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

I know everyone likes to think their ‘thing’ is a ‘unique’ thing.

And I know people like to ‘big up’ whatever it is they do to sound even bigger than it is … like claiming a solid marketing 101 course is a ‘mini-MBA’, which is made even more amusing by the fact the person behind it has developed a caricature of being ‘no nonsense’ … but the problem with this ‘blinkers on, always look straight ahead’ attitude is that while you’re spouting your ridiculousness, we don’t see the people around us laughing and pointing.

Self-awareness is increasingly becoming one of the most important and valuable attributes in business – and yet, too often, anyone who points out a problem is met with distain, as if they are trying to destroy an organization when all they’re trying to do is protect them.

At this point, I could point to that utterly horrific Ritz Cracker Superbowl ad … or that Maxwell House/Apartment abomination … but no, I found something even more potentially insane.

This.

Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate people have favourite notepads. It may be influenced by paper stock quality, design or number of pages … but selling a notebook on its ability to lay perfectly flat?

It’s a notebook for fucks sake, not a bloody Toblerone.

This is up there with the sort of bullshit hype you see on most Kickstarter pages … except on Kickstarter, they at least try and claim they’ve added some sort of innovation that marks it out from traditional approaches, whether true or not.

But a notebook that lies flat?

That’s where we’ve got folks.

That’s where the marketing industry is.

Where it is no longer good enough to simply be good at what you do, everything needs to have some sort of hype ingredient … even if it induces ridicule more than aspiration.

It’s not even fucking targeted to a particular audience who may – just may – value the aesthetic of multiple notebooks placed together more than what they put in the notebook.

If you take away the fact this ad is desperately and blatantly attempting to suggest it’s for a premium product with an innovative feature … this may actually be the most generic piece of generic communication ever created.

And before someone says, ‘but you noticed it and wrote about it’, I would remind people the opposite of good isn’t bad, it’s apathy and there’s more of that being triggered than ever before – driven by systems, processes and ego’s that care more about elevating the self-importance of the creator than addressing the realities, needs and contexts of the recipient.

What we do can be important.

Not life-changing important, but important all the same.

Let’s not forget we can emotionally move people, impact economies and categories and create different futures for millions in ways few other industries could ever dream of achieving.

But if we carry on with our blinkered, arrogant, tick-box, Emperor’s New Clothes attitude, we will eventually discover – as will the clients, pundits and peddlers who either buy into this approach, encourage it or flog it – that the only people who are listening, is themselves.

Of course, as an industry, we should always be open to the new and the next.

But that should never be at the expense of forgetting, ignoring or devaluing what we do and how great we can be at doing it.

Sadly, somewhere along the way, it appears we have … and are now our business model appears to be chasing whatever we think makes us look relevant to the procurement department in business rather than doing things that are valuable to the actual business.

Resulting in us having more tools but making less valuable stuff with it.