Filed under: 2026, A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Attitude & Aptitude, Brand Suicide, Comment, Communication Strategy, Community, Complicity, Conformity, Consultants, Crap Campaigns In History, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Customer Service, Management, Marketing Fail, Planes, Planning, Reputation, Research, Resonance, Respect
Way back in 2006 I wrote a post about what exclusivity means.
Not the marketing version of it … but what the people who can afford to have it, really want and expect from it.
The reality is this group of people don’t care about showing – or sharing – their success with the masses. They don’t have any desire to be ‘aspirational’. In fact what they want couldn’t be more different – because all they really seek is to keep the masses as far away from them as is physically possible.
I entitled the post, FUCK YOU MONEY, but really it should have been called FUCK OFF MONEY … because that’s the spirit that defines exclusivity to them. The ability to live in a world where the only people around them are equal people.
Or said another way, they like to practice economic racism.
It’s part of the reason LVMH lost cache in China when they opened stores in lower-tier cities.
It’s part of the reason Bentley lost long-term customers when they became the car-of-choice for rappers.
And it’s part of the reason why Air New Zealand have scored a massive own goal with their most valuable customers with this billboard rolling out all across NZ.
For those who don’t know what Koru is … it’s Air New Zealand’s new Frequent Flyer Program and Koru Black is their highest tier.
To be fair to Air NZ, Koru is genuinely one of the best frequent flyer programs of any airline in the World … so with that in mind, I get why they think offering the public the opportunity to get more points to get closer to ‘black status’ is appealing.
However, it isn’t for the fuckers who already have achieved that status.
For them, they’ll not only see it as Air NZ allowing more people to be part of their club’, they’ll see it as Air NZ allowing ‘lesser people’ to be part of it given they ‘won’ their place via a promotion rather than ‘earned the right to be there’ as they will no doubt tell themselves they achieved
Is that bollocks?
Sure, but that doesn’t mean they don’t think it, which is why one of the best bits of airline research I’ve ever read was when the wonderful David Lin – who worked for me at Wieden, and is now Mr Important at Apple – told me that ‘business class was the politest way to say ‘fuck off’ to everyone who always wanted their time or attention.
But there’s more …
Because added to this is the fact many Koru Black members feel annoyed they already have to share ‘their’ airport lounge facilities with people from other airlines who happen to hold a business class ticket – which results in situations where there’s no seats available to rest in – and you start to think Air NZ may not understand their top customers as much as they may like to think they do.
What makes it worse is that it would have been so easy to discover …
The main one being just sit in the airport lounge and listen to the conversations when it’s full.
But it seems they didn’t. Or haven’t. Because what else would explain their disastrous decision to set all ‘black tier’ customers frequent flyer points to zero when they launched Koru.
Sure, they did a u-turn on when they discovered how angry it had made customers … but they still did it, which not only undermined their launch, but left customer with a horrible taste in their mouth they’ll remember for a long time.
I mean, you’d think it would be obvious to not do that, but apparently it wasn’t – which not only suggests Air NZ put their faith in the wrong research and creative partners – not to mention are incapable of evaluating standards with an objective, global perspective – it highlights how you can have all the data in the world, but if you don’t look for, or understand, the fucked-up, hypocritical truth of your customers, you’ve got nothing.
Also see every research company who announced with the upmost confidence that Trump wasn’t going to win the Presidency in his first term … either because they were arrogant, blinkered or simply failed to understand people rarely tell you what they think, instead they tell you what they think will protect them from revealing what they really believe.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Australia, Brand, Communication Strategy, Conformity, Creativity, Culture, Emotion
John Dodds sent me this a few weeks ago:
LLMs reward clarity and credibility. Your brand language should be concise, benefit-led, and evidence-backed. In a world of agentic commerce in which AI mediates consumer choice, trust shifts from being a feeling about a brand to an attribute of its data.
Why he sent it to me is unknown, but he has been doing that for decades and I always appreciate it.
However the key for me in what he sent is specifically this bit:
‘Trust shifts from being a feeling about a brand to an attribute of its data’.
There’s 2 reasons for that:
The first is people are more likely to connect to a brand based on the quality of their understanding on who they are interacting and/or engaging with [ie: the data they hold on the needs/wants/desires/loves of their audience].
Second is it’s pretty much always been the case.
It’s why there’s brands people know and there’s brands people go out of their way to have in their life.
