The Musings Of An Opinionated Sod [Help Me Grow!]

My Italian Uncle was a prosecutor against the Mafia and my Dad was a Human Right’s barrister who specialized in fighting corporations and governments who chose to label certain groups/people as ‘irrelevant’ or ‘unimportant’.

I – on the other hand – am not a lawyer. I neither had the brains or the patience … though I did get a distinction in law at college, albeit because my Dad helped me massively – hahahaha.

But the thing is, you can’t be around that level of legal brain without it having some influence over you and one of the things my Dad and Uncle really shaped for me was how ‘details matter’.

Now I appreciate law and advertising are VERY different, but one of the areas where they are very similar is the ability to make complexity, simple.

Unfortunately, a lot of our industry seems to have forgotten that … preferring to either celebrate complexity or make things embarrassingly simplistic, but when we do things right, we do things really right.

Of course it takes a lot of hard work to make things simple.

You have to read.
You have to explore.
You have to go down rabbit-holes.
You have to chat, challenge, and consider.

But not only does this approach mean you get to the core of issues, problems, understanding and opportunities … you are more likely to put something out that makes a real difference to people and the business. So I find it fascinating how more and more companies are giving less and less time for this hard work to be done.

Wanting the process to be at a ‘sprint’.
Wanting costs and people to be ‘trimmed’.
Wanting the agency to accept what ‘they say’.

But we don’t push back on this to be awkward, we push back on this because we give a shit about their wellbeing. We want to do things that add value to what they do, rather than open the door to challenges or questions. And while I appreciate there is a narrative that ‘the general public don’t really care about advertising’, the reality is a bit more nuanced than that.

1. They don’t care about SHIT advertising, but they do care about, what they care about.
2. They definitely care about not being fucked over by companies who try to fuck them over.

And if there’s one thing companies should know by now … social media often finds the stuff they want to hide. The stuff that challenges the narrative they like to project and profess. And while I appreciate that may have led to many companies making ads that basically say nothing – in the twisted belief that if they bore audiences to death, they’re protected – the reality is there will always be someone out there who delves into the details.

I’m not talking about conspiracy theorists.
I’m not talking about the populists and non-conformists.
I’m talking about individuals who want to make sure the companies who want them to give a shit, give a shit in return.

And you know what should scare companies even more?

AI allows everyone to do this quickly and easily. Suddenly the tool some companies have adopted as a way to ‘slash costs’, is the tool that allows society to work out if they should give them any time, let alone money.

And why am I talking about this?

Because in the last few weeks, there’s been a couple of posts that show the importance of ‘the details’.

A couple of posts that show a company that loves to claim they care about what you need, care more about what they need.

A couple of posts that are fucking breathtaking in their ‘findings’.

Who am I talking about? Uber.

Cars and Food delivery.

Now I appreciate what is detailed below may not be entirely accurate – different markets operate by different needs and requirements – however if you use Uber in any way, and I do, it’s something worth reading.

Because at the very least, if the information is not completely right, Uber can then tell us and show us how good they really are. And if the information is correct, then it will force Uber to change or face the consequences.

Details matter.