Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Attitude & Aptitude, Authenticity, Brand, Confidence, Craft, Creativity, Culture, Distinction, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Music, Perspective, Positioning, Purpose, Relevance, Resonance, Standards, Status
I recently saw the above photo and immediately fell in love with it.
Not because it’s slightly bonkers – but it helps – but because I love the commitment of them.
Now I have no idea if they were booked to appear with that look.
I have no idea if they’re a real band, though I know ‘rock bands that play kids parties’ exist because the wonderful show Z Rock was based on one. [In fact the actors in the show, were the actual band]
And I don’t know if the music they play reflects how they look.
But I love it.
I love every bit of it.
Because rather than pander, they’ve committed.
Committed to who they are.
Committed to what they believe.
Committed to what they want to do.
There’s not enough of that. Oh we hear so many brands – and bands – talk about their ‘purpose’, but that’s just a PR headline because their actions often demonstrate the only thing they are committed to is whatever is needed to make money.
There is more authenticity in this trio of rock crazies than 99% of the companies who profess to be driven by their purpose.
But here’s the thing, commitment is about inconvenience.
Doing – or not doing – the things that reflect your belief.
Of course there are implications to that …
But while others may be more successful or richer, there is one thing you’ll have they won’t …
The ability to sleep at night.
And given we are also seeing more and more people choosing those who are committed to their belief, regardless of inconvenience, there’s a chance you could be more successful and richer too.
You can’t fake commitment.
You can’t be temporarily interested in it.
You can’t use it as a marketing platform.
Because commitment shows up in what you say, what you do and how you do it ALL THE TIME IN EVERY WAY.
Commitment achieves things interested can’t.
Commitment gives you standards, interested can’t even see.
Commitment pushes possibilities, interested will never understand.
Commitment wants you to succeed in ways interested will never get close to.
That’s the difference between the imposter purpose pedlars and the real deal.
It’s not something different every 12 months.
It’s not simply expressed through their marketing.
It’s not only doing things if you can make money from it.
It’s not changing direction when things don’t go exactly as planned.
Of course, that doesn’t mean people will only choose the committed. The fact is humans are all hypocritical beasts who like their moments of easy and cheap. However, in this superficial, short-cut, high-cost, hype world … commitment has a way of standing out in ways they will never even understand.
Which is why I love the people in this photo more than I do other kids entertainers.
Not because those other entertainers don’t have talent or a right to make a living … but because this trio of rock band musicians know who they are rather than are selling themselves as whoever others want them to be.
In a world where you don’t know who you can rely on, I say choose those who are committed, not interested.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Authenticity, Brand, Brand Suicide, Confidence, Creative Brief, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Differentiation, Education, Effectiveness, Emotion, Empathy, EvilGenius, Fake Attitude, Fulfillment, Honesty, Insight, Loyalty, Management, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Perspective, Planners, Planning, Point Of View, Positioning, Purpose, Relevance, Resonance, Strategy, Wieden+Kennedy
Tone of voice has always made me smile.
A list of cliched terms that somehow supposedly captures the distinctive characteristics of a brand, despite using 90% of the same language.
Fun … but aspirational.
Premium … but approachable.
Smart.
Human.
Innovative.
Blah … blah … blah …
What ends up happening is two things.
1 It ends up all coming down to a ‘look’.
2 It ends up with some people ‘getting the brand’ but never being able to articulate what it is beyond those same cliched words every brand uses.
That’s why I loved when Dan Wieden said …
Brand voice was given a huge amount of focus and time at Wieden.
It wasn’t some scribbled words shoved on a brief at the last second that everyone ignored … it was really delving into the soul of the brand.
How it looked at the world.
The Values and beliefs.
It’s point of view.
Oh, I get it, that sounds as pretentious as fuck doesn’t it … but that’s why you can tell a NIKE spot within 1/10th of a second … regardless of the sport, the audience, the language it’s in, the country it represents or even the style of ad.
That’s right.
They get brand attribution and can be as random as fuck.
And before you say, “oh, but that’s just NIKE” … Wieden [who are/were the undisputed champions of this] did the same thing for Honda, P&G, Chrysler, Converse and any number of totally desperate brands.
The reality is, when you really invest in getting the brand voice right – both from an agency and client perspective – it becomes something far more than a look or a tone, it’s a specific and individual feeling.
And that’s why I find this obsessive conversation about ‘brand attribution’ so amusing.
Oh I get it, it’s important.
But the simplest way to get it is to simply do something interesting.
An expression of how you see the World without constraint.
A point of view others may view as provocative but actually is born from your truth.
That’s it.
It’s not hard and you’ll get attribution automatically.
