Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Confidence, Creativity, Culture, Diversity, Emotion, Empathy, Happiness, Insight, Relationships, Social Divide
At Christmas, I went to the free Winter Wonderland show in London.
I say ‘free’, but it cost me more money than a West End Show,
But for all that, there was one thing that I saw that I truly loved.
This.
Yes, it is from a long time ago.
Yes, it is a pretty small thing.
But my god, how good is it?
The idea that the government paid for small versions of real cars to help kids with disabilities feel they are part of society – when everything around them tended to, and still does to be honest, say otherwise – is brilliant.
An act that lets minorities feel they belong.
Are seen and heard.
Can contribute and become more than they thought they could be.
And while this sort of behavior seems to be something consigned to history, they are happening.
I have written a post that comes out on Friday that does a similar thing.
Except it was done by Otis’ school rather than any government authority … and that pisses me off, because in my opinion, this is exactly the sort of thing the government is for.
To look after the people it represents.
Their health. Their wellbeing. Their education.
And before everyone starts calling me a hippy or a communist, it’s not just because that is their duty but because by doing this, they are literally making the country better. Richer.
Not just in terms of happier, smarter more confident people, but interns of invention … collaboration … industry.
A nation that is healthy and educated is a nation that builds, grows and attracts and yet it appears nowadays … governments are about control, power and self serving.
How the hell did we come to this?
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Brand Suicide, Confidence, Crap Campaigns In History, Creativity, Culture, Cunning, Embarrassing Moments, Great Ads In History, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Wieden+Kennedy
So I recently saw this ad in the tube.
To be fair, it caught my eye more than most tube ads but there’s something about it that just doesn’t feel right.
To be honest, I’m not really sure what it is.
Maybe it’s that they are advertising viagra on a transportation device that is long and hard?
OK, it’s not that.
Maybe it’s the fact they call it Viagra Connect?
It’s not that, but it doesn’t feel right either.
Oh I know, it’s the fact the company website is GetEddie.com
This bothers me for a bunch of reasons.
One of them is that asking a bloke called Eddie for erection help feels very, very dirty.
Alright, that might just be me, but it just feels very under the counter when the whole premise of the ad is that it’s not something to be shy or scared of.
But more than that, it’s the website that really makes me uncomfortable.
You see while I am sure GetEddie is meant to be a play on ‘Get Ready’, it also feels like it’s trying to imply ‘get head’, which just seems pathetic to the core.
However – and it’s a big however – I appreciate this view may say more about me than the people behind Eddie, because lets not forget the time I thought an Old Spice campaign we did at Wieden – called Smellcome to Manhood – was a play on words about teenage boys experiencing puberty, when in fant it was literally just a pun on the word ‘Welcome’.
The creative team avoided me like the plague after that, which is a shame, as it was one of my favorite Old Spice campaigns.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Authenticity, Confidence, Creativity, Culture, Emotion, Legend, Millennial, Planners Making A Complete Tit Of Themselves And Bless, Planning, Positioning
So a client of ours has an arcade machine in their reception.
I say ‘game’, but it’s much more like a social definer … separating the haves from the have nots.
Any minute of the hour, you see people congregating there to test their gaming chops.
Pushing themselves to be better.
To rise up the ranks.
To be the eventual champion.
Except when I walked into that clients building, a new sheriff was in town.
Sure, I looked a bit knackered.
Sure, I am more ball shaped than athlete.
Sure, I made sure every meeting was as short as possible so I could play on that machine.
But as you can see from the picture above, I proved that in the field of sports it’s not how you look, it’s how you perform and I performed like the crap arcade game champion I truly am.
Let this achievement give all old dogs out there the belief that 2019 isn’t a year they need to learn new tricks, but to simply challenge the whippersnappers to games that don’t matter and they don’t care about.
Which means this post is ultimately a strategy lesson on repositioning.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Confidence, Creativity, Egovertising, Insight, Marketing, Relevance, Resonance
Y&R is over.
Of course, the powers-that-be say they’re merging, but really they’re over.
This is sad for me.
Not just because I spent 4 years of my life with them and did some stuff I’m proud of with people I still respect hugely … from SONY to VB to Schweppes [the ad is here as it’s gone from the post] … but because there was a time where they really took a stand, both in terms of what they stood for and what they did.
Recently I found an ad they did for themselves …
Yes, you can argue it’s a bit dodgy, but apart from the novelty of seeing an agency practicing what it preaches [accepting an agencies work should be the best ad it does for itself] it’s interesting to see them celebrating how technology [read: data] and emotion [read: creativity] sit side-by-side in their company.
Sure, it doesn’t say what the computers at Y&R actually do.
They hint it finds valuable ‘audience stuff’, but for all I know, they might have actually been used to just type and/or design their ads on … but it’s the first thing I can remember where an agency proactively talked about the coming together/tension between data and creativity.
Of course it’s nowhere near as good or provocative as their 1965, Backbone ad [again, for themselves], but it is nice to see an agency have a point of view, which – ironically – is the very thing they stopped doing which contributed to them ending up as the back end of VML.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Attitude & Aptitude, Audio Visual, Brand Suicide, Comment, Confidence, Context, Crap Campaigns In History, Crap Marketing Ideas From History!, Crap Products In History, Creative Brief, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Data, Differentiation, Experience, Focus Groups, Honesty, Innovation, Insight, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Relevance, Resonance
One of the things that bothers me is how data [in marketing] has become law.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge fan of data – or should I say, real data that has been amassed properly, read properly and used properly – but a lot of the stuff today is nothing more than small bits of information packaged to be big bits of information.
Worse, a lot of it has no texture whatsoever … designed to reinforce a position someone wants rather than to inform and enlighten on things you don’t know but would like to find out.
But even then, data is not infallible.
There, I said it.
Data is as good as the people who created it.
And yet day after day, I read about companies who treat their data like its god … even though you can see the flaws in their approach from 10,000 miles away.
From what they’re trying to discover.
To how they’re trying to discover it.
To what they want to do with it once they’ve got it.
No surprise then that so many then go on to report ‘lower than expected’ revenues.
I’m lucky that I work at a place with a progressive view of data, especially with the way we use our Ventures program.
But in addition to that, I work with an amazing data specialist.
She’s cheeky sod who is a bloody legend.
Not just for what she does but for what she pushes.
A believer in the role of culture not just habits.
But another part of her skill is that she knows what data does and what data doesn’t.
Data guides.
It heavily suggests.
It shines a light on important and essential behaviours.
It forces discussions about how best to approach situations.
But it rarely is undisputed, unquestionable, always certain, fact.
To be honest, I believe most people in the marketing field of data knows this but – as is the case with most things in marketing – we go around talking in certainties in an attempt to raise our professional standing when all it does is the opposite.
Hey, I get it, we see it being done in so many fields – from government to finance – but that still doesn’t mean it makes people believe what we’re saying, it just makes us complicit.
The reality is society is far smarter than we give them credit for. The only reason they let so much of this rubbish pass is because they literally don’t care what we say. They have seen so many facts that turned into fiction that they view what we do as literally a game … which is why, while data and strategy still play an important part in making creativity that helps brands move forward, the most powerful differentiator between ideas that culture sees and culture give a shit about is how interesting, intriguing and exciting it is.