Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Brand, Brand Suicide, Communication Strategy, Complicity, Confidence, Content, Context, Craft, Crap Marketing Ideas From History!, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Design
A few weeks ago, I went on a trip where the people I was going to meet, had sent a car to pick me up.
If this wasn’t flashy enough, it was a Mercedes. With a driver who wore a fucking cap … and it wasn’t even a German Policeman.
As I sat in the plush leather seats, I couldn’t help but notice one thing.
This.
Brown.
Brown on brown.
Brown on brown. On brown.
It was as if the design team were a bunch of perverts who loved sewer porn. Or something.
And I have to say, I found it pretty off-putting. Well, when I say off-putting, I mean distracting … because I couldn’t take my eyes off it. Wondering why anyone would do this.
Because it wasn’t just 50 shades of brown, it was also made up of multiple materials of brown.
Leather.
Wood.
Plastic … often disguised to look like leather. And wood.
What the actual fuck?
I tell you something, when you’re literally cocooned in a car of poo, the last thing you want to do is drink the bottle of water they kindly put our for me.
At the time, I tweeted out a picture of the car and said:
“Mercedes really like brown. Though no doubt in the brochure it was called, ‘decadent dark chocolate’. 💩”
To which someone tweeted back that the official colour was, ‘Macchiato Beige’
MACCHIATO BEIGE!
BEIGE!!!
Jesus Christ … if associating with brown is alarmingly questionable, then surely associating yourself with beige is even worse?
Who the hell decided that???
I’m as confused by that as I am the people who actively chose to spend multiple tens of thousands of dollars on having it as an option.
But then history is littered with companies being able to embrace terrible decisions as long as someone has given them a reason to ignore reality.
Years ago, Bloomberg Businessweek asked me to write something for them.
One of the things I wrote about was UPS and their choice of ‘corporate brown’.
At the time I said, “if I had millions to spend, I don’t know if I’d be using it to associate with the contents of a dirty nappy.”
[Otis was approaching his 2nd birthday, so that was relevant to me rather than an attempt to be controversial]
While I appreciate the role colour has in branding – even though the way many use it. think about it and talk about it is utter bollocks – I still don’t really understand how any organisation could decide ‘brown’ in their shade.
In fact the only reason I imagine that can happen is when they hire a consultant firm and they tell them, “brown is a white space for your category, so by owning brown, you differentiate yourself from competitors”.
Which highlights five major considerations for brands:
1. When you allow ‘white space’ to define your strategic decisions, you’re ultimately seeding control to your competitors, not your truth.
2. The quest for differentiation only counts if it offers something of value, not just is different.
3. Without creativity and meaning, your ‘brand asset’ is a conformity drain.
4. Job title doesn’t equate to being smart.
5. Honesty trumps harmony … at least with companies who don’t have god complexes.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Cars, England, Technology
So after a pretty traumatic week, I’m back.
It has been a bit of a rollercoaster, but all is looking settled and well now.
The patient is doing very well – despite me taking care of them – and so I thought I should get back to ruining other people’s day by writing this blog again. So here we go …
I’m so old I remember when car phones – literally a phone attached in a car – was a new thing.
An innovative thing.
A symbol of success and status. Or a salesman – hahaha.
You could tell which cars had them as they had a little aerial attached to the top of their rear windscreen to help send/receive the phone signal … except, in typical fashion, some companies started selling fake ‘stick-on’ aerials so people could pretend to have the tech, even though they weren’t really fooling anyone given they were in a green – if you could see the colour through all the rust – Austin Metro.
But for those who wanted something real, but cheaper [at least in terms of buying the thing and connecting the thing] … there was a phone system called ‘Rabbit’.
To be honest, Rabbit was utterly shit. Because rather than a phone, it was basically a pager system … where the only way you could make/receive/listen to calls or voicemail was if you were within 20 meters of a designated transmitting station. And there weren’t many of them about. In fact the main places you’d find them was at a Motorway Service Station or a Little Chef cafe. So because of the restriction and limitation of use, it meant you had to keep pulling in to those places to ‘check’ or ‘make’ calls … which was not only inconvenient, but expensive.
Of course I had one.
Even though I had no one to call and no one to call me.
But I remember feeling it was amazing … even more so when Rabbit became the ‘Orange’ network and, as a customer, it meant I could get access to the newest, latest, coolest Nokia GSM phone.
So I did.
Even though I couldn’t afford to call someone or have someone call me.
There’s few things that have given me the thrill and excitement of that phone.
The feeling I was entering a new dawn of independence and innovation.
And I include AI in that statement.
Maybe because mobile phones felt more about freedom whereas AI feels more about productivity. Of course I appreciate what AI can do and allow … but I get more excited by technology that enables me to stretch my boundaries rather than do it for me.
Which is why when I saw this phone in a car recently – not working, obvs – I felt more of a thrill than I will when the next iPhone is launched. Maybe because back then, tech was about liberation and possibility rather than pure profitability and control.