We worked up a mission statement once, but it was a little wordy, so we never formally adopted it. It read “The Barbarian Group exists to foster environments and engagements which inspire creative people to the highest creative standards and exemplify that creativity, technology, media and the network can combine to benefit commerce and culture equally.” Which is all definitely true, it just seemed a little verbose.

Then we took a different approach and tried to minimize, minimize, minimize, and we came down with something like “creative Internet’ or “creative technology.” This was all before we had a copywriter on staff. We’re sure if we tried again, it would be really awesome. It did the trick, though – the whole exercise did what mission statements are supposed to do, and got us all on the same page and focused our energies and kept us from letting our dreams about owning bars or Italian villas from distracting us from the mission at hand. So, again: The Barbarian Group exists to foster environments and engagements which inspire creative people to the highest creative standards and exemplify that creativity, technology, media and the network can combine to benefit commerce and culture equally.

So what does this mean? Well, you’ll notice a few things here. First off, we aim to benefit commerce and culture. We believe that the best advertising can do both of these. It makes everyone money, of course, but it also becomes part of our collective conscience, and it does this without resorting to anything evil. You’ll also notice this whole “highest creative standards” business. We really mean that. Like annoyingly so, sometimes.

We founded this company because we were fed up with all the compromises we had to make every day when working in advertising. Every time we grumbled under our breath “things are messed up around here. It totally doesn’t need to be that way,” we made a mental note. And every time we made a decision as we were building this company, we kept those mental notes in line.

For us, creativity isn’t necessarily a visual design worthy of Communication Arts. Creativity isn’t necessarily the highest production standards. These are tools we use when it’s necessary to reach someone. It’s the idea. It’s the purity of the idea. You can sacrifice a lot on a project and still have it be creatively brilliant, but once that core idea is compromised, well, that’s just a big warning flag.

Making sure our creative work stays as good as it can be is a full time job. It’s so easy to just let it go when things get difficult. And yes, there are times we have to back down, and yes, there are times we have to let an idea go. But it is the exception rather than the rule. We may forget sometimes, but we want to be the best, and we want the work to be the best. Remind us. One of the most powerful tools we have here is the sheer creative brainpower that we, as a company, possess. Good ideas can come from anywhere. We never want to forget that. Creative pow wows, emails, walkabouts and naps are of vital importance. We don’t care if you’re in PR or Finance or Production or are a Rails developer. If you have an idea about a project, we want to hear about it.

We’re telling you all this because we’re obsessed with it. So much so, that we forget to mention it. It often seems manifest to us. Especially since we have hired all these amazing artists that have been blissfully sheltered from the withering realities of every day life in the advertising world. Ha. Sometimes we forget to explain to you that something isn’t doable because it will kill the idea. Sometimes we sound completely unreasonable. Sometimes it seems like we’re ignoring your input. We’re not. We’re just keeping an eye on the big picture. We’re idealists. We know it’s a pain sometimes, so we figured it’s best to tell you straight off.

Our passion for creative excellence extends to the words as well as the pictures. Copy is totally the red-headed stepchild of interactive creativity. I think we use this metaphor somewhere else, but we’ll let that slide. One of this metaphor’s parents was promiscuous. Anyway, it’s true. We care about our copy. We know you do, too, and we’ll talk later in this document about how and why copy for the web is different than copy for, say, a print ad or broadcast spot (not least because there’s a lot more of it). For now, though, we just want to remind you that copy matters, and we try and keep it as solid as we can through the course of a project. -