Filed under: Advertising, Attitude & Aptitude, Comedians, Communication Strategy, Context, Creativity, Culture, Cunning
Years ago I wrote a post about how Borat was deeply prejudiced and yet – because it was done for humour – it was totally fine to use the worst stereotypes to define and express a culture, heritage or community.
Now of course that’s something comedians have hung onto for years.
The ability to leave no subject on the table.
To let humour challenge myopic beliefs and attitudes.
And, to be honest, I’m a big believer in that – as I am with art – but sometimes you can’t help but feel some people use it as a convenient excuse to purposefully profit from notoriety.
Where instead of adding to the conversation, they just exploit it.
Taking rather than adding.
I say that because I recently saw this:
Yes, I know it does no one any harm.
And I appreciate that London is not the sunniest place in the World.
But it all feels a bit lazy … not to mention confusing given they have called yellow, ‘bumblebee’ when surely they could have named it, ‘LA sun’.
Or something.
But by the same token, I not only remembered it, I wrote about it – so maybe this highlights the reason we need to allow humour to challenge our perceptions and perspectives because maybe the biggest thing that this post has actually revealed is my English fragility, and I’m not even from London!
Wow, I’ve got whiplash from the turnaround of this post.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Confidence, Creativity, Effectiveness, Egovertising, Management, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Perspective, Planners, Planners Making A Complete Tit Of Themselves And Bless, Planning
It’s not that long ago that advertising award submissions would talk about how many Facebook ‘likes’ a post got as proof of effectiveness.
As I wrote a few years ago [even though I can’t find the post, haha] that’s the equivalent of claiming someone is your fan simply because you asked them to pass the salt in a café and they did.
And while many were quick to try and blame Facebook for suggesting this as a metric, the reality – similar to those who blame Powerpoint for writing bad presentation – was it was the people who wrote the submission who were to blame.
For all the talk and conversation about effectiveness, it’s amazing how we continue to try and reframe what it is and how you achieve it.
Hell, even those who literally make a living out of it, do it with one eye on serving their own needs and wants – resulting in methodologies that, while not wrong, tend to be more about not failing than liberating.
But hey … they’re way smarter, objective and valuable than so much of the stuff we’re seeing being peddled left, right and centre.
Some things to note.
Having 100,000 followers on Instagram is not a demonstration of your strategic effectiveness.
Having 10,000 subscribers to your newsletter is not a demonstration of your strategic abilities.
Having clients write you a letters of thanks is not a demonstration of your strategic skills.
They’re all lovely.
They’re all things you should feel proud of.
But they are not a demonstration of your strategic chops.
Christ … I have 17,000 instagram followers and do you know how I got them?
Well, as much as I’d like to say it was down to the 18,000 excellent images I’ve posted over my 14 years on the platform, the reality is it was an accident.
Metallica linked my insta to one of their photos and overnight, I gained about 20,000 followers.
Literally overnight.
Now I know what you’re thinking …
“How come 20,000 people followed you but you only have 17,000 followers now?”
Well, it’s easy …
Once people realised I was not going to furnish them with insider knowledge of their hero’s and instead, would be bombarding them with photos of my cat, they left in droves.
Almost 10,000 people.
So those 17,000 people on my insta consists of about 10k who find me so insignificant they can’t even be arsed to stop following me and 7k of people I’ve overshared into submission.
To paraphrase Lee Hill who once told me, “turnover is sanity, profit is vanity” … we can say the same about followers/readers and happy clients.
Sure, having a lot of people like what you do is good … but it doesn’t mean you’re strategically effective.
It doesn’t even mean you’re even strategic … and yet so many seem to be mistaking their volume of insta/newsletter/client letters as proof that they are.
All that means is – at best – you’re good to the people who have chosen to follow/work with you and as good as that is, it’s worth remembering a lot of people think Donald Trump is the messiah which highlights many people don’t know what the fuck they’re doing or talking about.
Filed under: Attitude & Aptitude, Brand Suicide, Crap Products In History, Food
As you know, I like gadgets.
I’ll go further … I like shit gadgets.
My bank history is littered with decisions of madness. From robot balls to pens that can write in any colour imaginable to stupid badges and cups for colleagues to a bloody windmill.
Part of it is because I just find weird shit, fascinating … part of it is because I’m a fucking idiot … but believe it or not, over the past few years I’ve got much, much better grip on my ‘stupidity spending’. Even Jill said so – which is the ultimate proof, because she’s been an innocent victim in so much of it.
But what’s even more amazing is that I’ve started to gain an objective viewpoint, which is my way of saying that not only would I never buy this item, I acknowledge it’s fucking pants.
What item? This item …
A one handed pepper mill.
A ONE HANDED PEPPER MILL!
What the absolute fuck?!!
Yes, I appreciate there may be some people – like the elderly or those who deal with disability – where it has merit, but the photo doesn’t show that.
In fact, based on the pic, it’s been designed for middle class, psychotic males who need to control every aspect of their wives lives … right down to how much pepper they can put on their food, even though they made it themselves because their husband won’t let them leave the house IN CASE THEY TALK TO OTHER PEOPLE IN THE STREET AND THAT WOULD BE AN ACT OF DISRESPECT.
It’s not just over-engineered … it’s over-thought … the equivalent of a planner who has convinced themselves they can position cereal as the family antidote to the economic crisis.
Or should I say, a multi-millionaire, delusional CEO.
Look, I’m all for over-engineered nonsense. My car is a perfect example of that. But over-engineered nonsense for the ‘psychotic bully in your life’ is another thing altogether … even though I can see a perfect partnership with the re-release of Sleeping With The Enemy.
