The Musings Of An Opinionated Sod [Help Me Grow!]

Yes that really is a photo of the one and only, super-famous human-activist. And Sir Bob Geldof. Ha ha!

Now I’ve just had a very enjoyable [swear-filled] dinner with Sir Bob and Chris DeWolfe [the bloke who started MySpace.com] – and what great, great guys they are. 

For all their fame/riches, it’s great that they are still so down to earth and intouch with what’s going on around them.

We talked about all manner of things, from the Boomtown Rats, Live Aid, Rupert Murdoch, Famine, Changing Face Of Business, 80’s Music, George Bush, Youth Trends – but the 3 key things that really struck me were …

1. Geldof has made more impact on the World than probably all the ad people and brands put together. [Think about that next time you reckon you’ve done well!]

2. Whilst both have achieved incredible success … Chris did it by tapping into cultural trends whereas Geldof did it by shifting actual cultures.

3. Geldof is one of those people who truly deserves to be called a ‘legend’.

This led to us having a debate as to who would make the better ad agency … and we all agreed it would probably be Bob because whilst both would achieve their clients needs/wants – shifting cultures is always going to achieve more dramatic results than simply tapping into cultural trends.

What I loved was that Geldof said ‘anger’ made him more powerful.

In his mind, it not only ensured he maintained his motivation to achieve the goal, but it also kept him striding forward – barreling over the trillions of obstacles that tried desperately to stand in his way.

So there you go, the secret to marketing success … anger [that leads to vision, intelligence and resilience] … discovered by a man who has dramatically shifted cultures despite never making an ad or following traditional business or marketing ‘rules’.

An inspirational evening …

Another hotel … another burger …

This time it’s at the outrageously expensive Gansevoort Hotel in the Meat Packing district of New York City.

What amazes me is that for a hotel that used to be in an area of NYC that

[1] dealt in meat

[2] was a neighbourhood that was NOT where you wanted to hang around in

[3] was a cheaper area of NYC [admitidlly a long time ago]

… it is amazing they can charge US$45 for a burger which – if truth be known – was smaller and less tasty than the one I wrote about at the Westin Hotel Sydney.

Still, as you can see below … it achieved the same result – but then it was after an 18 hour flight and hour drive into the city.

The more I think about it, the more my Healthy Hunger idea, makes sense. 

Hell, corporations should definitely get behind it … it could help reduce the chance of their overworked, overstressed execs having heart attacks – which inturn, reduces the chance of them having to pay out millions of dollars in health or death insurance. 

God, all this thanks to my facination of hotel burger eating … how sad am I? [don’t answer that]

As created by my dear friends at 10AM – supposedly for being a ‘Whitey’ who actually understands, relates to and empathises with Asian culture.

I am taking it as a compliment even though I look the roughest looking woman since Freddie Mercury donned a dress for the ‘I Want To Break Free’ video.

So I’ve been in the US for all of 3 minutes and wherever I turn, I see evidence that the media is spoon-feeding information to its consumers.

Now there could be many reasons for this, but sitting here with Andy, we’ve narrowed it down to 5 …

[1] Consumers don’t consume media, they just look at pictures.

[2] Consumers are too thick to understand any information that requires them to think.

[3] The Media are too thick to understand their consumers don’t care about what they deem newsworthy.

[4] The Media are too thick to convey information with a degree of intelligence and/or sophistication.

[5] All of the above.

Our favourite bit of ‘stating-the-bleedin’-obvious’? 

This lovely picture [and astoundingly daft copy] in US magazine …

Genius … pointing out that the pic was taken ‘before he died’ – and there was us thinking Anna-Nicole Smith had got him stuffed after his tragic death and posed him like that.

The sad part is, alot of advertising is like this these days because clients and agencies think people won’t ‘get’ what they are trying to do/say. They seem to forget to ask themselves whether the product they are trying to flog – or the communication they have created – is something people want, like and are engaged by.

It’s exactly this sort of behaviour that has led to the decline/effectiveness of most communication channels as well as a distinct lack of consumer loyalty for most brands out in consumerland.

The sooner companies understand BOREDOM is not STUPIDITY, the quicker consumers will start positively reacting to communication again and the better companies sales results will be.

It’s not a hard job – infact, it’s one of the easiest ones in the World – but my God, we don’t half complicate matters, mainly because we’re all so pre-occupied with validating our jobs [and looking intelligent]

Communication companies are good at many things – pity that in alot of cases – communication is rarely it.

So last night, I talked to a bunch of my stupidly clever mates [George from cynic, Ed from Mother, Pete from Crispins, Ian from WhatIf and Ivan from Virgin] to help me out on this Bali project I’m doing.

