Filed under: Attitude & Aptitude, Brand Suicide, Consultants, Corporate Evil, Crap Marketing Ideas From History!, Culture, Embarrassing Moments, Marketing, Marketing Fail
Sorry Lee, but seriously … WTF?
You need to tell Mr B to ditch the management consultants and get people who actually know the soul of the brand.
Or at the very least, people who will say, “this is a terrible idea”.
I can’t even work out who this is for …
Most young people won’t know who the fuck the Pistols were.
And the people who do know are self aware enough to know how tragic this makes them look.
I know the history between the two brands but …. nooooooooooooo.
No, no, no, no, no.
And it is underpinned by Mastercard.
The ‘priceless’ people.
How can you all get it so wrong?
Well, I know how … but come on, even Stevie Wonder can see how bad an idea this is.
I appreciate you will have personally had nothing to do with it, but christ on a bike.
I bet you’re grateful comments are still turned off? Hahaha.
I’m genuinely so upset about this, but I am also willing to sort you out. For a price, hahaha.
Filed under: Attitude & Aptitude, Comment, Innovation, Insight, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Technology
A few weeks ago, a client of mine at Google posted this on Linkedin …
Fortunately, due to its lack of swearing and use of bullshit terms like Gen-Z – not to mention the fact it was more professional than I’ve ever been in my whole life – it was pretty obvious no one was going to mistake this for me.
Which means my job – whatever it is I do – is safe.
For now.
And I say now because it’s only going to get better.
That should be obvious, but the amount of people who judge new ideas by the standards of established ideas is insane.
Of course that doesn’t mean every new idea is going to be successful, but it does mean every new idea has more places to grow and go than established ideas and for that alone, we should keep an open mind rather than – as this industry loves to do – make grand declarations about the impending doom of anything we don’t understand, don’t like and/or don’t want it to destroy what you’ve spent years trying to build for yourself.
Filed under: Advertising, Apathy, Attitude & Aptitude, Brand, Business, Comment, Communication Strategy, Consultants, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Distinction, Emotion, Imagination, Management, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Perspective, Planning, Point Of View, Relationships, Relevance, Resonance, Respect, Strategy
Don’t get me wrong, commercial creativity has a job to do.
It needs to create the cultural conditions for people to think/act in ways that benefit your client.
What ‘benefit’ means is both open to debate and individual contexts and needs.
But here’s where the problem lies.
Because for many companies, it’s no longer about creating the cultural conditions … it’s explaining EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANT PEOPLE TO THINK, SEE AND DO.
What they think is ‘advertising’ is delusional dictator-ing. If dictatoring is a word.
And there’s 2 reasons why it’s delusional …
The first is people do what is in their best interests, not a companies. And so unless a company lets go of their fragile ego and God-complex, they’re never going to understand or resonate with their audience. Resulting in either being ignored, or forever ever having a utility style relationship.
The second is when your only focus is telling people what you want them to think, see and do … you often discover it’s exactly the same as what everybody else in your category wants people to think, see and do.
So you end up with this.
Brand gets a lot of stick these days.
Its whole role and value is being questioned.
But the irony is the problem isn’t with the value of brand, but the understanding of what some people think a brand is.
Because a brand isn’t contrived wrapping paper placed around a functional product feature … it’s an idea that is as distinctive for how it see’s the world as it appears in it.
That some people will find this shocking not only explains why we are subjected to such ugly noise day after day after day, but how little companies/venture capitalists/consultancies understand, respect and value culture.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Apathy, Attitude & Aptitude, Authenticity, Black Lives Matter, Brand, Communication Strategy, Corporate Evil, Crap Marketing Ideas From History!, Creativity, Culture, Disney, Embarrassing Moments, Experience, Inclusion, Individuality, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Packaging, Perspective, Relevance, Resonance, Respect
Good news. Bad news.
Good news: Given I had yesterday off, that means you only have 4 days of this blog to deal with. Seriously, this is the slowest ‘easing you back into my rubbish’ that I may have ever done. What a Saint.
Bad news: There’s no more holidays for ages so prepare for a lot of it. That is if anyone reads this any more. Or if anyone read it, more like. Especially given the lack of comments which was – let’s admit it – the only reason people popped along. Damnit.
Anyway, I thought I had posted this a while back only to discover it was still in my ‘to post file’. The good news is 99.96% of my posts fail to hit the ‘topical sweet spot’ so I can still post it and no one will bat an eyelid.
I have a strange relationship with the Disney organisation.
I appreciate their history.
I appreciate their creativity.
I appreciate their craft and film making.
But they can also be a bunch of assholes.
This is not just based on the 3 years of weird shit – good and bad – I experienced with them when we were launching their park in Shanghai at Wieden [only for them to take the business off us at the last moment and hand it to Ogilvy simply because as the first park in the digital age – we wanted to use digital to bring the story of the characters journey to China to life] but because they have a history of putting their name to anything if they’ll get paid for it.
