Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Brand, Brand Suicide, Confidence, Craft, Creativity, Culture, Emotion, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Music, Planning, Relevance, Resonance, Rick Rubin
Recently I saw this photo of Motorhead.
I fucking love it.
Not because I’m a die-hard Motorhead fan [though I’ve always loved Lemmy] but because it captures a time when music and art were interesting and dangerous partners-in-crime, not focus-group designed ‘brand assets’.
Please do not think this is a rant against people like Ed Sheeran or Dua Lipa.
I both respect and appreciate what they do.
They’re very talented and they’re very musical.
However the way they use music is very different to bands of the past.
Back then, artists like Motorhead used music as a form of expression, whereas modern singers/acts use it more like a product.
That doesn’t mean it’s wrong, it just means they’re more marketer than musician.
After all, Ed Sheeran admits to using focus groups.
And Dua Lipa’s team acknowledge they closely follow trends.
For them, music is a ‘brand asset’ designed to help achieve specific business goals and targets.
I’m not knocking it, there’s a lot of money doing that … but what people – and marketers – seem to forget is there’s a whole career to be had choosing the alternative.
Where you focus on the idea not the assets.
Where you lead audiences, rather than chase them.
Where you mean everything to someone not something to everyone.
It’s why I found a recent comment by Lady Gaga interesting.
I love her. I think she’s amazing.
But recently she said “don’t call me a singer, I’m an artist”.
And while that might sound like a pretentious diva who also see’s music as a brand asset in a range of their products – it’s not.
It means she see’s what she does as art, which is far more interesting in terms of the possibilities of creativity … because it not about doing things right for others, it’s about doing things that feel right for her.
We need more artists in the World, not marketers.
Filed under: Advertising, Apathy, Attitude & Aptitude, Authenticity, Bank Ads, Brand Suicide, Creativity, Culture, Education, Finance, Management, Marketing, Money, Premium
OK, so Friday’s post was an April Fool joke.
I say that because some people seemed to believe it until they got to the very last line. Which obviously made me very happy … no doubt helped by the fact April Fools Day started upto 20+ hours before some parts of the World.
But today’s post is real, even though it’s even more of a joke.
It starts with a tweet I saw a few weeks ago …
I don’t mind admitting, I laughed my socks off when I saw it.
Because it’s true.
The amount of people – read, men – who talk about crypto like it’s a guaranteed money earner despite [1] not looking into how it actually works [2] realising there are a vast amount of choices that are out there and [3] all have experienced incredible and – in many cases – huge losses, is amazing.
But I also kind-of get it.
Because the sniff of winning big can be intoxicating.
Especially if you don’t think you otherwise have a chance.
And for many people they don’t …
Not because they’re not smart or talented or capable … but because life is unbelievably unfair.
Which is why for all the questions that need to be answered about the role, legitimacy and even legality of certain crypto, the reality is many people think the chance of making it big on what is essentially a giant wheel of roulette is still better than the chance of doing OK following ‘traditional’ paths.
I get it. I was in that situation.
I was living in Australia, broke … with a seriously ill Dad and a Mum who couldn’t pay the bills.
I didn’t know what I was going to do when someone I knew asked if I wanted to get involved in a pyramid scheme.
Out of desperation – and a belief I didn’t think I had anything to lose – I said yes.
Of course that is mad, because I did have a lot to lose, from the initial ‘investment’ to the chance to get out of my situation within a year.
I ended up being very lucky.
Because I got in very early. I made back many times my initial investment within 2 weeks.
[I should point out that while I was able to help my Mum and Dad out as soon as this happened, I never told them what I’d done. Part of this was because they’d have been fuming and part of it was because it was hard enough to get them to accept presents from me, so if they knew, then I’d never be able to financially help them out again]
And while the time between ‘investing’ and ‘vesting’ were some of the most exciting, intense and scary weeks of my life, the minuscule chance of making something sizeable out of it drowned out the highly likely chance of losing all of it.
Would I do it again?
No. I am in the incredibly fortunate position to be in a good position now. But I get why people would do it and why crypto is so tempting for so many.
Nothing brought this home than some information Natwest Bank sent me last week.
It was their interest rates.
I say ‘interest’ but what I mean is arrogance.
Have a look at this …
What the hell?
Seriously, what the absolute hell?
Do they think this is good?
Do they think this is going to make people want to invest with them?
Even with their ‘bonus’ percentage, their ‘best’ rate is 0.05%.