Now normally you get quite alot of ‘thinking’ time before you have to present back to a client … well, certainly far more more than the 5 days I’ve been given … however in Bali’s case, time isn’t something they’ve got a hell of a lot of – so they want some short and long term ideas as quickly as is possible.

Maybe it’s because we’ve all worked together at various points in our lives … or maybe it’s because they’re all really smart … but within a couple of hours, we were able to come up with some – though I say it myself – wonderful and [relatively] quick-to-implement ‘tactical’ ideas that will definitely generate a tourism lift quickly and effectively . [These ideas are around the areas I detailed in some of my previous posts which can be seen by clicking 1st post, 2nd post, 3rd post or 4th post PLUS do things like ensure people in Western markets actually know where Bali is located [they often lump all of Asia together] so that they understand it’s miles away from the places that suffered Tsunami’s, civil unrest etc etc]

However, where we came to discussing the overall brand idea, things took a turn for the worse.

On the positive side, we all agreed the essence of ‘UNCONDITIONAL GOODNESS’ was right … we felt it really captured the spiritual, emotional, physical and mental essence of Bali [and further research with locals backed that up] … however where we didn’t have consensus was how this could be expressed in a communication idea.

Oh how we went on and on and on …

We all agreed that the words ‘NATURAL’, ‘HUMBLE’, ‘PEACEFUL’, ‘SIMPLE’ were important interms of tone-of-voice, but as for the idea that could form the foundation for all communication, we disagreed and disagreed and disagreed.

Now I know and trust these guys … and whilst we may all work in competitive agencies, there’s no ego between us [we’ve too much of a history together for that] … so the fact we were all disagreeing about the ‘idea’ meant we simply hadn’t found the right answer yet. [Especially as any central idea has to be ‘adaptable’ to dramatically diverse markets – ie: The core idea has to be able to be expressed in ways that are relevant and resonant to Americans, Indians, Chinese, Italians – even though culturally, they all have such varied views on subjects like travel, Asia, terrorism, vacations, Bali etc]

Anyway, we started talking about work I’d done with Lonely Planet [I’d got them to to invest in movies like ‘Monsoon Wedding’ because it encouraged more people to start traveling [increasing the odds of them buying a Lonely Planet] than any ad would do] and before you knew it, we were onto a subject close to our hearts … films.

We somehow always end up on this subject … and quite often, end up having exactly the same conversation as we’ve had a million time before … but being gluttons for punishment, we stated playing our usual ‘game’ where we take it in turns naming a film that starts with the last letter of the previous movie mentioned.

For example …

WHO DARES WINS

SPIDERMAN

NEVER SAY NEVER AGAIN … etc, etc, etc

So why am I boring the pants off you by telling you all this?

Well, because at one point, I had to come up with a movie beginning with ‘L’ [after George had said ‘Kill Bill’] and I came up with …

… and within a second, we all started acting like a bunch of 8 year old girls going, ‘THAT COULD BE IT, THAT COULD BE IT’.

You see for some reason, we all feel there is something quite magical in the thought of ‘Life Is Beautiful’. 

Sure, we have to identify/articulate just why we think it works  – but it definitely feels closer to an expression that can credibly come from ‘UNCONDITIONAL GOODNESS’ than anything else we’d come up with … aaaaannnnnnd when you underpin it with a tone-of-voice that represents simplicity, natural, humble and peaceful … we think it can really lead to something interesting, differentiated and motivating.

OK, you could argue it was late, we were tired, hungry and a bit fed up … PLUS we’re not even charging for this project [it’s a pro-bono – because [1] we love Bali and [2] we/I need all the karma points I can get] … however that’s not the reason we like it. 

As I said in a previous post, Bali could be described as ‘God’s Greatest Work … the people are warm, humble, kind, beautiful, respectful and friendly and this continues despite ever increasing pressures on the economy.  Whereas other nations in similar situations may see people resorting to certain ‘criminal activities’ to survive … that is very, very rare in Bali because from a religious standpoint, that isn’t within the Balinese psyche and from a social perspective, everyone is committed to encouraging the return of tourism and ‘mass holiday crime’ isn’t going to help that happen.

It’s been 24 hours since we had our deliberation, and we still think there’s something in ‘Life Is Beautiful’ … even my friend Andy [the cynic in cynic] thinks it’s got some real potential [though only after I informed him that the people of Bali were the ‘Amish of Asia’, ha] … so in the spirit of openness, friendliness and humbleness, if you have any comments or suggestions [to the idea and/or ways we could bring the ideas ‘to life’] I ,,, and a bunch of Balinese people … would be very happy to hear from you.

I fly to NY on Monday … talk about ‘change of scene’.