K atie c ouric

When in Doubt, Go with Your Gut
Even though I’m a huge advocate of testing and learning (as you may have
gathered by now), there are times when you have to let go, let experience
guide you, and listen to your inner voice. Trust yourself (which is not the
same thing as taking a shot in the dark) because intuition, which is based on
life experience, can guide you and help you determine which content will
be more or less effective.
Mike Jurkovac, Emmy Award–winning director/producer at
TheBridge.co
, shared a story about important information he learned
working alongside Mike Koelker. Koelker is in the advertising hall of fame
for much of his work, especially for campaigns including the Levi Strauss
& Co. “501 Blues” for 501 jeans in 1984, and “Colors” for Dockers in
1992.
Jurkovac witnessed Koelker’s use of his intuition to give birth to a very
special campaign. Jurkovac and Koelker met with the California Raisin

---

Advisory Board who were trying to figure out how to promote raisins (not
the sexiest fruit in the bunch). They were looking at the results from some
focus groups and two creative ideas were getting pretty strong results, while
the other creative direction wasn’t. The farmers couldn’t decide which way
to go. Since Koelker had built a billion-dollar business, they decided to ask
his opinion.
He said, “I know the tests aren’t supporting this, but there’s just
something about those clay-mated characters that I think people will really
respond to. Following my gut, I’d go with this.” The direction that Koelker
chose, the one that wasn’t responding well in the tests, became the
“California Raisins” commercial of 1986, where the raisins sing and dance
to “I Heard It Through the Grapevine”—one of the most iconic and
successful commercials of the eighties.
A fun story about Koelker making that choice comes from while
Jurkovac was working late on the Levi’s account. A man came in and said,
“Does somebody here do the raisins?”
“Yeah, that team’s downstairs,” Jurkovac said. “A guy named Mike
Koelker did it.”
The person replied, “I had a dream last night, so I flew up to San
Francisco because I saw myself as one of the California Raisins. It’s not
about the money. I just want to be a raisin. The money can go to my
charity.” The man who spoke those words was Michael Jackson. Michael
had seen the campaign and on his own decided, “I want to be that.”
Jurkovac says that this is the secret to content: make something so great that
it 
moves
people to take action.