It’s also why there’s arguably been a reduction in the amount of brands that people ‘love’ – probably because instead of focusing on who they are, who they’re for and what the culture around their category is doing or care about, they’ve fallen for the lowest common denominator, paint-by-numbers, repeat-for-every-category-and-audience, self-interest, outsourced-for-profit schtick of ‘guru’s’ who have never built, worked for or created communication for brands that people adore and care deeply about.
Or said another way …
Here’s another example of someone championing ‘new’, without realizing they’re just rehashing the old. Probably because they don’t know it, understand it or know what to do with it to make it magical rather than just even more functional.
The old adage I always return to is this:
If you want people to give a shit about you, maybe start by giving a shit about them.
Filed under: 2026, A Bit Of Inspiration, Colenso, Colleagues, Confidence, Conformity, Respect, Si Vicars, Wieden+Kennedy
One of the most overused words in advertising is ‘confidence’.
It’s a characteristic that tends to fail in 2 key ways:
First, it tends to represent who the brand wishes was their customer, rather than who is.
Second, too often its presented in superficial, contrived and over-the-top ways … as if the brand is scared their audience won’t be able to tell what they’re trying to convey unless overt.
Thirdly, a lot of the time it ends up reeking of a brand insecure in who they are and what they believe.
The result of which is that the work often ends up bring a repellent to audiences, rather than a beacon.
There’s an obvious reason for this and that’s real confidence is expressed – and felt – in the small stuff, not the big, which is why one of the best true expressions of confidence was this brilliant Southern Comfort spot from WKNY back in 2012.
I still remember seeing it for the first time.
I was visiting WK Amsterdam and Martin Weigel showed it to me.
Didn’t need any explanation.
Didn’t need over-the-top behaviour.
Didn’t even need any bloody words.
Confidence oozed out of every moment, by nature of it not trying to.
Now, I appreciate being half Italian, I saw these men on the beaches of Pescara, every year that I was growing up – so it could be argued I was ‘pretuned’ to comprehension. But truth be told, whether you’re from Italy or Iceland … everyone got it.
Not just intellectually, but emotionally.
And that line, ‘Whatever’s Comfortable’.
How good was that? The embodiment of confidence, without having to say it.
Just a way to acknowledge some people are at ease with who they are. That they have a belief in who they are. That they are accepting of who they are, regardless of comparison or competition.
No delusion.
No arrogance.
Just a comfort in who you are, rather than pretending to be who you’re not.
And frankly, there hasn’t been anything that has come close to that piece of work since that piece of work, because all I see these days is either more blatant try-hard shit – which reveals a brands lack of confidence, rather than an abundance of it – or manosphere, toxic bullshit.
That was until recently …
The photo above is Simon Vicars, our CCO – also known as the nicest man in advertising.
He is the living proof that ‘good guys’ don’t always come last. He is also proof that being a good human doesn’t mean you’re not talented. Because he is, sickeningly so.
But as I wrote before, he is also a bit of a cheeky bastard. Never with malice, but with a slight mischievousness that somehow, you can’t help finding endearing.
And how does he pull this off?
Well, because he may be the most confident man since the Southern Comfort man.
Sure, he’s whiter than the Dulux Dog.
Sure, he has a nose that Concord would be jealous of. [and I’m hardly one to talk!]
Sure, he has the upper torso you would imagine a slight gust of wind could knock over.
But this just proves my point because how else can you explain him going to a pub [with me] to interview a potential job candidate … asking if they were hungry [it was lunchtime to be fair] and despite them and me saying ‘no’, goes ahead and orders a fucking massive Chicken Parm before proceeding to scoff it down in front of both of us.
To be fair, he looked a bit sheepish as this photo captures – but he still did it – and frankly, it may be one of the most incredible and understated acts of confidence I’ve ever seen.
Partly because he is so nice that I know he did it because he was starving with hunger and was going to be starved of time. Partly because I got a kick of staying quiet at different moments of the interview so I could watch him have to swallow massive pieces of chicken so he would be able to respond to the questions with no massive pause. And partly because – where so many would deny their truth so that they ‘fitted in’ – he did what was good, right and comfortable for him … which, when you come to think of it, is one of the greatest acts of self-respect and transparency you could receive from someone.
So here’s to Si Vicars. He may not look it, but he may be the most confident man in the World.
Filed under: 2026, A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Comment, Complicity, Confidence, Conformity, Consultants, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Differentiation, Experience, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Relationships, Relevance, Retail, Technology
I was going through some old photos when I saw this …
That’s right, Banana Republic used the pandemic as an opportunity to shame people who were struggling to work from home – while trying to also care for the people in their home, including having to teach their kids their schoolwork – to look better for their work calls.