Filed under: Comment
A month ago I was in Utrecht in Holland.
While my hotel room was a bit weird [it had a bath on a mezzanine floor that was above my bed … but the actual bathroom was on a separate floor below the bedroom] there was one thing I liked.
This.
To give you more information on what it was about about, read this.
I really like this.
Simple, easy, persuasive.
A way to make a difference without it requiring you to make much of a difference.
It’s similar to the hotel I stayed in San Fran … where they identifed little ways to innovate services that make a positive impression for the guest, the planet and for others in need.
From this idea of brilliance …
To this shower ‘egg timer’ to reduce water usage.
What I particularly like about their approach is that they’re seemingly adopting the attitude of trying stuff rather than waiting to ‘perfect’ stuff.
That doesn’t mean that there’s no thought going into what they do, more the realisation its better to start with something and evolve it over time than wait till you can perfect something.
[Which, let’s be honest, often goes nowhere as it ends up being caught up in the endless churn of organisational politics … which is why the Asian model of cumulative innovation is far more productive than the Western approach of delusional perfectionism]
Not that long ago, there was talk about Airbnb destroying the hotel business, but hotels have upped their game to fight back … helped by Airbnb charging so many ‘fees’ that in many cases, a hotel ends up being more cost effective and/or less hassle.
Which is a reminder that to be a true ‘transformational businesses’ there’s a couple of things you have to be able to do.
One. Be able to make a profit rather than just a big valuation.
Two. Resist the urge to become the beast you were meant to slay.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Comment, Complicity, Confidence, Context, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Differentiation, Distinction, Effectiveness, Innovation, Insight, Linkedin, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Mediocrity, Planners, Planners Making A Complete Tit Of Themselves And Bless, Planning, Relevance, Standards, Strategy, Trust, Wieden+Kennedy
There is a lot of talk about a new term in marketing, called ‘UBR’.
UBR stands for Universal Buying Reason and there’s a lot of people seemingly wetting their pants over it. In essence, UBR is when a brand owns a position within a category that arguably, anyone within that category could have had, but they were first or the most consistent or invested in making it their or were simply, the biggest spenders behind it.
If you’re thinking this is not exactly new, you’d be right … but many people seem to be more obsessed with being associated with new terminologies or methodologies than actually making stuff that pushes brands and business to new places.
That’s why UBR feels like the next terminology trope in a long line of terminology tropes …
Brand Assets.
Brand Eco-Systems.
Global Human Truths.
Overly simplicitic labels that promote conformity under the guise of effectiveness or efficiency.
[And yes, I know Dan Wieden used to talk about Global Human Truths … and as I told him, he was wrong. Because while all Mum’s may love their kids, a Mum in Wuhan shows it in very different ways than a Mum in Washington, and to ignore that nuance is to ignore truth for convenience and complicity. And as anyone worth their salt will tell you, often it’s the nuance that is the difference between doing things for people or about them]
Of course, like all trope trends, there’s some value in what is being said about UBR – after all, its hardly a new concept given countless brands and categories have used this approach for literally decades, from alcohol to jewellery.
But what some of the people pushing UBR are seemingly forgetting – or not understanding – is that even at the most functional level of category marketing, it requires depth and consideration to fully release its potential … and frankly the lack of discussion about that highlights the industries obsession with providing clients with easy answers/solutions rather than encouraging/pushing/provoking them to appreciate the rewards [and shareholder benefit, let alone expectation] of putting in the hard work to identify how they can consistently build their value, role and position.
What scares me most is that some of the people ‘fluffing UBR’ – but thankfully not all – are in jobs where they’re paid to help clients with their business … and yet they talk in incredibly generalistic and simplistic terms about something that has context and complexity.
Where the hell is their objectivity?
Where is the understanding?
Where is the nuance?
It all feels like a desperate play to be seen as an industry thought leader, where the goal is to highjack whatever seems to be getting industry traction and then aligning themselves to it.
What’s worse is we’ve seen how this approach works as more and more people value and aspire speed and status over substance and experience … and I don’t really care that makes me sound old, because it actually has nothing to do with age, and everything to do with valuing what our industry can do when we do it with craft, understanding and ambition.
What sums it all up [for me] is how one of the brands the UBR advocates bang on about is Tesco’s.
I get why, because on face value, Tesco’s is a supermarket like every other supermarket.
But …
All it takes is a quick look at Tesco’s history – from their foundation in 1919 through to the many acts and actions they’ve embraced and led over 100 years, from the ‘computers for schools’ program to challenging EU law to give their customers access to products at the same price as their European cousins and a million things in-between – and they’d see the ‘Every Little Helps’ position is not something ‘anyone’ could say, but something far more specific to them specifically … something they’ve continually reinforced and invested in through retail, customer and cultural innovation as opposed to just the repetition of a category trope.
It’s yet another example of people needing to know their history before they can claim they’re creators of it.
Or – said another way – why clients and the industry at large, need to get back to valuing those who have DONE and DO shit, rather than just talk it … regardless how popular or well-meaning they may be.
[OK, ‘talking shit’ is harsh, but it sounded good in that sentence, so forgive me]
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for pushing knowledge and possibilities, I’m just not for people putting lipstick on a dead sheep and calling it Ms World.
And don’t get me started on how many of these people are ultimately downplaying someone else’s creative excellence to make it all about them.
Wow, that’s like a rant from 2010. Felt good. Thanks industry trope for waking me up.