Prove it. Don’t claim it.

Every category is full of brands announcing they’re better. Almost none show it. Build the proof into the idea itself and nobody has to take your word for anything.

We launched a Japanese pickup, priced above the competition, into the most patriotically American category there is — after two previous failures. Real demonstrations, no effects. Sales rose 146% in a category that was shrinking by 12%, conquest of domestic buyers tripled, and all three American truck brands changed their advertising in response.

Simple, or it doesn’t travel.

Complicated ideas need explaining, and explaining is where they lose their energy. If I can’t say it to someone who doesn’t work in advertising, it isn’t finished.

A minivan, launched as a rap video. Twenty-two million views, and eight years later people were still writing in for the badge.

Go and look.

Before we said a word to American truck buyers, I sent photographers and writers to live among them, and published a 261-page book about their working lives. It was never an ad. It was homework.

Fortune, the following spring: “America’s Best Car Company. How? By understanding Americans better than Detroit does.”

The medium is a decision, not a default.

Work out what the idea needs, then buy the media. Not the other way round.

Swagger Wagon launched off one YouTube banner — no TV, no Super Bowl, a nervous client and a segment in decline — into a 145% sales increase. For the RAV4 we posted outdoor boards four hundred miles from the places they pictured, so the media buy itself made the argument: only one tank away.

Collaboration is a discipline, not a personality trait.

I’ve led creative across four agencies working one brand in four cultures, and a dozen more simultaneously for WPP. It holds when people trust you to represent their work honestly in the room they’re not in. It collapses the moment they don’t.

That launch made Camry the best-selling car model in America — $259 million, up 40%. The protocols we wrote between those four agencies are still in place.We execute.

We apply the chosen idea to a defined media deliverable list, for real world execution.

The work has to work.

Awards are a fair proxy for bravery. They’re a poor one for effectiveness. I’ve been fortunate with both — but only one shows up in the numbers a client has to answer for.

146% and 145% in shrinking categories. A billion impressions from one day. Tripled conquest. Brand imagery up 150%. Best-selling car in America. Best November since 1994.