Back in 2002, when he was still the CMO for Procter & Gamble, Jim Stengel was pictured on the cover of an Advertising Age reprint that I happened to pick up while in the office of a client in Atlanta.

Jim Stengel

Before there was a GameChangers LLC, before one word of the book had been written, I read in that Ad Age article how Stengel had made what we know today as a GameChanger move: He banned all storyboards from first meetings with ad agencies on new campaigns. What a gift!  Storyboards in a kickoff meeting, presume way too much. They hijack the process, and take it down a one-way, one-lane street. They imply a client/vendor relationship that prematurely assigns status and roles to the players and is therefore toxic to a truly organic process.

I give Jim Stengel a lot of credit for indicating that there is a need for improvisation in business. His storyboard ban created a vacuum that, by design I’m sure, required improvisation to fill.

In animation, where films are largely worked out on storyboards, presenting scenes that have been depicted on storyboards is called ‘getting the story on its feet.’ Stengel recognized that getting anything on its feet that was going to have legs needed to fall a time or two first.

Today, Stengel teaches at the Anderson School of Business at UCLA, and from his website it seems that he’s still got a unique perspective on the practices and processes of marketing brands.   I hope he’s telling the future captains of industry about his P & G storyboard rule.  It’s a good one.