What “Mad Genius” Really Means
Where did the name Mad Genius come from?
Stop me if you’ve heard this one: A producer, a salesman, and a creative director walk into a bar…
What would become Mad Genius originated in 2005, when Rick Moore, Chip Sarver, and I decided to create a leading-edge ad agency in Mississippi. The first order of business? What to call the business.
It had to be something different—something smart. We needed a name able to encompass a creative philosophy attractive to clients yearning for work that’s crazy effective, insanely clever, and maddeningly beautiful.
It had to be Mad Genius.
The Process Behind the Name
Mad Genius’s creative process starts with research. We spend the time to get a deep understanding of the competition we’re aiming to out maneuver, the audience we’re trying to reach, and the problems we’re trying to solve. We ask a lot of questions about market perceptions and operational hurdles, because we believe that breakthrough ideas can springboard from the most unusual, and often overlooked, places. The Genius side of our nature is our desire to fully comprehend any client’s business.
Yeah, yeah… So Mad Genius conducts exhaustive research to understand consumer expectations. What agency doesn’t?
All too often, marketing types build brands to meet expectations. At Mad Genius, we aim to exceed them, both in the brands we build and the clients we serve.
We invite clients to experiment, make discoveries, and create breakthroughs with us.
We believe the two most powerful emotions for new customers are surprise and delight. How can we surpass what’s expected and deliver a memorable, perhaps even shocking, experience? It’s as simple as that. That’s the Mad side of our nature: feeding the part of our collective brains that demands more ideas and pushes brands to find new opportunities.
Sit through one discovery meeting, and you’ll see that Mad Genius is more than just a name. It’s a singular passion, a bold promise of creativity and invention, and a fearless culture of “what’s next?” Perhaps most importantly, it’s a grand challenge to business owners and corporate marketing directors to embrace the unexpected, and to choose something that may lie just beyond their comfort zone.
Not Right, Ready
Everyone has heard the mantra hammered into the heads of anyone who has ever worked in retail or owned a business: “The customer is always right.” We respectfully disagree. At Mad Genius, we believe the mantra should be: “The customer is always ready.”
When asked to evaluate the relationship with their ad agency, one of the best questions an entrepreneur can ask is, “When was the last time your agency told you no?” (If you’re looking for order takers, then we’re not the yes-men you’re looking for.)
That’s why we invite clients to experiment, make discoveries, and create breakthroughs with us. For Mad Genius, the art of building connections with clients and their customers isn’t complicated; it’s about embracing surprising solutions and taking delight in the string of lunatic whims that got us there. It’s about trust, forged through mutual respect, and a willingness to listen, and to set aside the need to be right.
It sounds silly, but at Mad Genius, we enjoy being wrong. The more ideas we can eliminate during the experimentation and discovery phase, the greater chance we have for one of those ideas to be a unique, impactful breakthrough solution.
It takes a brave client to believe in the process and to celebrate all the ideas—the great ones and the not-so-great ones—resting safe in the knowledge that there’s genius behind the madness. The trick, of course, is to turn madness into momentum, the one-in-a-million, completely unhinged, insight driven spark that will change your business forever.
That’s easier said than done. But we didn’t name ourselves Mad Genius for nothing.
Get in touch with us. Let’s get it wrong together, until we get it right.