Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Attitude & Aptitude, Devious Strategy, Empathy, Insight, Marketing, Supermarkets
A few years ago I wrote about the brilliance of supermarkets.
Not in the sense that it offers a one-stop-shop to get all your food requirements, but in how it combines products that you don’t think should go together, but do.
I called this romantic notion strategy but the reality is it’s simply understanding either the breadth of a persons character or the requirements of a particular audience.
To be honest, I’m underselling both those approaches because while it may appear obvious, it’s scary how few companies – and agencies – make those connections and yet the result of them is genuine brand differentiation, true audience connection and incremental sales.
Well I recently saw another area that supermarkets are great at and that is spotting implications of a particular purchase and offering remedies.
OK, so this is not so new – but whereas places like Amazon offer ‘similar purchase alternatives’ [under the banner of, ‘people who bought this also bought this’], supermarkets offer real product partners as demonstrated by this Asda in Derby.
Yep, some headache pills in the booze section of the store.
Not a massive leap, but simple and effective and – arguably – far more noticeable and inviting than expecting people to go to the medicine aisle and buy them without any prod.
It’s amazing how often we forget the most obvious approaches in the quest of being smart … which ironically, shows how un-smart we can be.
The only thing I’m trying to work out is whether this says more about the customers who shop at Asda or the people who live in Derby.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Brand Suicide, China, Comment, Crap Marketing Ideas From History!, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Deutsch, Differentiation, Food For Thought, Goodbye China, Hello America, Insight, Internet, Interviews, Marketing Fail, Martin Weigel, My Fatherhood, Otis, Paul, Planners, Planners Making A Complete Tit Of Themselves And Bless, Planning, Point Of View, Positioning, Pretentious Rubbish, Relevance, Resonance, Social Media, Standards, The Kennedys, The Kennedys Shanghai, Unexpected Relevance, Unplanned, Unprofessional Professional, Wieden+Kennedy
How is your 2018 going so far?
I know it’s still early days – but is it looking good or bad?
Well, if it’s looking positive, I’m about to ruin it for you and if it is looking dodgy, I’m going to help you solidify your opinion.
Why?
Well, a few weeks ago, a nice guy called Paul McEnany asked if he could interview me about my career.
While I’m sure his reasoning for his request was to help planners learn what not to do, my ego said yes even before my mouth did … and while the end result is the bastard love child of rambling randomness and base-level swearing, it’s the perfect way to justify your pessimism for 2018 or to ensure your optimism for the new year doesn’t get too high.
So go here and errrrrm, enjoy [if that’s the right word for it, which it isn’t] and after you’ve heard my crap, listen to the brilliant interviews with people like Gareth Kay, Russell Davies, Richard Huntingdon, Martin Weigel and the amazing Chris Riley because apart from being hugely interesting and inspiring, you’ll get the added bonus of [1] undeniable proof I’m a massive imposter and [2] the knowledge that if I can have some sort of semi-successful career in advertising, you certainly can.
You’re welcome.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Comment, Culture, Daddyhood, Fatherhood
In December, I went to more Christmas parties than I have done in years.
That’s not because I’d suddenly become popular – oh no – it’s because you didn’t really have them in China, mainly because the only role for Christmas was to extract cash from expats who were missing home than to celebrate the actual occasion.
Anyway, there was one week where I was out till 3am on two consecutive nights.
I know … I know …
What made it even more amazing is that on both following mornings I had to be up at 5:30am which meant I had a total of 5 hours sleep over 48 hours.
Once upon a time I would have been fine with that.
Well, maybe not fine – but I could have managed. But this time, I felt like I had literally been run over by a truck.
So much so that when I went out for lunch with an old Wieden [NIKE] colleague that weekend, I apparently spent so much of our time telling him how knackered I was, that he sent me this.
Nice huh?
Prick.
Which all goes to explain why the thing I look forward to the most at weekends these days – after doing my fatherly duties of running around an insanely energetic 3 year old for a few hours – is sleeping rather than partying, which also explains why this post from 2014 is even more relevant today than it was then.
