Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Auckland, Brand Suicide, Crap Marketing Ideas From History!, Crap Products In History, Creativity, Dad, Experience, Imagination, New Zealand, Packaging, Perfume, Relevance, Unexpected Relevance
Over the years I’ve written a lot about scent companies – both for men and women, both good and bad. Or should I say, terrible.
And while it has been more focused on preposterous nature of their advertising – I mean, who can forget the car crash that was Gerard Butler’s ‘Man Of Tomorrow’ bollocks for Hugo Boss – I’ve covered everything from when Mont Blanc decided to go from ink to stink when Moschino thought the perfect bottle design to convey the sophistication of their scent was a detergent bottle to the absolute insanity of this.
DO NOT CLICK THAT LAST ONE IF YOU ARE AT WORK. INSTEAD GET A – ERRRRRM TASTE – OF WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT BY CLICKING HERE OR IF YOU ARE FEELING A BIT BRAVER, THEN YOU CAN CLICK HERE. BUT YOU PROBABLY STILL DON’T WANT TO DO THAT IF YOU’RE AT WORK.
Now, to be honest, nothing in the universe will ever beat that last example … but recently I did see something that wanted to give it a run for its money. Not in terms of smut, but stupid.
Now I admit, I’m not the biggest fan of the Friday 13th movies – or horror for that matter – but even if I was, I don’t know if I’d like to smell of it.
Though what the smell of it still is unknown.
Is it of corpses?
Is it of blood?
Is it of the desperation of whoever was behind this to try and make a quick buck.
On one hand, I am kinda-in-awe they did it because let’s be honest – the business case for it must be pretty niche. Plus they went all out on the packaging because it comes in a box designed to look like a VHS video tape.
However, if I can find this product in New Zealand – a place on the other side of the planet with only 5 million living here – then the peeps behind this product must have spent pretty big on it, which begs the question, WHO THE FUCK DID THEY THINK IS GOING TO BUY IT?
Well, according to the literature, it’s potential serial killers who think murder is fun. I quote:
Warner Bros Horror Friday The 13th Eau de Toilette is a fun and fearless scent that allows you to discover the safe deeper inner you. Comes boxed in a VHS to bring you back memories as well as scents. Perfect for any special occasion.
And they have the audacity to say it’s ‘perfect for any special occasion’.
Maybe it is if your special occasion is the homocidal murder of people at a kids camp, but for any other occasion, I’m not so sure.
Which reminds me of something my Dad once said to me.
“If you think people on the streets are crazy, try looking at people in the boardroom”
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, America, Attitude & Aptitude, Authenticity, Brand, Brand Suicide, Comment, Communication Strategy, Context, Crap Marketing Ideas From History!, Creativity, Culture, Cunning, Design, Distinction, Diversity, ECommerce, Entertainment, Fake Attitude, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Racism, Relationships, Relevance, Resonance, Social Media, Unexpected Relevance
I’ve written a lot about the ‘hijack’ strategy.
Where a brand pushes itself into a cultural event or topic to either attempt to change the narrative or leverage the narrative.
Some brands do it brilliantly … Nike or Chrysler for example.
However some are a bloody car crash.
At its heart, the difference is simply whether your hijack ‘adds to culture’ or just ‘takes from it’ … however given this approach is now so common among brands, I have to ask whether it can even be considered ‘hijacking’ anymore when most of society expect someone to do it.
That said, it is still a powerful strategy when done right … the problem is, most brands aren’t doing that.
Case in point … social media GAP during the US election.
What the hell?
I know why they did it.
I know what they hoped would happen from it.
But all I can think about is when your own brand of clothes don’t know who they are for, you’re pretty fucked.
And that kind-of sums up GAP’s problem.
Who are they for?
It’s no surprise they are facing incredible pressure in the market these days, to the point there’s talk of them pulling out the UK altogether.
They’re not distinctive enough for people to want to pay a premium for. They’re not cheap enough for people to use them as a foundation for whatever fashion they want to express that day.
In fact, the only thing they have going for them is a collab with Kanye.
It could be amazing.
Reimagining the future of what e-commerce is and how it works.
Combining it with art, not just functionality.
Though whether it will end up making GAP’s clothing range look even older and blander is anyone’s guess.
If they want to learn how to really hijack a moment, they should look at the Four Seasons Landscaping company in Philadelphia.
This is the place where President Trump’s team recently held a press conference, mistakingly booking it thinking it was the Four Seasons hotel.
With all this global attention, they’re leveraging it by selling merch that mimics Trump’s messages.
This is real cultural hijacking.
This is done by adding to the experience rather than just taking it.
Making a landscape company a brand of culture. Albeit for a short period of time.
But let me say this, it’s still more fashionable than the stuff GAP are making right now.
You can buy it here.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Apple, Attitude & Aptitude, Audio Visual, Comment, Content, Context, Craft, Creative Brief, Creativity, Culture, Design, Emotion, Experience, Imagination, Innocence, Innovation, Insight, Marketing, Music, Planning, Presenting, Professionalism, Relevance, Resonance, Standards, The Beatles, The Kennedys, The Kennedys Shanghai, Unexpected Relevance, Wieden+Kennedy
One of the things I love about this industry is our way of re-writing rules.
I don’t mean that in terms of post-rationalisation.
I don’t mean that in terms of rebellion.
I mean it in terms of letting creativity take us to new places.
That said, I think a lot of people forget this.
Clients and colleagues.
Specifically the one’s who encourage work to go where others have gone before.
Or where the brand has previously been.
