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

Can you tell what it is?

OK, have another look …

Any closer?

Well in the interests of you getting off this blog as quickly as possible, let me help you – they’re the instructions for a toilet.

Yes … a bog!

Now you may be wondering why you would require instructions for a product that has, for all intents and purposes, been the same for decades – well that’s because we’re in the era of over-engineering.

Of course there’s a fine line between evolution and over-engineering – and I appreciate that things can always be improved – however I can’t help but feel that when you have a toilet ‘misson control centre’ that looks like this …

… you are in overkill mode.

Buttons to put the seat up and down.

Buttons to make the toilet seat warm.

Buttons to make the seat jiggle to help you ‘perform’.

Buttons to wash your front or back bits.

Buttons to dry your front and back bits.

Buttons to flush the thing, even though it does it automatically.

There’s even a button – which I admit is quite cool – that produces a sound of pouring water so it encourages you to wee whilst making sure that anyone else in the bathroom can’t hear you when you decide to ‘drop your kids off at the pool’.

Jesus.

To make matters worse, you end up being so bloody captivated/weirded out that you spend 3 times as long in there as you would otherwise do meaning everyone outside thinks you’re either up to no good or have the worst constipation since Oprah. [Why else does she go from thin to fat in seemingly 7 weeks?]

What’s wrong with the old shit-and-go toilet?

OK, so I appreciate cleanliness is a big issue – especially in public areas – and touching a loo seat isn’t going to be high on most people’s agenda’s, but christ, a piece of toilet paper could help you move that up/down with minimum germ risk.

Don’t get me wrong – I appreciate the need for companies to continually evolve and I accept I’m writing a post on it so it could be argued it captured my imagination – but to me, this all smacks of the micro-innovation I talked about a while back … where companies ignore exploring cultural insights that could drive their innovation inspiration in ways that could genuinely engage society in more meaningful and motivational ways, in favour of simply forging ahead with what they know – heads down, blinkers up.

Have a look at your phone.

How many functions do you really use?

I’m not talking about once or twice … or in a mad burst of activity when you first downloaded/bought the new app … I’m talking about something that is a fundamental part of how you live your life.

Yes I know I am a total hypocrite given I own robot dogs, cats, rabbits, flowers and R2D2 dolls … but if you’re anything like me, you’ll maybe use 10 core functions on your phone a day.

TEN.

And yet phone companies pack them with all sorts of features … features we might never even know, let alone access.

In our quest to grow, too many brands/companies/people are focusing on features rather than value – and in a day where an app that allows 140 characters to be sent has more impact than the latest 400 trillion megapixel camera phone from Samsung, maybe it’s time brands started getting back to understanding what’s really going on in people’s lives rather than just churn stuff out.

I’ve said it many times, but I believe the future of brands and advertising is understanding people and culture better than anyone else and sadly, I can’t help but feel there’s an awful lot of companies out there who believe they know it all and/or feel society is too thick to express what they really want.

Sure, people might say – as in Henry Ford’s famous quote – they want a “faster horse”, but as I’ve banged on countless occasions, if you were to explore that statement more closely and ask some pertinent questions, you’d be able to identify that what people are really saying is they would welcome a method of transportation that can get them from point A to point B in a relatively quick time, regardless of weather, road or distance. In other words, a car.

For me, this ability to ‘translate’ is one of the core skills of a planners – or it should be – but sadly so many agencies have sold objectivity and creativity so far down the river that the only way they can justify their monthly retainer is by getting guys to churn out paperwork rather than have them explore, identify and apply [or at least encourage the application of] relevant, powerful and game-changing insight.

But then we know as much as agencies say it, most of them can’t think beyond the ‘ad’.