I remember my Dad bet me 50 quid I couldn’t do the Rubik’s Cube.
Well, one day, I spent about 15 hours non-stop on it – and even though I didn’t know how I managed it, I succeeded … though there was little point because my ol’ man was so convinced I cheated [such faith in his son eh!] he didn’t pay up.
I should of sued.
Anyway, I bring this up is because I’ve just been mentally violated/humiliated by this …
What a smart, smug, multi-tasking little shit.
But here’s the thing …
Years ago, while working on Smarties, I did a lot of stuff with young kids [not in the Michael Jackson sense, obviously] and the thing I loved was their ability to notice and place huge emphasis/value on things that were incidental to whatever it was they were viewing/experiencing.
Whereas adults would watch Harry Potter and see a 4-eyed virgin with shit hair and an inability to magic himself up some contact lenses even though he’s supposed to be some sort of Wizard genius … the little un’s would notice things like how the clouds are moving behind him, how some schoolkid is flicking peas at his mate at the dinner table and how the cleaning lady is being spit roasted whilst snorting cocaine off a teachers tits.
Or so I’ve been told.
OK, so this news won’t be new to any of you [that kids notice the details, not that Harry Potter is basically a porn flick] but wouldn’t it be great if agencies and clients adopted the same approach when trying to sell stuff to ‘adults’ rather than the spoon-fed drivel they seem so keen on producing each and every day?
I still get seriously shocked when companies produce boring, unimaginative, unemotional and self-focused pieces of blandom and then act all surprised/hurt/angry when they fail to motivate any interest, let alone action.
Alright, so the agency behind the rubbish should take some of the blame … however whilst mainstream advertising might not be as effective as it once was, I could argue that it has as much to do with what companies want to subject on the masses as it does with the changing media habits of the people.
As I have been known to say, “a bad brand always blames the agency” … but then a client once said to me, “a bad agency always blames the client” but he was wrong because some of them also blame the research.
🙂