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

Before you read any more of this post, please go here …

Done it?

Saw the challenge Marcus thrust down upon my feet? 

Well here is a story that explains why I WON’T be doing it …

About 2 years ago, I was in JFK Airport in New York walking towards a plane that was finally going to take me home after spending weeks flying here, there and everywhere. 

I was in quite a good mood … sure I was tired and my back hurt from one too many ‘hard hotel beds’, but apart from the fact that after this flight I was going to be in my own house … I had an advance copy of Starsailor’s new album on my iPod and was totally loving it.

That was until the chorus of the first song, ‘In The Crossfire’.

As one reviewer said, Starsailor are what Coldplay would be like if they had some balls … so as a lover of all things ‘Rawwwwwk’, I was well into this song.

Too ‘well into it’ as it happens.

As the chorus approached, despite being totally surrounded by hundreds of people making the slow, feet-shuffling walk to the terminal, I apparently did something stupid. 

I say ‘apprentely’ as all this happened without my conscious knowledge or approval … however, within a nano second, I had closed my eyes, taken a huge, deep breath, opened my gob and, as if my life depended on it, screamed out the chorus infront of everyone around me!!!

What’s even worse than that is that I still hadn’t realised what I had done. Sure I knew I was singing along, but I thought I was doing it in my head and only realised something was wrong when 3 key events happened …

I opened my eyes and saw …

1. The whole World turned and looked at me in sheer shock before absolutely pissing themselves.

2. America’s gun happy security came running towards me with sodding guns at the ready.

3. Andy, my fat-bastard business partner, fell on the floor.  How I hoped it was a heart attack but no, it was from the evil shit laughing too hard.

My mind was racing … WHAT THE HELL WAS GOING ON … and then it dawned on me. 

O H.  M Y.  G O D.

To say I took control back of my mouth is a huge understatement … I literally covered my mouth with both hands and bit by lips, petrified another squeak may pop out. 

Now I’d had quite a few embarrassing things happen in my life, but without doubt, this was one of the worst … made even more painful by the fact I had to endure an 18 hours flight with people on the plane either pointing at me, smirking at me or advising me not to listen to any music when everyone on the plane was asleep.

Bastards.  I felt like wringing each and everyone’s neck … I mean, they’re perfect aren’t they … they’ve never done anything daft in their lives except wear those stupid airplane socks or laugh at all the wrong bits of the God-awful inflight movies.

So when you take all this into account, maybe … just maybe … you’ll understand why on this one, Marcus is on his own!

So I got given a business card from a media person at Zenith and was quite taken aback by their ‘strapline’ … the R.O.I. agency.

As much as R.O.I. could stand for Really Ordinary Individuals … the reality is, of course that it stands for Return On Investment … another phrase in the marketing dictionary that has little or no meaning.

What do I mean by that?

Well there’s a few things …

1 Advertising is never the be-all and end-all interms of a campaigns success – factors like product, packaging, price, competition and distribution all have an incredible influence – so no company can ever claim to be directly responsible for R.O.I.

2 Given R.O.I. can be evaluated in many ways – from sales divided by costs / shareprice increase / improvement in production output / staff morale – what evaluation criteria are they actually basing their claim on?

3 At what point does a communication company acknowledge their involvement in the campaign is over?  They could claim their influence carries on for months, which sort of increases the opportunity of achieving this mythical R.O.I.

4. What ‘costs’ does a company include in its R.O.I. calculation?  Production? Media? Sales Kits? Distribution? Packaging? Promotions?

Of course clients [and agencies] need to evaluate whether their hard work has been fruitful [read: successful] or not … and of course, the methodologies used are probably the ‘best of what is available’ … however for a company to come out and say they are the Return On Investment agency when they play a small [though admittedly important] part in the process, amazed me.

Sadly I can see a lot of clients falling for this sort of marketing hyperbole because the standard of marketer is declining almost at the same pace as the standard of agency leader … plus in Asia, the region is so corporate-focused, their obsession is always on the ‘bottom line’ [the standard of work is a distant second] … however given this agency is publically screaming an obvious exaggeration of its capabilities, you have to question whether they’re the sort of people you’d really be able to trust working on your business.

It’s abit like DM companies …

Don’t get me wrong, I totally appreciate the value of DM [when it’s done right it’s great, but too often CRM seems to stand for Customer Revulsion Marketing] … however what really bugs me is that so many of them ponce around like they are the only comms discipline that is truly effective when in reality, all they are, is a comms discipline that can prove how INEFFECTIVE they are.

Being able to quantify exactly how many people responded to a specific ad doesn’t mean you are an effective medium … just a knowledgeable one … and yet I see all these DM companies, like Zenith, shouting out massive claims like “Obsessed With Results“, “You Know Where You Are With Us” and “Facts Not Promises“.

As I said, DM has a place and – when done right – a real value … however I don’t think they can claim to be an effective comms channel any more than Zenith can claim to be a R.O.I. company but hey, in the World of marketing, spin seems to continually be ‘in’.

Maybe I should point them to this post!

And the moral is?

Well as far as I am concerned, it’s don’t work too hard because hardly anybody notices anyway!

… HHCL.

You are – and will continue to be – very, very sadly missed.

You were the pioneer of many things … including brave, imaginative, media neutral ‘ideas’.

Society loved what you did … agencies were jealous of what you did and clients craved what you did. 

Without you there would be no Mother … no Crispin … no Naked ,,, and certainly no cynic.

Thanks for being the best teachers I could ever of had … cheers for giving me some of the best times of my working life … and ta for the multitude of bollockings!

[Thanks Rob M for not letting this slip my mind!]

You are wondering what the hell that picture is, aren’t you!

Go on, guess …

Any ideas?

OK, let me put you out of your misery …

Once upon a time, not so long ago, an environmental body in Australia declared that the whole nation – as an act of unity against global warming – should switch off the power in their homes at exactly 7:30pm.

Australia is quite good at this sort of thing [even if their commitment lasts only 60 seconds] so at exactly 7:30pm, people all around the country [well the bits that were actually dark] collectively reached for their fuse boxes and switched the buttons to ‘OFF’.

That is except my great friend, Tony van Oosten.

Yes ladies and gentlemen … the photo above is of his apartment – lights shining bright into the night sky of Manly, while all around him, conscientious residents have switched off their power for the good of mankind.

And what would make Tony act in such a careless, provocative manner?

Two words. The Bill.

You see as much as Tony is abit of a ‘greeny’, he loves following the weekly adventures of the coppers of ‘Sunhill’ even more. 

And before you make any generalisations of character, please know this is a normal bloke … who has friends … drinks beer … has girlfriends … and has never played Second Life even once in his life!

The best bit is the person who took the photo [the wonderful Rich, Tony’s housemate] walked past a couple who were muttering about how “…the people in that house obviously don’t care about the environment” which is funny because if anyone is conscious about that sort of thing, it’s Rich.

So to Tony … for proving to the ad community that television still has incredible power over the masses … I bestow upon you the McDonalds award for Environmental Pollution, congratulations!