And not just any attribution … but the sort that has short and long-term commercial value rather than begrudged and meaningless familiarity.
However so many brands – and the brilliant Mark Ritson has to take a lot of the blame for this – think attribution is built on the repetition of brand assets.
And while there’s some truth to that … the difference is when ‘brand assets’ ARE the idea rather than born from it, then you’re not building a brand or creating change, you’re literally investing in complicity and invisibility.
Especially if those brand assets are so bland and generalistic that to not make any impact in the real world whatsoever.
Here’s an uncomfortable truth …
You can’t have commercially advantageous attribution and be traditional at the same time.
Oh I know there’s a lot of agencies and consultancies who say you can, but they’re literally spouting bullshit.
I’ll tell you something else …
If you’re relying on opening logos, watermarks or number of brand name mentions per execution to ensure your work is being attributed to your brand … then you’re not just likely to be showing your neediness and desperation, you’re probably admitting that you’re not saying or doing something that is worthy of making people care.
In fact the only thing worse is if you hire a ‘celebrity’ to front your campaign, then have to label who they are because no one knows them.
Sorry.
Now I appreciate this sort of approach may get you a ‘Mini MBA’ from the Mark Ritson school of marketing … and it may help with internal consistency and familiarity … but I can assure you that it won’t get you a sustainably disproportionate commercially advantageous position in your category, let alone culture.
And maybe that’s fine, and that’s OK. But if it is, then own it … rather than put out press releases announcing your leadership position in the market when really what you’ve done is dictate the blandification of everything you say or do because your marketing strategy is based more on ‘blending in, than standing out’.
And nothing shows this more than tone of voice.
An obsessive focus of playing to what you think people want rather than who you are.
It’s why I always find it interesting to hear how planners approach what a brand stands for.
So many talk a good game of rigor but play a terrible game of honesty.
Spending weeks undertaking research and holding ‘stakeholder’ interviews to learn who the brand is – or wants to be – rather than going into the vaults and understanding not only why they were actually founded … but the quirks of decision they made along the way.
Don’t get me wrong, research and interviews have a place, but for me, learning about a brand at the start of life is one of the most valuable things you can do because it reveals the most pure version of themselves. Or naïve.
No contrived brand purpose … not ‘white space’ research charts … just a true expression of who they are and what they value.
Or wanted to be.
And when you start piecing those things together, you discover a whole new world.
Better yet, you get to a very different – and authentic place.
Oh, the things I’ve learned about companies over the years.
Not for contrived, bullshit heritage stories … but to understand the beliefs and values that actually shaped and dictated the formation and rise of the company, even if down the line it failed and/or modern day staff don’t know any of it.
There’s a reason The Colonel purposefully chose bigger tables to be in his restaurants when he started KFC. There’s a reason Honda made their own screws for their machines. There’s a reason Prudential helped widows and orphans.
It’s not hard, it just needs effort, commitment, transparency and honesty.
That’s it.
And while I could say this quick-fix, fast-turnaround, communication-over-change world we live in means good enough is good enough … the reality is for a lot of companies and agencies, they don’t think they’re sacrificing quality. They don’t think they’re sacrificing anything. They think they’re creating revolution and that’s the most fucking petrifying bit about the whole thing.
Inside the vaults lie the stories and clues that help you get to better and more interesting places. Not for the sake of it, but because of it. And when you get there, it will naturally lead you to bigger, bolder and more provocative acts and actions. And when you do that, then brands get all the attribution they could ever wish for, because by simply being your self, you will be different.
_______________________________________________________________________________
For the record, I truly respect Mark Ritson.
He’s smart, knowledgable and incredibly experienced.
He has also added a level of rigour in marketing that has been missing for a long time.
I also appreciate some of the issues I talk about are a byproduct of many other things – from talent standards, corporate expectations and plain misunderstanding.
However, when you say a course is the equivalent to gaining a Mini MBA, it not creates a false sense of ability – to to mention gets more and more brands thinking, behaving and expressing themselves in exactly the same way – it suggests the focus is on personal gain over industry improvement and you run the risk of becoming the beast you wanted to slay.
That said, he’s still much smarter than I’ll ever be.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Attitude & Aptitude, Authenticity, Brand, Content, Craft, Creativity, Culture, Digital, Effectiveness, Emotion, Empathy, Entertainment, Happiness, Honesty, Imagination, Inclusion, Innovation, Insight, Long Copy, Love, Marketing, New Zealand, Perspective, Purpose, Relevance, Research, Resonance, Sentimentality, Truth
As many of you know, I’m quite the emotional guy.
[OK, I get it … that’s an understatement. Let’s leave it there]
But while this can sometimes result in me having an ‘Elton John’ moment [™ Elton John] I have always been a huge believer in the value and importance of empathy.
