OK, so a few years ago I had the ‘experience’ of working with Coca-Cola in Atlanta – and boy, what an experience it was.
You see this is a brand with a severe chip on its shoulder … it cannot grasp that much of what it does is NOT the height of cool or that their massive sales are NOT a representation of having mass consumer adoration.
Don’t get me wrong – it’s an incredibly successful brand … but alot of that is to do with its monopolistic distribution rather than their advertising and communication.
And yet they continually fail – or choose to ignore – this point.
Personally I think it’s down to ego.
You see in many countries, the bottling and manufacturing sides of Coca-Cola are completely separate entities … so for someone who works in Coke Marketing, it will be almost impossible for them to give any credit to the bottling side of the business because they may feel it undermines the importance of what they actually do.
Hang on … there is a point to all this.
Anyway, I used to go to meeting after meeting at Coke HQ and almost always hear the same thing being spouted by some little-experienced, myopic, consumer-ignorant, brand-blinkered brand manager.
“We want work that reflects the size and stature of the Coke brand, something with the WOW FACTOR!”
And every single time, I would ask the same question,
“Can you tell me what a WOW FACTOR actually is?”
To which I’d be met with either sneers, an arrogant laugh or some fake coughing – followed by a myriad of overly-complex descriptions of what this mythical ‘WOW FACTOR’ was.
The funny thing was that they’d go on and on and on about wanting to impact culture – lead people to a happier place – and then, when it came to approving our ideas [including one that is possibly the best idea we’ve ever developed], they felt the only thing they needed to do was a television ad. Yeah, very WOW FACTOR eh!!
So why am I going on about this?
Well it’s because I hate these marketing-department-type-terms [ie: ‘WOW FACTOR’] because in the real world, they mean nothing.
Hell, in the 2 years I was worked with Coke, not once was there a unifed view of what this term meant, though it seemed to us it basically represented a ‘feeling’ that excited them – more often than not because it made Coke look good against Pepsi.
Anyway, this is not about Coke … I will have to save that for a day when cynic no longer work with them, ha … this is about fulfilling my promise to Rob Mortimer and writing about Microsoft and their astoundingly brilliant, creative pile-of-Vista-launch-shite, “WOW”.
What I love about Bill Gates company is that they have an almost magical ability to take stuff that is genuinely good, and fuck it up.
It doesn’t matter whether it’s Windows XP, XBox, Zune or now Vista … this is a brand that invites the Fuck Up Fairy to come and visit each and every time.
Take their new campaign …
Did you watch it?
So according to Microsoft, their Vista product gives you the same feeling as watching a rocket take off, discovering new lands, seeing the magnificence of nature … in short, it is the next Wonder Of The World.
WHAT A LOAD OF SHIT!
OK … so I am sure Vista might make a few things more possible for us all, but the software doesn’t give the WOW FACTOR, it’s the content the software allows you to create that makes that happen. Another example of company ego coming to the fore.
Why don’t they go the whole hog and say, “Hey Earthlings, you should feel very lucky we decided to do make our Vista software because you are petty, insignificant ‘things’. Cough up a fortune and we – and only we – will put a little life into your sad, lonely lives. Without Microsoft Vista, you are nothing … nothing, do you here”.
People with outrageous salaries and reputations came up with this rubbish.
They will have been paid an absolute fortune to research, develop, test, re-research, redevelop, re-test concept after concept and then – somehow – come up with the most nonsensical, pointless ad campaign [possibly] in history.
I hope you are all pissed off. I am … I mean, how come those fuckers can get paid millions to make a load of crap when I do it in my toilets for free each and everyday? Hell, the only WOW I have gotten from Microsoft, is, “WOW, another load a complete bollock advertising!”
If I was Gates [a man who I had started to actually respect given his charitable endeavours] I’d be pissed … because not only is this campaign unlikely to change consumers view of the Microsoft organisation [which IS important given they are broadening out into other areas of consumer electronics ] it also undermines his stance on helping the World’s poor because they are spending hundreds of millions on insipid, uninspired communication.
If Apple launched this campaign, it would still stink but because they have a history of liberating consumers creativity, we could probably just about mentally rationalise it … however when a brand like Microsoft does it, it almost acts as an ad to NOT associate with Microsoft – which as far as I can remember, is not a good thing.
This is corporate ego at its worst – giving no tangible reason why I should even want to find out more about Vista, let alone buy it … and so as far as I am concerned, the people behind it [both client and agency side] should be publically flogged till they swear on their families lives, NEVER to subject humanity to such mindless twaddle again.
On the other hand, it does give Steve Jobs and Apple great material for their ads …
