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

Another Pile Of Ad Crap …

No, your eyes do not deceive you, this IS an ad for a toilet and if that wasn’t strange enough, it’s for a TEN THOUSAND DOLLAR toilet!!!

Ten grand.  For a loo. Holy shit eh!

Apparently it has an ‘automatic’ seat lifter for those too lazy/germ obsessed to reach a few inches and pick it up/put it down … plus it has a ‘turbo flush’ for reasons I don’t even want to think about.

However, the really, really weird bit [apart from the ‘oh-so-cool’ photo styling and bloody flamingo!!!] is that this wasn’t in some uber-cool interior decorating magazine … it was in Singapore’s FHM!!!

Now, correct me if I am wrong … but isn’t this totally crap [excuse the pun!] media placement?

Apart from the fact that the only bottoms FHM readers like to think about are those attached to beautiful models … the magazine is hardly the most obvious place to reach people who’ll spend 10k on a place to leave their bodily waste.  Sure, if the loo had a PS3 built in, it might be a different matter … but I can’t see too many getting excited about it’s innovative seat styling!

Maybe I am missing something here … but for all the talk media companies give about knowing where consumers spend their time – I am constantly underwhelmed by their strategies/executions … because exluding the net and a few ambient ideas [often done for the cred of the agency than the client], it seems in practice, they generally seem to use the same old, same old to bring their clients brands to the consumers attention.

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate media agencies … there’s a few out there who I respect enourmously [plus it’s not just media agencies faults, but also creative companies and clients – who are obsessed with only using quanitifable communication channels] … but I can’t help but feel I was experiencing much more intelligent media thinking back when I was with HHCL [and working alongside Michaelides and Bednash] back in 1990!

Clients are currently in love with media agencies because they think they are more ‘responsible’ with their cash … and media is a very, very, very important componant in the communication process … but ‘what you say’ and ‘how you say it’ is just as important as the channels you communicate in – and the sooner clients and a few media companies get a grip on this, the better.

I know this is going to make me sound like an old fart, but there was a time where everyone I met appreciated the different disciplines and the roles they had to play in achieving client success … I find it so sad that we now live in a time where every person seems to think their individual skill/discipline is disproportionatly more important than those around them. 

For me, the best planners – be it media / creative / business – are the ones who can truly think ‘neutral’ … the one’s who can develop ideas / thoughts / concepts that really can work in any channel [be it mainstream communication / web / POS / promotion / NPD / distribution etc] and if this industry is going to survive the barage of the ‘management consultant’, it’s time to go back to basics and start with training tomorrow’s generation of ad people because at this rate, we’re going to be about as relevant as a 10k toilet ad in a typical lads mag.

8 Comments so far
Leave a comment