And that’s their best. The rest are 0.01%.
ZERO POINT ZERO ONE PERCENT.
Not just many times less than inflation.
Not just many times less than the amount you’ll be charged in fees.
But less than fuck all.
Why would anyone choose to invest their money with a bank?
And I mean anyone … from someone with one pound to one million.
Seriously, you somehow manage to get a million quid and Natwest will reward you with 100 pounds in interest.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
So much for all their talk of ‘caring about your future’.
Of course, they think they can get away with it because they think they hold all the cards.
And right now they probably do.
But for all their advertising claims that are seemingly designed to make the board of directors happy rather than their customers, the vast majority seem to have failed to grasp the one thing that could undermine them all.
People go where the chances are.
Doesn’t matter if it’s not perfect. Doesn’t matter what the research says. If what’s on offer is dramatically better than what the establishment offers – and it’s ‘generally’ legal even if it’s highly risky – then they’ll explore it.
I never imagined I’d be the sort of person who would be part of a pyramid scheme – but circumstances of desperation meant I did. Which means I am pretty sure there’s a hell of a lot of people you’d never imagine would be into crypto, who are.
Not because they’re money hungry assholes – though there’s definitely a bunch who are that – but because with banks taking the piss out of their hopes and dreams with a miserly 0.01% interest rates, suddenly the risk of crypto looks like the most sensible investment for the future they can make.
And then, it’s not just the banks who will be screwed, we all will be.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Attitude & Aptitude, Brand, Brand Suicide, Colenso, Creative Brief, Creativity, Culture, Effectiveness, Focus Groups, Honesty, Imagination, Insight, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Membership, Mischief, Perspective, Planners, Planning, Point Of View, Relevance, Research, Resonance, Strategy
When I was living in Shanghai, I met a young guy who said to me,
“I think the Chinese government are rock n’ roll”.
Given I couldn’t imagine anyone less rock n’ roll, I asked why they said that. To which they replied:
“You told me rock n’ roll was about doing whatever you want to do, regardless what other people think. That’s the Chinese government”.
Mind. Blown.
Never in a million years would I consider the Communist Party rock n’ roll … and now that’s all I can think. I say this because recently I had another of these moments.
It was when I read this:
How amazing is that?!
Now whenever I talk to my friends named Tim, I keep imagining them as a moth.
Which brings me to the point of this post.
If you don’t leave space for conversations and understanding, you will miss out on these little gems of opinion. These things that can make you look at subject in a completely different way. That can take you to different place with even bigger possibilities than you could imagine.
And yet we – as an industry – aren’t leaving space for this.
We actually think getting into the real world is a hindrance.
Too messy. Too much time. Too many opinions.
So we actually advocate building creativity and brands from a weird sort of recipe book.
Where equal parts questionable data, brand assets and self-serving logic come together to make something that looks like a cake but generally tastes bloody awful.
Because we’d rather follow what everyone else does than create something everyone else wants.
Valuing attribution more than change.
Oh don’t get me wrong, I get the importance of all these things.
I agree and value their role in brand building and creativity.
But as I wrote a while back, it’s utterly bonkers that as an industry, we value the condiments of the meal more than the steak.
Recently, someone called me irresponsible for demanding my team spend time meeting, talking, listening and understanding people from all walks of life.
They literally used that word: Irresponsible!
Now I don’t mind admitting there’s many things I could be accused of being irresponsible for, but valuing the role culture has in liberating creativity and possibility isn’t one of them.
No wonder society is so bored of what we do.
No wonder brands have had to reframe bribery as loyalty.
Or membership.
Because while we think we have all the answers, culture has the interesting.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Attitude & Aptitude, Authenticity, Brand, Brand Suicide, Comment, Communication Strategy, Crap Marketing Ideas From History!, Creativity, Culture, Egovertising, Management, Marketing, Marketing Fail, New Zealand
Love it or loathe it, but Wordle has captured the world’s attention. Whether it will continue to do that now the NYTimes has bought it, is anyones guess, but right now, it’s peak popularity.
Hell, even I love it and I HATE word games.
Crosswords? Hate.
Scrabble? Hate.
And yet whether it’s the last thing I do before I go to sleep or the first thing I do when I wake up, I’m playing the days challenge. And I’m brilliant at it. Hahaha.
Anyway, I was on Twitter when I recently saw this from Air New Zealand.
