A trailblazing, laugh-out-loud style of advertising has given Madison’s Planet Propaganda a national platform. Known best for its creative work with Duluth Trading Co., where creative teams transformed a regional workwear catalog into a $600 million national retailer, Planet Propaganda’s work is about advancing clients “on a precipice” of bigger and better things. It has done the same for Jersey Mike’s and Jimmy John’s submarine sandwiches, which went from small shops to national powerhouses with Planet Propaganda’s creative touch.
We recently spoke to Dana Lytle, the agency’s founder, CEO, and chief creative officer, to find out the secret of helping clients take that critical step. Fresh off his induction into the Wisconsin Advertising Hall of Fame, Lytle explained how his team’s “creative hoobajoob” has Planet prepared for an even more successful orbit.
What does the Wisconsin Advertising Hall of Fame honor mean to you?
It was a complete surprise for me, and I’m incredibly grateful and humbled by the honor. There’s been some greats of the advertising agency world that have been represented. Even people like the late [broadcaster] Bob Uecker and Willie G. [Davidson] from Harley Davidson are in. So, it’s cool from that perspective. Obviously I’m grateful for the strong creative industry here in Wisconsin and Madison and Milwaukee. They’ve really been our foundation and support over the years.
How do you approach the creative process for accounts such as Duluth Trading?
Planet’s sweet spot is to work with what we call brands on a precipice. There are moments when companies must leap from growth to scale, and we’re really good at that time in the process. We’ve been fortunate to work with a bunch of amazing CMOs and CEOs over the years that are really brave and bold and maybe even a little crazy at times, but our secret sauce is we’re great at finding a single significant business idea that’s not just a catchy campaign or tagline. It’s more of a mantra or a business philosophy.
There’s a great business writer named Patrick Lencioni [founder of the Table Group] that I love to read, but he has a quote that if you can get everyone on your team rowing in the same direction, you can dominate any industry or any market against any competition at any time. I love that quote and that’s really what our methodology is built around. We call it “simplify, amplify,” and distill down a business idea that sometimes becomes a tagline or a mantra.
For Jimmy John’s, it was “Freaky Fast,” and it isn’t just a fun tagline. It was a differentiator and a way for a brand to stand out against the competition. Jimmy [John Liautaud], when he originally came to Planet, wanted to compete on the freshness of his food, but Subway was also doing that and they had millions of dollars to spend against him. So, we worked with him and part of Jimmy’s story was their food was fresh and they had great ingredients and all those things, but part of it is because they’re fast. We combined that with the personality of the brand, and that’s where Freaky Fast came from.
The cool part about stuff like that is they become litmus tests for ideas going forward, because Jimmy didn’t veer very far from that. When franchisees wanted to serve french fries, Jimmy said, “No, it’s not fast. It’ll destroy our operations.” He used that on not only the marketing side but the operations.
Similarly, we created “A Sub Above” for Jersey Mike’s. Again, that’s a philosophy. It’s not just a tagline. That’s one of the key differentiators for Planet. We really boil it down to those single significant ideas that really encapsulate a company in a brand and philosophy that’s going to drive them forward, and we build on that, both internally and externally. The great brands have that kind of differentiation … and they are consistent.
Planet Propaganda has grown the market for various clients. Which campaign opened the most doors for you?
Oh, it’s definitely Duluth Trading. You can pretty much go anywhere in the country and when you say that we worked on Duluth Trading, they’re like, “Oh, we love those.” … It’s helped Planet and it’s something I’m incredibly proud of and passionate about. Duluth is an amazing company. The people out there are great. Their product is incredible. They’ve had real success, but they’re on to that next chapter, that next precipice point that they have to get through.
We don’t come in and just put up Planet’s take on things. We pull out what’s there and dust off things that are great and maybe got lost or distilled down. …
You always start with their customer, and [Duluth Trading]had some really quirky, fun things going on. Their customers originally were all tradesmen, and they were direct, no BS-type people that were hardworking but also had a magnetic sense of humor. And so, we played all that up, and we tried to take what’s there and amplify it in a way that they can build off and grow because they were basically a regional workwear brand when we started working with them. They grew from $60 million to $600 million, and they’re a public company today.
Define the term “creative hoobajoob.”
Have you ever heard of the term lagniappe [pronounced lang-yup]? It’s a bonus or extra gift, and it’s a Cajun term and I’ve always loved it. It means a little extra or something given for free, and hoobajoob is in that realm too, where you just give a little extra. … It’s an insight that’s going to make things resonate. It’s not just to communicate an idea. You have to make it resonate so that people feel it in their bones, and they not only understand it, but they can take action with that as well.
So, how do you innovate as a company, as a brand? When you have an idea like “A Sub Above” or “Freaky Fast,” you can innovate off that. You can operationalize a brand off of that, and you can take that to another level where it’s just not understanding the idea. …
You can have an angry beaver biting somebody’s legs, but how about a giant angry beaver? Ideas like that obviously don’t make rational sense, but they can make a huge difference. What I’ve always liked about those things is that they represent something beautiful, and that’s a willingness to risk looking foolish in the pursuit of something authentic. And that’s where that creative hoobajoob is like, wow, that’s got a little bit of extra, if you’ll pardon the pun, bite to it. This isn’t just being crazy or weird for weird’s sake.
When Duluth was in that position, they were a small regional player against Carhartt, which was probably a $600 million–$800 million company at the time. They needed to find ways to stand out and to break through the clutter, and we’re big proponents of that. You never bet the farm in those kinds of situations. You do it appropriately. You test and learn and try something. [Duluth’s giant angry beaver] idea originally ran as pure digital ads and we tested them, and if they wouldn’t have worked, we had a Plan B, Plan C thing ready to go.
How is artificial intelligence playing a part in your staff’s creative process?
It’s definitely aiding. It’s a fantastic tool that can help you get to options faster. We use it both for creative research and strategic research.
There are [AI] services popping up daily in different verticals. Recently, we signed up for a company called Waldo that basically automates complex research tasks and helps you get smarter, quicker. Five years ago, I was just doing a lot of web research and looking through things, and 10 years ago, it was harder than that, but now you can sit down at a computer and use tools like Waldo.
We have another AI tool called Granola that we use for our note-taking, and it’s incredible what it can do to summarize a conversation. The benefit is when we’re talking to a client and they outline everything, Granola distills it all down and puts in all the key components with amazing accuracy. You can go back and say to the client, here’s what we’re talking about. Is that right? And you confirm everything.
What’s next for you and Planet Propaganda?
I want us to do the best work of our careers, and we’ve done some amazing work so far. Planet is growing and we’ve been successful with our current clients, and we have to grow around them. I could see us potentially doubling in size because of that and getting even more national notoriety.
