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A few years ago, my wife – a designer – was working for a company on a freelance project.
She met them for the briefing and they told her, “We want people to see us as innovative”.
To which she replied, “I think the only way you do that is by doing innovative things”.
Now she wasn’t saying this to be an asshole, she was trying to be helpful … but, of course, they didn’t see that, even though she was absolutely right.
OK, some companies get away with it.
There’s one I know very well who position themselves as progressive … but look a little deeper and you see the innovation is more in their language and wrapping than anything truly ground breaking. And what’s more, they do the same thing – albeit with a different skin – for different companies time and time again.
To be fair, some of what they do/did is truly progressive, but that is most definitely the exception rather than the rule because their current business model appears to be far more about duplication and replication than innovation.
And that would be fine … except they position themselves as innovation pioneers.
It works because nothing attracts conservative companies than the ability to pretend/think they’re innovative or disruptive when – as Lee Hill once brilliantly observed – all they’re really doing is simply ‘modernising to the times’.
Or said another way, they’re simply catching up to where everyone else is, rather than leaving them behind.
It’s a commercial co-dependency.
They talk to you so you can think you’re innovative and you pay them to allow them keep thinking they are.
The reason I say all this is because I recently saw this in Pudong Airport …
It’s for Austrian/American chef Wolfgang Puck and his restaurant chain.
Now Wolfgang has achieved a great deal in his life …
He is the only chef awarded the ‘Outstanding Chef of the Year’ award on multiple occasions.
His 1982 restaurant Spago – which was a revelation – created the concept of the open kitchen.
He is responsible for serving celebrities a special banquet after the Academy Awards.
All good and grand.
However for all the ‘innovation and success’ Wolfgang has achieved, his Wolfgang Puck chain is anything but … exemplified by the fact that this hoarding claims, “To be truly original is to invent the future of food … to question, to experiment” and yet all the pictures accompanying this statement are about as basic as my dress sense.
Cheeseburger.
Prawn salad.
Steak.
Now I am not saying this food won’t be tasty. But I am saying it is not original and it most definitely is not inventing the future of food.
Of course, there is a lot of [bad] marketing that is underpinned by exaggeration and hype. And I totally appreciate China loves the superlative … however, as exciting as the people behind this restaurant may be about this concept and regardless how ‘new’ this may be to China [clue: it’s not] they’re selling the illusion of innovation rather than the reality of it.
And why do I care?
Because people are falling for this shit.
And while that is their issue, the result of this is the systematic downgrading of standards and ambition.
And truth.
Where more and more people are falling for average because it’s been sold to them as exceptionalism.
And it is convenient for them to believe that because it doesn’t challenge or question, it just comforts with convenience.
The result being those who are being innovative … the ones who are trying to do things differently … are met with immediate distain and dismissal. Judged, insulted and dismissed.
Please note I am not in any way claiming to be one of these people. But I know those who truly are. And so many have failed to achieve the impact and success they deserve because the business of illusion innovation is easier to buy than actual innovation.
And while I could say that is their problem, a lot of it is because of what they refuse to do.
Like guarantee results.
Or sell one-size-fits all process.
Or blindly accept the opinion and views of people because of their title.
Or follow research methodologies that are designed for totally different scenarios.
But that happens a lot. I’ve seen it. We all have.
Which is why I think the best thing that can save marketing is maybe to stop marketing.
Stop playing the games of how so many operate.
Stop valuing convenience, complicity and popularity in favour of truth, action and change.
Stop judging people on how much cash they bring in and more on what they’ve done/do.
Stop playing down to a price rather than up to a quality.
This industry is littered with brilliant creative, innovative, progressive doers and thinkers.
They’re everywhere and yet they rarely seem to be championed or celebrated.
At best they’re viewed as a novelty. At worse, a destructive force.
The Emperor’s New Clothes may get short-term economic results.
It may keep people employed and give the C-Suite big, fat bonus cheques.
But what it is also doing, is ensuring we fall backwards.
Not just killing our credibility, but denying a future to those who could bring us back.
And as acts of corporate hostility go, I find that one of the worst of all.