Why We're Here
This post originally appeared in my weekly newsletter, BL&T (Borrowed, Learned, & Thought). Subscribe
Borrowed
“A hallmark of true expertise and insight is making a complex subject understandable.”
From “Good Strategy Bad Strategy” by Richard Rumelt [Book]
Learned
Every Barrel proposal opens with a page called “Why We’re Here.” It’s meant to frame the context before we get into case studies, approach, and pricing. And for anyone new in the room, it’s a good way to catch any misalignment on what we’re solving for before we say how we’re solving it.
Over the last few months, that page has grown from a few sentences to a paragraph, and sometimes two. Each iteration added another line about the brand’s history, recent challenges, vision, etc. All of it matters, but together it can bury the point. Last week we were working on a proposal and talked about simplifying it, and it swung the other way: “[Client] is looking to redesign their website.” That’s true, but so is every other client who reaches out to us.
Neither version was wrong. The long one showed everything we’d learned, and the short one described what we’d do. Neither succinctly said what led the client to reach out and what they wanted to accomplish. It took another pass to get to a couple of sentences that were short and only true for them.
Understanding the outcome a client wants has always been the job. The redesign, the email strategy, or the audit is how we get them there. But what I’ve been thinking about is how much more it matters now that AI is making the work itself more accessible to anyone willing to learn. A brand isn’t hiring us to make a thing. They’re hiring us because we’ve spent years working with CPG brands that sell in grocery, on Amazon, and on their own sites, and we know how each piece of that work fits into the business they’re trying to build.
People have had WebMD for years, and they still go to the doctor. When it’s serious, they see a specialist. A good one listens, recognizes what’s going on because they’ve seen it many times before, and can tell you plainly what it is and what to do.
Being able to say in a couple of sentences what a client wants, in a way that only applies to them, is a small test of whether we understand them, and whether what we’re proposing is the right path forward.
Thought
Are we describing what we do, or what they need?
