Filed under: Advertising, Attitude & Aptitude, Business, Corporate Evil, Creativity, Culture, Embarrassing Moments, Finance, Grifting, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Money, Scam
Scams.
They’re bloody everywhere.
SMS. Email. People knocking on the door.
There seems to be three types …
The hopeful … which is sending the same thing to tons of people and see if it will stick.
The too-good-to-be-true … which is promising untold riches for a fraction of investment.
And the invisible … where it has been so well planned, you may not realise it’s happened until its happened.
While I understand how the latter works – having once been a victim of it – it’s amazing how often the first 2 do.
Part of that can be down to blinkered greed.
The belief we’re all ‘special’ and while friends may think it’s a scam, they stick with it as it reinforces what they’ve aways felt about themselves.
Until it doesn’t.
The other group are people who are desperate – whether financially or lonely – so they take part in a desperate bid to escape their own personal hell.
So while its easy to laugh at people who we think have been stupid, the reality is there are always mitigating circumstances that add to the scammers success.
And nothing shows how successful the crims are by their exaggeration. Look at this …
For just NZ$400, you can get a ‘guaranteed’ NZ$7800 every month.
EVERY MONTH … where do I sign?
But the scammers aren’t completely stupid, so they’ve added a picture of Elon Musk.
Now whether that’s because he’s super rich or is OK with losing billions – as demonstrated with Twitter – is anyone’s guess, but given they’ve bought a ton of ads all over Facebook and other social media channels means they think it makes what is one of the most ridiculous financial investment promises in history, legitimate.
And you know what, it seems it has … which is a great reminder for the marketing community that while customers are often much smarter than we give them credit for, they rarely adopt the logic we like to think/claim they do because ultimately – and here’s the big reminder – they buy for what they’ve need, not what we want them to need.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Brand, Brand Suicide, Comment, Communication Strategy, Confidence, Consultants, Corporate Evil, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Cunning, Devious Strategy, Effectiveness, Fake Attitude, Grifting, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Planners, Planners Making A Complete Tit Of Themselves And Bless, Planning, Relevance, Scam, Strategy
I’m all for people expressing their opinion.
I’m all for people being excited about things they see as having great possibilities.
I’m all for people trying to find new ways to evolve, grow and make money.
But come on …
It’s getting to the point where Linkedin should be renamed Disneyland given how much fiction and fantasy are going on.
What’s worse is among all the ‘consultants’ and ‘new business development people’ claiming expertise, are a bunch of strategists.
Now I know as a discipline we think we have the answer to everything … but we don’t.
Fuck, even the people who are developing the technology, don’t.
But what bothers me is the reason behind why so many people are claiming expertise.
OK, so I know some have a real understanding of the technology and its possible implications. And in that, I include certain strategists – we all know who those brilliant people are.
And I also appreciate some mistakenly believe that because they’ve used ChatGPT, they think they now know everything about the technology.
But others – and this is potentially the majority of them – are doing it because they see it as a chance to personally gain from it.
In essence, their perspective is that as long as a subject matter is highly topical and others – especially companies – don’t know about it, then they can profit from it because they can say anything because no one will know enough to tell them they’re wrong.
You can tell who this group are because they’re the one’s who are either the loudest to declare their knowledge or the first to say they had identified the trend … despite never doing anything with their ‘expertise’ or because of their ‘vision’.
Putting aside how this sort of behaviour can damage the reputation of real experts, disciplines and entire industries … the issue I have is how it is often justified as hustle culture.
I’ve written my issue with hustle culture in the past, but the fact is, this isn’t hustling … it’s grifting and the impact of it is not just damaging people and companies, but it killing the potential of technology before it has a chance to find it’s real possibility.
I appreciate this is quite a heavy post from what was just a piss-take image of Homer … but the best comedy is always based on a truth we often like to deny.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Apathy, Attitude & Aptitude, Authenticity, Brand Suicide, Business, Communication Strategy, Confidence, Content, Context, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Distinction, Education, Effectiveness, Experience, Facebook, Fake Attitude, Honesty, Innovation, Management, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Money, New Product Mentalness, Perspective, Planners, Relevance, Resonance, Scam, Social Media, Standards, Technology
After the amazing drama of yesterday, I need to calm things down.
Not for you, but for me … because my heart can’t take nerves like that.
And yet it’s going to have to do just that in a little over a week.
Bloody hell.
So to slow things down, let me take you back in time …
Back in 1985, the band Dire Straits launched a song called Money For Nothing.
It became famous for a whole host of reasons.
It was the first song of theirs that actually sounded slightly modern.
It had ‘modern’ day references in the lyrics.
It had Sting – from The Police – singing on it.
It had this video …
Did you watch it?
You didn’t did you?
You lazy bastards …
Well, to get back to the point of this post, here’s a screen grab from it …
Now while that image may not strike you as cutting edge, back in 1985, it was revolutionary.
Digital characters living in a digital world, where their universe was a blend of normality and possibility.
Hang on, does that sound like something else?
Something that a huge amount of the tech and marketing industry have been wetting their pants over?
Something that sounds suspiciously close to this …
Did you watch this?
You didn’t did you?
You über-lazy assholes …
Well, to get back to the point of this post, here’s a screen grab from it …
Yep.
Yep it does.
A music video from 1985 by the most snooze-rock band ever formed, not only communicated the metaverse, it did it in a style pretty close to what Facebook and every other brand have shown as ‘the standard’.
How terrifyingly embarrassing is that?