Oh I know some people will say this was ‘good marketing’ … seizing an opportunity to drive their business at a time where commerce was expected to suffer [when we know the opposite was true] … but it’s not, if anything it’s ambulance-chasing marketing. Where the only consideration is ‘can I make money out of this person, regardless of their situation.
And that’s the thing between good and shit marketing … the knowledge that just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.
The fact they literally call these scarves ‘video chat accessories’ is so overt it’s breath-taking.
And sickening.
But to be fair, they weren’t the only one adopting this ‘strategy’.
I remember a UK-based kitchen company that suggested you should go thousands into debt to have your kitchen ‘updated’ so you can do your future work calls in a room that presented you in a more ‘professional, wealthy, successful light’.
The big problem with a lot of our industry is our disregard for customers.
Actually that’s wrong … it’s our ability to pretend we’re doing everything for our customers.
The reality is though many companies don’t know who their customers are or even what industry they’re in … they simply believe that people – all people – are lining up to buy whatever it is they want to sell, whenever they tell people about it.
I once worked at a place that was obsessed with D2C – direct to consumer.
They were heavily pushing ALL their clients to follow suit … claiming it was what customers wanted, how a modern brand behaved, where retail was heading.
And, to be fair, there was a lot of that happening at the time and they were well placed to leverage it … but I, and more than a few others, weren’t convinced. Mainly because the brands who did it well were very clear on who they were, what they did, who they were for and how long they intended to be around whereas they were trying to force it on organizations who were the antithesis of this. Worse, they were the antithesis of this but were being told that didn’t matter … it was what the future was all about.
I kept bringing this up … highlighting this was not a blanket approach for all and there were serious implications on the brand, customers and category over time. Or at the very least, we shouldn’t be advocating clients let go of all they have done and built and stand-for just so they can exploit a new opportunity for cash.
And I was told I was a dinosaur.
Harking back to a time that was no longer relevant.
That technology was changing everything and they were at the forefront of it.
And while they were a good company, they were lost in their own ego and greed … refusing to look beyond the world they had created, because it was a world that positioned them as visionary rather than acknowledging this was a temporary wave where they were well equipped to benefit from.
Don’t get me wrong, we have to continually innovate.
We have to identify the possibilities, opportunities and waves of change.
But it only works if you know who you are, what you do, who you are for and what they value and want.
It also needs self-awareness, objectivity, honesty and transparency and the realization everything and everyone evolves – regardless what you wish people did.
Which may explain why many of the clients they had, are now brands who are a case-study for what not to do.
A warning that when you think the things that define you, guide you and build you are superfluous, then you can – and probably will – fall for everything.
Just ask Wework.
And Nike.
And The Line.
There’s a big difference between making money and building a business. Sadly, today, few seem to care about what they can become, just what they can get now.
Filed under: 2024, A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Clients, Collaboration, Comment, Complicity, Conformity, Consultants, Culture, Marketing, Marketing Fail, New Zealand, Outdoor, Planes, Professionalism, Research, Strategy
So yesterday I wrote a post about Air New Zealand’s frequent flyer ‘air points’ promotion.
I pointed out how I don’t think they understand the real needs, wants and motivations of their top tier passengers and that it doesn’t matter how much data you have, if you don’t understand what it’s really saying, it’s useless.
Worse … it’s commercially dangerous.
Especially if you choose to ignore 2 consistent ‘hidden’ traits of humans:
1. All of us have areas of hypocrisy.
2. Most people tell you what they think will help protect their beliefs rather than reveal them.
I ended the post asking how the hell could they get so many key elements wrong for such an important relaunch … suggesting the research company they used looks like they spent too much time with the data and not enough – if any – with actual customers.
So imagine my surprise – and delight – when last night, I received this:
Not sure this is the best ‘ad’ for Kantor.
Or the research industry, to be honest.
And just before I get any hate, I have a lot of time and respect for the research industry – when it’s does properly and well. But frankly, we’re witnessing far too many focusing their efforts on how to ‘optimise’ their efficiency [read: using AI and bots] and redefine their position [read: being consultants rather than informants] the the work coming out ends up – ironically – making us ask more questions than have greater understanding.
Don’t get me wrong, I know research is not perfect – what the hell is?
I also appreciate that any research is better than none.
However when companies act like they – and only they – have all the answers, then they better be OK with owning their mistakes … because if they don’t, they’re no longer valuable to business, they’re a danger to it.
I get we live in a time of corporate hutzpah – where no one must show any weakness or vulnerability – but what that also means is we’re living in a time of Emperor’s New Clothes and we all know how that turned out.