Part of this is because my Mum always told me to be interested in what others are interested in, but as I got more and more into my planning career, I realised that if you can truly understand the feelings and emotions someone is experiencing, it enables you to make work that others will also feel and resonate with.
A perfect example was this work we did ages ago for Nike in China.
It had already been decided the idea for the global 2012 Olympics Campaign was going to be Greatness. The problem was that when we spoke to kids all over China, they didn’t feel they were ever able to refer to themselves as great.
They felt that was a term saved for the chosen few. The people who the government deemed as having done things that raised the entire nations profile and success.
Of course they didn’t articulate it like this … we got there by spending time with them and slowly pulling away the layers of codes and confusion so we could understand what they wanted to say rather than what was being said.
Or said another way, we wanted to understand rather than get answers.
Now I am not denying it took a while … and I also accept being an Olympic campaign, we had the time and the money to do things right. But the thing is this rigour was worth it … because not only did it turn into an incredible campaign … not only did it become China’s most successful ever campaign … it helped changed attitudes towards what greatness is and allowed millions of kids to feel they could feel valued and valuable.
This is the work.
The reason I say this is because for the past few months, I’ve been working with The University of Auckland’s Creative Thinking Project in exploring new ways to use creativity to engage and deeply resonate with audiences.
Thanks to the work of Sir Richard Faull, Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences at The University of Auckland and Nuala Gregory, a fellow of the National Institute of Creative Arts and Industries – also at The University of Auckland – we have explored and experimented with a whole host of different creative formats to identify which one can create the best conditions for connection.
The findings have been astounding.
While the vast majority of communication spend goes towards television, digital and outdoor advertising … none of these had the same impact on audiences as the power of the poem.
In fact, when poems were used as the content for television, digital and outdoor, the increase in engagement went up on average 13.3%.
THIRTEEN!
OK, I know that may not sound a lot on first impression, but when you consider last year, companies spent SEVEN HUNDRED AND FIVE BILLION DOLLARS GLOBALLY on advertising … if this can improve connection to potential audiences by 13%, then it has huge commercial opportunity.
[And by that, I mean for brands, creativity and the University of Auckland]
Now I suppose on one level, none of this should be a surprise.
Rap is a kind of poetry.
A way to communicate that’s felt as well as heard.
But while we have started to explore this, our focus has been on poetry and the results, as I detailed above, have been fascinating.
Sir Richard believes this may be heavily influenced by the challenges the World has faced over the past few years. Where the feeling of isolation of helplessness has created an yearning for any sort of emotional connection. And while TV may have their manifestos, they often come over as contrived … whereas poems have a fragility to them that enables them to better resonate and connect to audiences.
For example … of the literally thousands of poems tested, this was one that achieved one of the highest scores, despite being from an anonymous author.
Now this mountain I must climb
Feels like the world upon my shoulders
But through the clouds I see love shine
It keeps me warm as life grows colder
While it is deliberately ambiguous, it appeared to connect to audiences as they saw it as capturing the struggles they felt in life. Where there is still an expectation for progress and yet the conditions people find themselves having to deal with are increasingly harsh and difficult.
Other poems that resonated – and follow a similar theme to the previous example, except it is by contemporary poet, Ocean Vuong – include this:
And when your fears subside
And shadows still remain
I know that you can love me
When there’s no one left to blame
So never mind the darkness
We can still find a way
As well as a piece from his work entitled ‘Life’, which has a much darker theme:
Loneliness is my hiding place
Breast feeding my self
What more can I say?
I have swallowed the bitter pill
We are still working on the research but have set up an instagram that lists the poems that have tested particularly well.
I would love it if you could visit the page and let me know how the poems affect you. If they do.
Now I appreciate this leaves me open to all sorts of ridicule.
And I assure you that I am not trying to suggest poems are the future of effective advertising.
This is simply a project to see if there are techniques that allow us to better connect emotionally to audiences without necessarily needing to spend months in the field meeting endless people.
While I am part of this work, it is ultimately the property of Auckland University.
Fortunately, they have said I can promote the work because they would love to have more respondents take part. So if you are interested in discovering more – and helping see where this creative adventure could lead, can I ask you to sign up here.
That said, I would recommend you do it today … because studies have found April 1st is the optimal day to get people to sign up to ‘research’ that is actually just some 80’s song lyrics from Foreigner, Guns n’ Roses and Queen.
Have a great day. I know I will.
Filed under: Advertising, Attitude & Aptitude, Authenticity, Business, Comment, Creativity, Cunning, Death, Devious Strategy, Management, Marketing, Purpose
The industry likes to talk a lot about purpose.