Look, I get it’s a competitive world.
I get brands are looking for anything that can help them stand out.
And I get ‘hijacking culture’ is a cheat way of doing this.
But there’s 2 reasons why this approach is tragic rather than magic.
First is it’s Air New Zealand.
Of all the airline brands out there, they are a pioneer. An innovator. A leader.
They’ve created, influenced and changed the airline industry in ways few have come close.
From being the first to make ‘in-flight safety videos’, entertainment to creating economy seats that turn into beds.
Ripping off Wordle doesn’t represent any of this.
If anything, it does the opposite.
But then, when I see the work they are putting out these days, maybe it all makes sense.
When a nation that prides itself as explorers and adventures has their National Airline promote their role in a post-covid world as being ‘we fly for you’ … you have to question if they realise what they’ve done or if they made a conscious effort to ditch the approach that made them great and forward thinking in favour of the sort of bland, contrived, unrealistic and meaningless twaddle of big corporation 90’s advertising.
Like this.
From 1991.
God I hope not. They are better than that and NZ needs them to be better than that.
Which leads to the other reason.
Hijacking culture.
What’s interesting is that so many brands do it.
As I said, I get why … but 99% of them have failed to understand how it really works and so we now live in a world where the approach is so common, it doesn’t surprise anyone.
If anything, it un-hijacks culture.
So how does it really work?
Well having worked with the brand and agency that arguably created the approach – or at least mastered it – the secret is to do something that adds to culture, not just steals from it.
Which means having an actual right to be there.
Then do something that opens things up, not just repeat what’s already happened.
Adding a point of view to the situation not just adding more noise and clutter to it.
Of course, even with all that, it still doesn’t mean it will work … but its definitely going to be better than the desperate amateur hour that so many brands favour.
Who think it makes them look cool but forgetting if you’re trying to be that, you’re definitely not ever going to be that.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, America, Attitude & Aptitude, Authenticity, Brand, Brand Suicide, China, Chinese Culture, Context, Crap Products In History, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Distinction, London, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Membership, Shanghai, Wieden+Kennedy
One of the things I hated when I lived in China was hearing people slag off the country for all manner of things.
While some of the accusations were true, the reality was China was not the only country that participated in such behaviour but people chose to ignore that.
Not that I’m defending what was going on, because even though I rarely saw any of it – in fact I saw more in the US and UK when I lived there – I knew it was going on.
However there were some claims that showed people didn’t know what the fuck they were going on about.
The amount of people who would come to Shanghai from America and say, “let’s do ideas that force the government to deal with the pollution crisis”.
They’d say it like they were the very first people to identify China had a problem with pollution – which is possibly the greatest sign of arrogance you could have. So we would tell them.
China knows there is a pollution problem.
They are actively fighting it.
They’ve been the biggest investor in green tech for decades.
Proportionally, they still pump out less pollution into the air than America.
In fact, up until the last few years, they pumped out less pollution than America full stop.
America had been doing that for decades.
And there’s parts of London with a higher pollution index than most parts of China.
Then they’d stop acting like they’re a superhero and start understanding their perspective had been driven by media bias not cultural understanding.
But there were some things that were accusations. The lack of respect for copyright being one.
Of course, it’s not just in China this happens, but it definitely happens there. A lot.
Even now, I still think Uncle Martian is peak-plagiarism … mainly because they didn’t just make replicas and sell them as originals, they created a whole new brand based on the intellectual property of brands including Jordan and Under Armour.
I say that because I recently saw another version of this.
Maybe not quite as bad as Uncle Martian, but pretty terrible al the same.
But not from China … so you can keep your prejudiced thoughts to yourself.
It’s that brand at the top of this post that looks awfully like this …
I am an enormous fan of Liquid Death.
I love what they’re doing and how they’re doing it.
Not only are they the true embodiment of a cult brand – with some amazing cult behaviours, such as their $100,000 country club membership … or buy a slab of Liquid Death – they have made drinking water in public cool for men.
That’s something no other beverage brand has pulled off.
So while I am sure they would think someone ripping them off is a sign they’re doing something right, it’s also a sign some lazy, parasitic pricks are ripping them off.
Though as George once said when we once pitched an idea to a client who said, “but what if we just asked another agency to do your idea for cheaper?”
If you choose to go with someone copying someone else’s idea rather than the people who actually came up and created the idea, then you deserve all the disappointment and confusion you get. Including the lawsuit.