Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Brand Suicide, Comment, Culture, Egovertising, Embarrassing Moments
For all the shit I get about my fashion, music and gadget tastes, at least it comes from a place of actually liking and valuing the stuff.
The reason I say this is that a while back, I wrote a bunch of posts about vulgar displays of wealth.
I talked about a Merc that had been covered in diamonds.
And a gated community that wouldn’t let anyone – even family members – enter without a prior appointment.
And a TV that cost over US$130,000.
In all cases, it says more about the ego/stupidity of the creator than any positive influence they so desperately seek from those around them.
[That’s why from an ad perspective, I still think the Bentley approach beat the ‘classic’ David Ogilvy Rolls Royce approach, despite the ridiculously good headline]
But as much as we know there’s far worse than the things I highlighted above, I recently was sent a picture of possibly the most vulgar display or wealth – and taste – I’ve ever seen.
Even worse than the choices of the entire Kardashian family put together.
This …
Yes, it’s a Lamborghini.
With a huge, unsubtle Supreme sticker on the door.
Topped off with – in what is an act of genius or a mental health issue – a Peppa Pig head.
WHAT?
WHY?
Isn’t the Lamborghini enough?
Has owning a supercar become so mainstream that you have to put the logo of a skateboard brand on it to make it look cool?
Even if that is the case – and Supreme are an amazing case study for both the new rules of luxury and fan management [as covered in our America In The Raw book/presentation] – what the hell does Peppa Pig add?
Is it because it shows you have so much money you literally don’t give a shit what people think about you?
Is it because it lets you show you have so much cash you can piss on the sort of thing most people could only dream of owning by covering it in the sort of thing they don’t want to own.
Or is it because Peppa Pig is the biggest diva of all of them?
Whatever the reason, the owner deserves either the gold medal for money madness or a chair in the face … though to be honest, given they make me almost look financially responsible, maybe I should be shaking them by the hand,
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Business, Comment, Communication Strategy, Confidence, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Experience, Innovation, Insight, Management, Marketing, Meetings, Perspective, Planners, Planning, Presenting, Relevance, Resonance
Yes I’m back.
If anything will help you be excited about the oncoming weekend, it will be that.
So the picture above is from a presentation I give to planners.
The reason for it is because I find it fascinating when ad folk try to be like their client.
Exactly like their client.
The way they speak. The way they dress. The way they think.
Of course, I understand the importance of knowing your client, their business and their challenges, but the problem with mirroring your client is that you end up looking at the World in the same way as them … and as much as some people may think that’s a good thing, it’s not.
You see when you focus on being like an insider, you ignore the benefits of thinking like an [informed] outsider. You know, the perspective the client actually hired you for in the first place.
As one of my old senior Nike clients once said to me …
“Senior management need and want to be challenged because that’s how we keep things moving forward. If you’re not doing that, then you’re not doing anything for us”.
Now I appreciate not every client thinks this way, but this shift to client mirroring is – in my opinion – another thing that has undermined our industry.
I swear the reason for it is an attempt to be taken seriously as a client partner when the easiest way to achieve that is to do work that shows we are a serious client partner.
Do the people who say, “we’ve lost our seat at the boardroom table” seriously think this approach will change that?
Maybe … but then they will be wrong because there’s only 3 things that will do that.
1. Talk about the things that are important to the client rather than important to us.
2. Know their audience/culture better than they know their audience/culture.
3. Solve their business challenges in creatively imaginative, distinctive, culturally resonant and sustainable ways.
Oh, and there’s a 4th point … prove it.
Not just in the short-term, but in the long … where client can see the economic value of investing in their brand voice. Not just through ‘brand campaigns’, but in how they approach everything they do.
Now I know some of you may think this whole post is my attempt to justify wearing shit t-shirts and birkenstocks to client meetings for the last 25+ years – and maybe it is – but if we are to get back to where we belong, I passionately believe it’s not going to happen by behaving more like clients, but by getting back to the things they need and no one else can do.
… or tomorrow.
You can thank America’s independence for your peace.
But don’t get too comfy, I’m back on Friday.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Chaos, Comment, Communication Strategy, Confidence, Creative Brief, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Differentiation, Emotion, Empathy, Focus Groups, Innovation, Insight, Management, Marketing, Nike, Social Commentary, Sport, Wieden+Kennedy
So a while back, someone asked me what I thought made a ‘good planner’.
To be honest, all I really remember is that they caught me on a bad day and so I kind of went on an all-out rant.
By pure chance I recently came across my reply and while I definitely sound a bit of a mentalist – not to mention I miss out talking about a whole bunch of stuff I believe is super-important, like empathy – there was a lot in there that I felt had some value, if only to open a debate about what our discipline is supposed to do and what it can be.
