Adios, arrivederci, au revoir, 2021!

What started out as the year that would put 2020 and a global pandemic that ground the economy to a halt and hundreds of thousands of lives short behind us, ended up being another year that kept us home, on edge, and unsure.

So as I write this during the first week of 2022, from my new home office (in my new home!) I’m thinking about the ways we can move forward this year. Less about resolutions and more about perspective. 

At Fancy, we’re recommitting to the whole reason we’re in this game in the first place. The three leaders of Fancy came together because we knew the power of advertising to change the world. And we also knew that business as usual wasn’t going to change anything. 

And so, we’re recommitting to the way we work—with our teammates, with our clients, and with our partners.

We are people first. We strongly believe that the lives we all live outside the job make us infinitely better at the job. We encourage our “Fancies” to build their passions, love their avocations, and integrate their work-life into their whole-life. We choose to work with clients who not only choose to work with companies that make a difference, but who make a difference in those organizations themselves.  

We are 100% women-owned and led. Our network of Fancies is diverse in background, experience, interests, and skillsets. What unites us all is a deep desire to make the world a better place for women. 

Do we exclusively work on brands marketed to women? No, but we exclusively work on brands that consider the female perspective and experience. Do we work only with women? No, but we work only with people, partners, and clients that want to elevate what’s important to women. 

Because that is our Positive Purpose: to change the way advertising works for women, both inside and outside the agency. What’s yours?

We help brands find a positive purpose in their being. 

Yes, you make hair shinier. Yes, your pizzas arrive on time. Yes, and more important than ever these days, you kill 99.9% of germs. But so what? Successful brands, brands with meaning, brands that occupy a place not just in the minds, but in the hearts, of consumers do more. They go beyond the functional and offer something that helps their consumers think, grow, connect, laugh—essentially move themselves and the people around them into a truly better place. 

Positive can be difficult.

It can be about facing your past, striving to be better. Owning your mistakes, your missteps, It’s not easy to admit a failure, often harder still to account for bad judgment, insensitivity. 

Positive is real. 

The word authentic gets bandied about an awful lot these days. Honestly, it’s kind of annoying. Still, being true to your core beliefs, not hiding who you really are, being honest about what makes you, you is important. You’ll attract the people who appreciate you. Who believe in you. And who will want more of you. 

Positive is brave. 

At Fancy we talk with our clients a lot about Brave Actions. Things that are intrinsic to not just what they do, but how they do it. These things may never be seen by consumers, but they affect every cell of the brand. They should be tough. They should be challenging. They should make you wonder if you can actually live up to them. Because when you do, you stand for something. Not because someone is watching, because they aren’t and you do it anyway.

Positive is power.

It is taking and shaping your brand’s DNA into the very best version of itself. Not because it makes you better (which it does) but because it makes us all better. 

And as we face shaking off the last year, we are grounding ourselves in being mindful of the time we spend working and ways we can use that time to push the cultural needle forward. For brands. For women. For the world.