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

Campbell for President?

He’d get my vote George.

Rob, as you and a couple of your boys are now officially a virus linked to core of the WPP Death Star, you should use this power as a plaform to get your views heard to a wider audience.

Your passion, experience and opinions are inspiring even to an old planning head like me and more people need to hear it, especially WPP.

I think it was Fred who called you the Bob Geldof of advertising, and though you are not Irish or have any hair, you are one of the few I know who have the anger and energy to make people stand up and take notice.

The force is with you, make it count. 🙂

George and Pete – could you please stop trying to get into my pants, I’m engaged remember! Ha.

Seriously, I appreciate your ‘faith’ and we’ll see if we can continue to use the JV to change the Death Star from the inside-out, but I don’t know if we have enough of ‘the force’ to do it properly, ha!

Hello Michael, nice to ‘meet you’.

You are of course very right about planning [and communication in general] as there is so much to do with subjectiveness throughout the process.

Infact what I tend to say is there is very rarely a ‘wrong’ way to do things, it’s more a matter of there being lots of ‘right ways’ to do things – so the real skill is finding which is the most effective one to answer the clients needs – whilst also ensuring a positive long lasting impression of the brand on the consumer. [To help build real brand loyalty/affinity as Pete said in his post …[http://robcampbell.wordpress.com/2007/03/30/when-you-know-the-humanity-genius-ideas-happen/]

If there was a perfect ‘system’, we’d have a whole less advertising in the World – and whilst that would be nice, the fact is there isn’t a perfect system because people’s needs / wants / fears / love continually change because factors both in their control and out are constantly changing … hence I am a firm believer that to answer a clients business need powerfully, it all starts with understanding the real issues in people’s lives [not just the category or some flawed research from campaigns gone past]

I know I normally take the piss out of planners but that’s only because most of the planners I worked with previously took the piss out of creative with where they thought their responsibility started and ended.
As much as I will deny writing this later, what you and the planning team do is fantastic, not just for the creative industry, but for the people we’re creating ideas for. The fact you see your responsibilty including selling the idea to the client and the results it achieves is fantastic and is why probably have such great clients who let us do things differently for them.
I’ve just written a mature response. Fuck.

I knew this would come back to haunt me.

Debitel (sell mobile phone contracts) have started a campaign here in Germany under the motto “Jeden mit Jeden” (anyone with anyone). It seems to fit in here quite neatly (I’ll take some photos later and post them somewhere).

It’s a poster campaign and, like the Toyota campaign, it’s everywhere (this seems to be the new trend in Germany – probably pushed by Media on Crack). The poster features the famous picture of Brezhnev kissing Honecker and the claim (which comes from the swinger scene) “Jeden mit Jeden” is white on a red flag. You should know the picture from the Berlin Wall.

Anyway, looking at it I was initially quite impressed. German advertising doesn’t tend to risk upsetting people and this campaign is actually quite demanding because it’s loaded with recent German history and Eastern European Communist imagery. My subjective view was initially quite positive because I was of the opinion that anybody in Germany over the age of 12 would be able to pick it apart and see what they were trying to do. I thought it was intelligent, full of insight quite well executed and brave – for Germany.

Bollocks is it.

I was sat in the underground next to a dad (40- 45 years old) his eldest son (around 12) and what appeared to be his friends. We pulled into a station and they looked at the poster. This is what they said:

Son: “Dad who ARE those two men”
Dad: “Not sure”
Friend 1: “I think it’s Schroder and Stoiber”
Son: “But they’re not gay are they”
Friend 2: “It’s phones for gays”
Dad: “Gay men use phones too, you know”

For years that image was THE image of the Warsaw pakt. I know that they teach this stuff at school (my eldest of 11 is doing it right now) it was the image of a country divided and given even more weight when it was painted ON the Berlin Wall.

I can see the agency looking at this and, subjectively knowing that this campaign is right. It fit’s into their personal polemic/politic and I can see their breasts swell with pride when they hang it on the wall. But they had forgotten one, very important thing. That to pull off this kind of thing it still needs to be relevant, still needs to mean something to people. Hell, it would help if the average guy on the street knew what the fuck you were going on about. Satirical insight from the 1970’s doesn’t cut it in 2007.

Touche.

As for changing the eath Star: (see bottom of post)

http://almostalwaysthinking.wordpress.com/2007/03/29/should-you-be-zigging-if-your-customers-want-to-zag/

I’ve just tested this. I’ve asked a 20 year old to tell me who the two men are and what the signficance of what they’re doing.

I think you can guess what he said.

Oh God … what have I done?

Before we get inundated with sad comedian double-acts, can I ask to keep on the subject matter [or at least try] as this is – for once 🙂 – quite an important matter for me.

Ta

As we know, focus groups tend to create lowest common denomenator answers. Which is probably why most ads are also LCD.

You’re so right Marcus … I have always wanted to make cynic abit of a political ad agency – fighting to get humanity to a happier place. Infact, you might – just might – here something about this in the not too distant future.

And Rob – yeah the focus group in unbelievably flawed [in fact quite often, the views are even more subjective than most other areas of comms] but clients need/want/like them as it help them justifies their communication choices to their bosses and shareholders.

I absolutely appreciate that companies need to check the idea they’re going to invest millions and millions of dollars in is going to work – but to only base decisions on a few ‘artificial situations’ is madness – hence my ‘push’ for people to look beyond the category and into life and culture … truly appreciate the ‘pulse of the consumer mindset’.

There’s never going to be a perfect way – and this is not against traditional research methods – it’s about looking deeper and broader to get the best answer rather than a few areas which ultimately are open to subjectivity and quite often are influenced by a clients pre-determined choice of idea.

Marcus – i love your example and it made me think about how much i love the freedom of being an artist when it comes to communicating.

When i’m trying to communicate an idea, i’d like as many people as possible to get it, but I know that some people just won’t and luckily for my art, that can actually be quite a lot of people because i’m only trying to communicate an idea, not an idea attached to a financial transaction.

When i had my last big show, i got a couple of great LCD responses: a) the artist must be a feminist because red is the colour of feminism (hmmm.. not so sure about that) and
b) the work was about menstruating because it was red and peeling off the walls.

a bit basic, a little frustrating and more off-target than i would have liked, but the work focused on red and was about entropy (the inherent destruction/degradation in a closed system) so while they were off the mark, it wasn’t so bad that i needed to go and slit my wrists – they still connected with the ideas of the work at the level they were able to.

people will read into things what they will. and for me, the key is to remain as authentic to a broad idea, as opposed to a final response, as much as possible, so that even when people have a LCD kind of relationship to the work, it’s still plausible.

so, while debitel aren’t a gay phone company, “jeden mit jeden” still works as an idea of unity. it may not be exactly what they planned, but it’s not that far off the ball and who knows, that kid might grow up to fall in love with men and go with debitel ‘cos when he was 12 he believed that they were accepting of ‘jeden mit jeden’.

isn’t that connection the actual idea of the campaign, rather than the specifics of political history? [as frustrating as it is to realise you live in a country of political and historical ignoramuses – or is that ignorami..] or am i being to idealistic here?

ha ha.. and i thought i had a musical reference for everything!
ooh… that reminds me..

im jetlagged and surrounded by frogs, not one of them hot. does life get any worse than this?

Andy, there is nothing worse than France.

you sure?