Have a great weekend.
Zzzzz Zzzzz …
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Agency Culture, America, Attitude & Aptitude, Comment, Creativity, Culture, Deutsch, Emotion, Empathy, Insight, Perspective, Planners, Point Of View
When I first joined Deutsch, I wanted to understand what the hell was really going on with American youth so I sent 3 of my team – Maya, Armando and Leigh [along with Sarah, a photographer and co-supported back at HQ by the wonderful Kelsey] – backpacking across the US to spend about a month in some of America’s most opposite cities.
Specifically the richest/poorest … fastest growing/shrinking … most/least diverse.
No nice hotel rooms.
No fancy travel.
Just a month hearing and learning from America in The Raw.
As you can see from this little text exchange below, it left a mark on the guys …
In all seriousness, while they loved it, there were some things they saw and went through that challenged them deeply on a personal level. So deeply, that I honestly believe they have all come back changed for the experience.
And yet overall, what they found was a nation full of young people who wanted their country to be the one they had been brought up to believe in.
A country that lets anyone succeed.
A country that cared for their own equally.
A country where it led by taking on the big challenges and issues and crushing them.
Now of course, you could argue America was never really any of these things – just a master of PR – but that aside, the country they have found is not the country they want and so the way they are approaching their life is basically one of survival.
And what do I mean by survival?
Well in essence, it’s how they can cope with what’s going on until it stops.
Their overall view is “I can’t control the future, but I can control the present”.
And while their behaviour is expressed in multiple ways, we believe they fall into 4 distinct territories …
Protect: Keep safe what you have and don’t risk anything to get what you want.
Disguise: Define your relevance by the topical things you want to associate with.
Escape: Physically create a [momentary] world you want to live in.
Fight: Push against the unfairness you face.
Of course it’s way more complex and complicated than that – and we have spent a lot of time exploring and uncovering the influences, attitudes and behaviours that drive it and define it – but it does seem those 4 lenses are consciously and subconsciously influencing how people are starting to behave.
In all honesty, this adventure has been fascinating – not just in terms of understanding what is starting to happen, but how the issues of race or equality are reaching points where you can feel major change is on the way. Whether that change is instigated by government or the people is still anyones guess, but what we know is that it won’t be able to be swept under the carpet as easily as it has in previous years.
They won’t let it, especially with the current administration doing all it can to prod and provoke them.
The implications for society and business are huge – both in terms of positive change and negative potential – which is why we have created a [coffee-table] book and a presentation and – when we get some breathing space – a short film to truly define and explain what we heard and discovered. But as much as all those things are exciting, the bit I love the most is my team have given a voice to those who are rarely heard in the purest and most unfiltered way you can get.
There’s a lot of things I’ve done in my career that has made me proud.
This is most definitely one of them.
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If you’re interested in seeing/having a copy of the ‘America In The Raw’ book, let me know. I can’t guarantee we can accommodate everyone, but we’ll try.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Chaos, Comment, Creativity, Culture, Cunning
Anyone who knows me knows I’m a big believer in chaos theory.Not, as you may be shocked to learn, because it validates my global-scale disorganization, but because I firmly believe chaos lets you create what order can’t.
Hell, I even based the whole of The Kennedys on this concept.
Anyway, while for some – the idea of this is basically professional kryptonite – there are others out there who believe in it’s power. One of the best is economist and journalist Tim Harford who wrote the brilliant book, Messy on the concept.
Of course, I am not advocating that all process is bad.
Hell, if I’m having an operation, I want the surgeon to follow the rules as carefully as they can … but the fact is, they only got to those rules because someone, at some point, decided to ignore the rules to explore what else is possible.
Hence my belief is that process is fine if we remember what we’re trying to achieve, but the moment the process is more important than the outcome we seek … then we have our priorities all wrong.
So as 2018 is still relatively fresh – I thought I’d leave you with 15 minutes 32 seconds of chaotic inspiration. Enjoy.