Now I have to admit they’re very successful at doing that … but it just reinforces there’s two groups the organisation. The craftspeople and the greedy exploiters.
OK, that’s like every company I suppose, but they just don’t even try to hide it … which is almost impressive if it didn’t rob you of the hope of someone good to believe in.
I know … I’m a sentimental idiot.
So you can imagine how pleasantly surprised I was with how Disney decided to handle the merchandise for Black Panther Wakanda.
Rather than sell the rights to Kmart to be shoved on as many t-shirts as possible, they partnered with Actively Black.
Actively Black is a community-first, black owned and run company committed to advancing representation of Black creatives, designers, and brands and they actively invest in the health and wellness of Black communities worldwide.
They’re an amazing organisation and so it’s no surprise the merchandise proceeds would be put towards educational programs and resources that promote physical, mental and emotional health, HBCU athletics, social justice initiatives and DEI advocacy.
It was a great move, especially given the importance and significance of Black Panther in the Black and African American community. Not to mention honouring the tragic loss of Chadwick Boseman.
It seemed Disney understood that of all the characters in the Marvel universe, this was one that had an even more significant role and position in culture and should be treated as such.
I say ‘seemed’ because then I saw this …
And to give you more details, there’s this …
What the absolute fuck?
A screwdriver set.
A FUCKING SCREWDRIVER SET!
I know Disney have form pimping their icons out, but a Kmart screwdriver set?
All that good will.
All that consideration.
All that sense they actually understood.
Let’s hope the reason is as my friend John stated:
“Calm down Rob … don’t you get that you need some serious power tools to dismantle the capitalist white supremacist patriarchy”.
We all know it isn’t.
But I wish it was.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Australia, Brand Suicide, Comment, Corporate Evil, Embarrassing Moments, England, Influencers, Management, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Perspective, Positioning, Pretentious Rubbish, Revenge, Social Divide, Social Media
The media – and marketing – have perpetuated all manner of stereotypes over the years.
They spend enormous amounts of time and money painting psychological beliefs into society so they can profit from others shortcomings or vulnerabilities.
They don’t care if it destroys lives, to them that’s just canon fodder in the quest of riches, so everything is justifiable.
Which explains why we see so many things being labelled by the media and marketing industries … because it’s the perfect way to achieve mass social psychological manipulation.
You name it and they’ll have given a name to it.
Superfast.
Superfoods.
Superhair.
Supersoup
They’ll use a label to sell anything … from kale to self-help books to gender roles.
And while that is a fucking horrible way to behave, there is one thing that is pretty impressive and that’s their ability to not just never stop doing it … but to never stop inventing new bullshit labels to fuck with people.
Take a look at this …
A CEO body?
A fucking CEO body?
What does that even mean?
Do all CEO’s share a particular physical format?
I mean, I know Elon and Jeff went from dweeb to muscle mountains, but I’ve still met a bunch of CEO’s with very different body shapes to them.
Also, what sort of CEO are they talking about?
A CEO of a big company? A start-up company? A fast-food company?
Do they lead 3 employees or 33,000 employees?
Are they heading up a profitable company or a crypto disaster?
Do they write thought leader pieces on Linkedin or are they living in a social media blackhole?
And why are you only showing a man?
A white man.
Is it because you think only white men can become a CEO?
Have you inadvertently just explained the real reason behind corporate racism, prejudice and the glass ceiling all in one go?
And while I’m at it, can you explain what you mean by the term ‘midlife’ in your headline?
What is that?
Is it a specific number?
Is it 30?
What about 40?
I bet it’s a mid-number like 45 or something … just to mess with us.
Come on, don’t keep it to yourself. Is there a standard ‘midlife’ no one told me about.
You can tell me. I know at 52 I’ve likely passed it, but I’d still like to know.
Finally – and I really don’t want to be picky here – but why are you telling everyone what the 16 foods ALL men should be eating are?.
Is it CEO food?
Don’t CEO’s eat fancy and expensive stuff?
And if all men eat it, does that mean all men will become CEO’s?
How will that happen? Are there enough CEO jobs to go round to make that happen?
And what about the women who are CEO’s? Do they eat that food as well? Is that how they got to the top … they ate like a man and had a body like a man?
I’m so confused.
In fact the only thing that’s clear to me is how you’re using marketing labelling bullshit to add even more expectation and judgement on people’s lives just so you can attempt to profit even more from making society question how they are supposed to look and live.
All this coming from The Times newspaper.
The fucking Times!!!
Once the pinnacle of journalism and standards, now a peddler of utter horseshit.
Even more so when you think what their CEO’s body is like …
Maybe I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure no one would want to look like that, let alone be like that.
And if The Times think they do, it may help explain why their readership keeps falling.
Dickheads.
Oh I really enjoyed writing that.