The supposedly unwavering commitment to its higher purpose, even if it only turns up in marketing.
It likes to talk about agility.
The ability for a company to change focus to maximise opportunities even, if often it’s done to hide a lack of strategy.
And let’s not forget pivoting.
The ability to shift from one area of expertise to another, even if the reality is its because you need to survive rather than you are forward thinking.
Now of course, there are some companies who have purpose, agility and an ability to pivot without using it as an excuse to hide their shortcomings. Companies who have embodied and expressed all these traits, often before it became another marketing or business buzzword.
Or – in the case of pivoting – there are some companies who openly admit why they did it. That if they didn’t, they wouldn’t exist any longer. Netflix for example.
But there’s some organisations who see the writing on the wall, but ‘pivot’ to such an extent that they literally show themselves for the lying, cheating, manipulative organization they have always been.
The best example of this I’ve possibly ever seen is cancer champion – Philip Morris.
You see the tobacco company has decided that their core cash cow doesn’t have the same profitable future as it once did so have decided – to loud fanfare – to pivot.
“What to?” I hear you ask?
Hold on to your hats, because it’s a Health and Wellness company.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
No, that’s not a joke … well, it is, but they don’t mean it to be.
Yep, Phillip Morris – owners of brands including Marlboro are supposedly pivoting to a health and wellness company.
It’s the equivalent of the Trump Organisation becoming an international aid charity.
Or kids TV show, Playschool pivoting to a rival of Pornhub.
How can they say this with a straight face?
They’re even lobbying for a ban on cigarettes within 10 years.
This is worse than poacher turned keeper.
This is an attempt for death to turn doctor … conveniently ignoring all the shameful acts they undertook – and still undertake – to keep their tobacco business killing its customers.
Look I get they have to continue making money.
I get a lot of ‘health and wellness’ companies are as questionable as a cigarette company.
But come on …
Apart from their bullshit being utterly transparent and sickening … what about all the scientists and doctors they paid off, bullied and sued to keep their kill sticks in market.
Do they think they’re just going to nod and think, “hey, we won?”
Will there be a follow up to the Michael Mann movie, The Insider … where Russell Crowe spends 2 hours saying, “I was wrong, Philip Morris are lovely guys really and I forgive them for trying to crush and threaten my life.”
And that’s before we get to the scientists and doctors who work for Philip Morris who must be wondering how a company committed to tobacco can just expect them to change their focus to fixing the illnesses they helped cause in the first place.
But do you know what the sickest part of it all is?
The markets won’t care.
They won’t cast doubt or suspicion.
As long as they make money they will support them.
They’ll call them a poster child for ‘purpose’ and ‘wellbeing’.
It will see the CEO, Jacek Olczak, celebrated and revered by the business press.
It will see him earn millions from bonuses, consultancy and speaker engagements.
We’ll watch holding company CEO’s jostle for position.
We’ll see even more agencies pitching for their business.
We’ll read fawning editorial about their shift in industry magazines.
We’ll hear strategists talk about them as proof of the power of pivoting.
And it will make me hate even more people for the willingness to support hypocrisy for profit.
Philip Morris. You can say you are a health and wellness company, but we all know the only health and wellness you have ever cared about is your own bank balance.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Attitude & Aptitude, Authenticity, Comment, Corporate Evil, Fake Attitude, Purpose, Relevance, Resonance
Marketing is always trying to find a way to be ‘relevant’ to its customers.
Of course, the real reason for this is because many of them don’t care about their customers beyond what they’re spending their money on.
It’s for this reason we so much bandwagon jumping – where brands suddenly claim to care about issues they’ve never shown any interest in and, in some cases, directly contributed to the issue society is fighting against – because they need to keep that money rolling in.
It’s why we have so much ‘purpose’ being spouted in marketing decks all around the World and why so many brands appear schizophrenic as they switch their attention to whatever social issue they think will ‘optimise’ their return on illusion. I mean, purpose. Ahem.
Putting aside the fact that if a brand really was committed to their purpose, they wouldn’t be changing it in the blink of an eye … there are at least some brands who put in some effort … who actually invest some money into what they believe. However, there’s others who just look for the easiest way to lie.
What. The. Hell???
I mean, there’s greenwashing, but this isn’t greensplashing.
I particularly love how they claim to have ‘overlooked the possibility’ the naming could mislead the people.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
Nothing shows how little regard they have for their customers than using that excuse.
I mean, doing such a terribly shit thing is horrific … but using an excuse like that to ‘justify their actions’ shows how they literally don’t care.
They’re laughing at us.
They think we’re stupid.
So let’s prove them right by never buying one of their products and say we overlooked the possibility they wanted us to actually buy their shit.