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

United are an absolutely terrible airline – even worse than Cathay Pacific – which is why one of my favourite websites is untied.com, a site created years ago by a disgruntled United passenger who decided bad publicity was the best form of revenge. And you know what, it seems he was right because not only has the site uncovered all manner of scandalous internal behaviour but it is also credited with losing UA millions of dollars in business.

The amazing thing is that UA carry on regardless – which is why companies need to understand that they are the reason why people regard ‘promises of care’ as nothing more than more marketing horseshit.

I’ve often said one of the big problems with brands is their inherent ego manifests itself into an obsessive one-way dialogue about how great they are.

Being proud of who you are is one thing … going on about it ad nauseam is another thing.

Funny how quite a lot of these guilty parties are American. More cultural influence in brand communication eh? Ha!

Anyway, while I know they think they’re saying really useful stuff … stuff people want to hear … quite often the reality is they’re just spouting what THEY want to say … things THEY think are important which is why in the minds of the masses, it’s about as relevant as trying to sell tanning lotion to Michael Jackson.

To best demonstrate this point – as well as allow me to use a cringe-worthy clip I got sent by my friend Christina – I would like to play you something that proves if you create communication that just talks about yourself, you’re basically advertising why someone SHOULDN’T embrace you rather than rush out and cough up their hard earned cash.

Bit of background …

A girl was out with friends having some drinks in Toronto.

A guy – Dimitri – approaches her and won’t leave her alone … saying how cute she is and how good they’d be together.

Frustrated, the girl gives him her business card in a desperate attempt to get rid of him.

What you are about to hear are 2 voicemails the guy left on her voicemail.

After you’ve heard them you’ll realise why she didn’t call him back and why there is a fine line between ego and confidence.

I am going to write a much longer post about this soon, but can we all stop fawning over guys who simply re-express an already accepted fact/observation!

To be fair, many of the people who make these statements don’t claim to be the originator of their insight/thought … however the reaction they get indicates there’s a hell of a lot of folk who view them like they’re Einstein 2.0

Don’t get me wrong, there are some outrageously clever people in adland – people I look up to like a 6 year old girl looks up to the Jonas Brothers – but it might help the state of the industry if we looked for intellectual inspiration beyond the usual suspects, because not only will it stop us looking like tits when we claim things like social networking, architecture and symbolism are new phenomenon’s in brand building/communication, but it’ll hopefully also encourage us to explore and discover brand new thoughts/insights which could actually move us forward rather than stay in the same place we’ve been for the last 10 years because we have this habit of putting glitzy new paint on rusty old facts.

Don’t re-invent. Invent.

Not only that, but despite the stains, sweat and god knows what else went on in it over the years, I am wearing it. In public.

And thinking of NP.

I could write a post about the different ways people connect with bands … the role melody and/or lyrics play in driving emotions, regardless of culture or heritage or even how brands should start thinking interms of making people want to wear them [obviously not brands like Prada etc, where they are already worn] … but it’s Monday, I’m tired, I have multiple tax bills screaming to be paid RIGHTFUCKINGNOW, an ‘intray’ that resembles Ben Nevis on steroids and the knowledge that even if I did write something about that stuff [including the research we’re doing with a prof of music @ Berkley which I know I have to tell Lauren about] you wouldn’t read any of it because not only would it bore you to tears, but because the thought of Freddie Mercury prancing about in his leotard has already made you queasy.

With that in mind, I’ll try and write something for tomorrow’s post that is better than this load of old tosh but until then, I leave you with a pre-hairy lipped Freddie singing one of the songs he wrote from the News Of The World album when Queen were still good.