All these hip, technologists, futurists and strategists trying to look like they’re on the edge of culture creation and all the bollocks they’re banging on about was expressed by bloody Dire Straits 37 years earlier.
THIRTY SEVEN YEARS.
Hahahahahahahahaha.
I mean … when that Zuck video first broke, I wrote a post about how it was missing the point by showing things we can already do, but now – thanks to errrrrm, Dire Straits, I realise it was even worse than I imagined.
Don’t get me wrong, I believe technology and – the metaverse, even though what is being celebrated as it, isn’t what it is – will have the possibility to make a huge, positive difference to humanity. Eventually.
But making – and lauding – a film and idea that looks awfully similar to a bloody 1985 music video isn’t doing them any favours. If anything, it shows how much of this industry is filled with individuals who crave attention or adoration or just desperately seek relevance.
Not helped when you learn that, unsurprisingly, the main reason Zuck is so into the Metaverse is not for changing the world but upping his bank account.
Given how much Facebook tried to label Apple as ‘anti-business’ for the amount they charged creators and partners – which is a lot less than 47.5% – it makes the whole Meta situation even more laughable.
Don’t get me wrong, I know the new is often misunderstood.
And new technology should not be judged by the standards of established technology.
But when the ‘icons and industry leaders’ stand on soapboxes and stages to promote the future in a similar way that Dire Straits brought to the World almost 4 decades ago … it’s only fair to question if these people care about the future or simply their own career image.
Even though, sadly, we keep seeing hyping can get better career growth, than grafting.
If the Metaverse could fix that, then maybe we’d all sign up.
Then again …
Filed under: Advertising, America, Apathy, Attitude & Aptitude, Authenticity, Brand Suicide, Comment, Communication Strategy, Confidence, Corporate Evil, Crap Campaigns In History, Crap Marketing Ideas From History!, Crap Products In History, Creativity, Culture, Devious Strategy, Honesty, Influencers, Legend, Management, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Premium, Relevance, Resonance, Scam
Recently we’ve been seeing a lot of collabs between brands and artists.
I don’t mean bullshit influencer social content, but proper collaboration in terms of product creation … albeit that it often ends up being just ‘logo swapping’.
Of course that is still marketing, but it’s a bit more effort than a celebrity just fronting a TV or print campaign.
Or is it?
You see, while the people at the brand all think they’re going to become cool and rich by associating with someone influential with millions of fans, the reality is somewhat difference.
Maybe once upon a time that was always the case … and when it’s done right it can absolutely still be the case … but for a lot of the bullshit collabs we’re seeing being pimped out by certain brands [you all know the ones, especially the tech bros desperately trying to look like they’re part of youth culture even though all they are is a fucking ‘productivity tool”], they don’t understand the artist and their fans have a very different view of the ‘partnership’.
To them, the association is not an act of endorsement.
Nor does it make the brand partner cool.
And it absolutely won’t define their loyalty.
The reality is the association is nothing more than a ‘get rich quick’ scheme for the artist and their fans love them for it.
Unlike previous generations, they don’t see it as an act of selling out.
In fact it couldn’t be more opposite because they see it as an act of awesome.
Taking millions off a brand for a moment in their day.
Something that will be forgotten as soon as it’s done.
A novelty for the fans to buy but not to keep buying.
Basically, playing the corporations at their own game but they end up the real winner.
That’s success right there.
Not that most brands understand that.
Most of them still think they’re playing the artist. That money means they can get whatever they want out of them. Why wouldn’t they, brands have been using, abusing and stealing from artists for decades.
But it’s very different now.
Years ago, I was working with a very famous brand who did a collab with a very cool, up and coming rapper.
The brand were beside themselves because they thought this association was going to change their fortune forever.
On set, the artist was a bit of a nightmare – not saying or doing anything the brand wanted them to do – in fact they even used their social channels to tell their fans they weren’t doing this because they loved the brand, but because they were getting big money.
Unsurprisingly, the brand team were not very happy about that, but they reasoned that the association would still be worth it for them in terms of awareness and sales.
And maybe it was … but the real winner was the artist because their fans thought what they’d done was even more cool.
Talking shit about the very people who had hired them and still getting paid millions upon millions for a few hours work.
That’s power.
That’s influence
That’s a life goal we should all have.
So while collabs can be cool when done for the right reasons and the right ways, many brands need to understand that while – at best – they may have a boost to their short-term profits, the cool doesn’t actually rub off on them. In fact, if anything, their desperate desire to look cool to millions has just made them the laughing stock to the very millions they wanted to appeal too.
Because while they think they’re hustling the artist, the artist and their fans are hustling them.
Welcome to the new definition of power.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Attitude & Aptitude, Brand Suicide, Crap Campaigns In History, Crap Marketing Ideas From History!, Crap Products In History, Embarrassing Moments, Fake Attitude, Scam
Ladies and gentlemen.
Boys and girls.
We have reached ‘peak hipster’ …
A monocle.
A bloody monocle.
It was bad enough when people started wearing glasses without lenses in but this … THIS!!!
And they say ‘splendid clear reading vision, when you need it’
What the hell does that even mean?
Splendid clear reading vision.
How different is that from clear reading vision.
And sure you need that all the bloody time …
I cannot tell you how angry this has made me and it’s only because they had the self awareness to add the word ‘madness’ to their website that I won’t turn up to their store with a weapon, which – given the period of time they are trying to bring back – would probably be pistols at dawn.