So with that in mind, here I rant …
__________________________________________________________________________
Planning is one of the most overused terms in the industry these days.
Everyone is now a planner … except in truth, many are either ‘packagers’ – taking the clients info and packing it into easily digestible chunks – or media people who tell you where to put your work based entirely on numbers rather than any true audience understanding.
Now I am not saying those folks aren’t important, of course they are, but for me planning is about ignition to bigger opportunities and possibilities.
For me, a planner understands 3 fundamental things:
+ What the real business problem is.
+ Who the core audience is.
+ What the creative opportunity is.
Those 3 things form the foundation of making things … things that don’t just solve the problem, but help the client have a sustainable position in culture that ultimately makes their marketing work harder for them.
Great planners care about creativity rather than advertising.
Care more about authenticity of a brand rather than marketing of a brand.
Want to uncover why people do stuff rather than just what they do.
It’s not about convenient answers, but ones that really understand the madness of how we all think and do and what we value and believe.
Of course when you’re spending billions of someone else’s money, the temptation to choose convenient, mass-acceptance answers is high and while that can get you results, breakthrough only comes when you resonate with culture rather than just try to be relevant to it.
The un-said.
The hard to explain.
The not easy to hear but it’s true.
It’s for this reason I always tell clients they shouldn’t focus purely on the methodology being used to uncover this stuff … but the person leading it, the people they’re talking to and the questions they are asking.
There’s a reason why a brand like NIKE is still at the top of its game after so long.
Sure, they have ups and downs along the way, but to still have that energy and pull 54 years after they were founded is remarkable.
Of course the biggest part of this is they make great products, have a focus on innovation, have incredible distribution and enjoy the benefits of their market power. But arguably, other companies can lay claim to doing this which is why I believe their ‘secret sauce’ is their commitment to the culture they believe in and are a part of. The culture of the athlete.
Everything they do goes through this lens.
Everything.
And that’s why their marketing doesn’t follow the usual strategic approaches of looking for ‘white space’ or ‘getting to as broad an audience as possible’, but to have a deep connection to the lives and minds of the athlete so they can bring the lessons to life in the most inspirational, yet deeply authentic way possible.
This approach dictates everything, including how they choose and use their agency partners.
From a planning perspective, I know I placed far more value on someone who has a deep love of sport and creativity than anyone who could talk process or methodologies because for me – and NIKE and Wieden and every other agency on their roster – their job was to inspire great creatives to do something audacious for a client who fundamentally believes in the power of their brand voice and sport.
All this highlights 3 things.
1. Great planning comes from truly understanding the core audience.
2. Great work comes from knowing how to be useful to the creative team.
3. Great brands differentiate themselves by their authenticity and distinctiveness.
I’ve written a lot about differentiation.
While the goal should always be to ensure your clients stands out from their competitors, if the approach is to ‘own’ a position that hasn’t been taken, then ultimately you’re letting your competitors dictate your future rather than deciding it for yourself.
For me, great brands embrace their truth in fresh and exciting ways.
They attract culture rather than chase it because they are the culture, not observers of it.
It means they are always moving forward rather than remaining stagnant.
It means they’re always relevant rather than fighting for it.
Planners play an important part in this.
But only if they remember the work is the key, not the ego.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Brilliant Marketing Ideas In History, Comment, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Cunning, Design, Innovation, Insight, Marketing
So I’ve seen something that – to me – is one of the best bits of innovation I’ve seen in ages.
Admittedly, it’s something that has kind of been done before.
And has a limited audience.
And probably a short shelf life.
But I love it because it shows innovation is not just about what you do, but what you see is possible to do.
What am I talking about?
This …
Or, more specifically, this …
What you’re looking at are the handlebars to a Micro scooter, the sort of scooter favored by my 3 year old son Otis and wannabe-hipsters who really should know better.
Now normally these handlebars have some ‘grips’ on them like this …
… but recently I saw they offered an alternative range and it’s this that I’m blown away by.
You see someone saw that the Micro Scooter handlebars are made of a hollow metal tube.
So far, so boring.
But what someone realised was that with a hollow tubular handlebar, they could make a grip that looked like this …
For those who can’t quite tell, it’s a grip that turns the handlebars into a horn, like this:
I know it seems a small thing and I know you might not be as impressed by it as me, but I think it’s bloody genius … both for the fun it adds to the scooter and – more impressively – for someone seeing possibility in something most people would ignore.
And that’s my problem with a lot of what adland regards as ‘innovation’, because in many cases the starting point is to do something totally new rather than to see the possibilities in our everyday World.
Which explains why our industry often comes up with bullshit like Peggy while other people/companies/brands come up with brilliantly simple but effective handlebar grip horns.