considering us a potential employer, and in all likelihood, every now and then my mom — who will be checking to see whether or not I should be considered a failure. Kidding. Second, I want to make it a bit entertaining, which I really just define as being funny. And since the only thing I can safely make fun of is myself or the agency, you’ll see most of the humor will be self-deprecating.

One quick aside on what you won’t find. You won’t find me venting about current projects, challenges or clients. That would violate the trust our partners put in our relationship, and frankly, intuition tells me that might be bad business.

Today I primarily want to focus on Barefoot and how we’re bringing some focus to our own agency positioning (thus the new website). We’ve found, like many agencies, that while we do an amazing job getting our clients to hone in on a positioning and singular point of difference, we haven’t done a real good job defining our own positioning. And while we have historically denied that, we’ve faced up to the truth, and decided to put a stake in the ground and focus our new business efforts on those clients that would benefit from the behavioral learning and expertise we’re developing as we focus on “Marketing the Pursuit of Happiness®”.

What is “Marketing the Pursuit of Happiness?”

It’s marketing products and services that consumers are willing to rocket for. Those of you who are familiar with Michael Silverstein’s book—“Trading Up” will know what this means, but for the rest of us, rocketing is a consumer purchase behavior defined by spending a disproportionate amount of your effort or income on something that is important to you, or as we define it here at Barefoot, things you do, buy or purchase in “the pursuit of happiness.”

If you look at our new identity system, you’ll see a series of what appears to be unrelated objects. They each represent an item that reflects a product or service that one of us here at Barefoot rockets for. For example, if you look at my business card, on the back you’ll see a whiskey barrel. Not because I spend a disproportionate amount of my income on whiskey. I don’t. It’s because a whiskey barrel literally marks the entrance to a large group of islands on the eastern shore of the Georgian Bay. Pointe au Baril (French for Barrel) is where our family has a summer cottage, and the whiskey barrel mounted at the point is a symbol that has denoted safe passage to sailors since the 1800’s. It is quite possibly one of the most beautiful places in the world, and I happily spend a disproportionate amount of my money getting from here in Cincinnati to there. And I spend as much time there as I can every summer.

Let me try to explain a bit more on why we’ve adopted “Marketing the Pursuit of Happiness” as our positioning.

• First, the agency environment is incredibly competitive and a differentiated agency position is critical to our long-term success. We wanted to develop a POV for Barefoot that’s not only different, but of substance and value to prospective clients. A clear reason to pick up the phone and call an agency in Cincinnati.
• Second, while this does more narrowly defines our prospecting efforts (otherwise it wouldn’t be an effective position), we believe this to be a significant market since virtually every category includes an option for which you can trade up or rocket. So while we are not narrowly focused in on a category (i.e. agriculture or B2B), the consumer behaviors we’re learning and the marketing tools we’re developing are narrowly focused.
• Third, when the purchase of goods and services are driven by a desire, hunger or passion for them, they lend themselves to emotional advertising that is passionate, smart, fresh and memorable. The very kind of work we excel at.
• Fourth, these are purchases that people tend to research and become experts on. And they like to share what they’ve learned. This opportunity for buzz and brand advocacy plays to our strength in non-traditional media and interactive.
• Finally, we’ve chosen this positioning because we’ll be pursuing our own happiness. Pitching accounts people here are passionate about, meaning those accounts for which people here already trade-up. I’ve talked a little bit about my passion in this blog with more to follow. Stop back soon and see what some of my partners rocket for.

Remember, you’re happier when you go Barefoot.*

* Our lawyer just pointed out that this is a claim. The preceding statement reflects the opinion of Doug Worple only. It is based on qualitative research and has not been extensively tested with a large enough sample of clients. If you’d like to volunteer to find out if it’s true, please contact me immediately.