Or just killing ideas before they’ve had a chance to start to evolve.
Of course I appreciate what we do has a lot of implications on our clients business.
That to get it wrong has serious ramifications.
But – and it’s a big but – doing the same thing over and over again doesn’t move you forward.
The opposite in fact.
They know this.
We know this.
And yet I hear words like ‘optimisation’ far more than I do ‘creativity’ these days.
Now I get it, you want to get every bit of value from something that you can, but our obsession with models and processes just limits our ability to invent and move forward.
Please don’t think I’m discounting the value of experience.
There’s a lot to be said for it.
But basing the future purely on what has happened in the past – specifically your individual past – is not experience, it’s blinkered.
Case in point.
Mouldy Whopper.
Here was a campaign that was attempting to do something differently. But rather than be curious about how it would be received, industry people – the same folks who are supposed to be pushing for creativity – were violently writing it off from the beginning. And when I pointed out that no one really knew what the campaign was trying to achieve – I copped it too.
Hell, I didn’t even like it very much, but I appreciated they were doing something different and evidence showed it was getting people to talk about preservatives in food – which was a positive for BK – so at the very least there were something positive in that. But then a senior industry person challenged me – said it was only people in the bubble of adland doing that – so when I proved he was wrong, he just disappeared. Happy to throw out personal opinion but not happy to be shown it was just his personal opinion. And that was my issue, we didn’t know how it would go. We had thoughts, we had opinions but we didn’t give it the time to see how it played out and apparently, it did pretty well by a whole range of metrics.
Of course, the great irony is that when you do have a brand that believes creativity can move things forward in unexpected ways, then you get accused of your job being easy.
I can’t tell you the amount of times people said to me, “it can’t be hard working on NIKE, they love being creative”.
Of course, the people who say this have never worked on NIKE and tend to be the first to criticise anything they think is ‘too creative’.
My god, when Da Da Ding came out, the wave of, “I don’t get it”, “it’s indulgent” was amazing.
But not as amazing as the fact that a lot of the abuse came from white men not based in India.
But I digress.
I love creativity.
I use that word specifically as I see it as being much bigger than advertising.
At least in terms of where the inspiration can come from and how it can be applied.
I am in awe when I see ideas taking shape. Things I never imagined coming together in the aim of changing something rather than just communicating it.
One of my greatest joys was running The Kennedys, because I saw that in possible its purest form.
From making takeaway coffee cups into dog frisbees to re=programming Street Fighter to represent the lessons they’d learnt over the previous year … was epic.
Sure, sometimes it was scary, frustrating and painful.
Sure, there were arguments, walk-outs and moods.
But as I wrote before, great work leaves scars and while that doesn’t mean it can’t be an exciting journey to be going on, it will have many twists and turns.
Or it will if you are pushing things enough.
And that’s what this post is about, because recently I read a story about John Kosh.
John was the creative director of Apple.
Not the tech company, but The Beatles.
John Lennon loved him and at 23, he found himself art directing the cover of their iconic album, Abbey Road.
What many people fail to realise is the band name was no where on the cover.
And while John had logic behind that decision, many in the industry thought differently.
Especially at their record company, EMI.
In fact, the only reason it ended up happening is that timing was so tight that it was allowed to slip through before anyone else could stop it.
Another example of chaos creating what order can’t.
What a story eh?
And before anyone starts saying I’m wrong …
I’m not saying the decision to remove the bands name from the cover made the album successful. This was The Beatles after all – the biggest, most successful band of all time – so it was always going to sell by the bucketload. However I am saying the decision to remove the bands name from the album cover helped make it iconic … which arguably, helped make it even more successful.
Not to mention make the zebra crossing on Abbey Road one of the busiest in the World.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Audio Visual, Authenticity, Brilliant Marketing Ideas In History, China, Chinese Culture, Comment, Communication Strategy, Creativity, Culture, Emotion, Entertainment, Innovation, Insight, Legend, Marketing, R/GA, Unexpected Relevance
Another day, another post about my love of China.
So a few months ago I was there for the opening of a clients latest venture.
You should all check it out because it’s a luxury fashion mall THAT LOOKS LIKE MARS!
Literally.
It was specifically designed to feel like you are on a space station on another planet.
It features everything from luna modules to robot sheep to video screens that look like skylights that show you in outer space.
It is utterly mad and yet truly amazing.
A place that is like no other I’ve seen anywhere else in the World.
But then, without wanting to sound a corporate toadie, the client is like no other I’ve met anywhere in the World … even when I was living in China, which tends to have a lot of brilliantly ambitious folks than anywhere else I’ve lived.
I have to do a post about him soon because not only is his influence on the fashion world almost unparalleled – and I am comparing him to people like Anna Wintour in that statement, let alone the heads of Gucci, Prada and countless others – but in the time I’ve worked with him, he has taught me to look at strategy in a completely new way.
Given I’ve literally been working in this discipline for more years than you care to mention, that’s pretty amazing … so I am sure you would find him pretty fascinating too.
Anyway, as part of the project, I was interviewed about what we have been doing for him and how we have worked together.
I talked about how much I love China and how much of an honour it is for me and us to be able to go there and help with a once-in-a-lifetime project. This may sound like I was a total crawler, but the fact is it’s all genuine.
We have been allowed to influence and shape at the highest level – strategically and creatively – and that’s been amazing, especially when there have been times you’ve disagreed with some of the things they wanted to do.
That’s hard for companies to hear at the best of time, but when it’s the billionaire founder of an international fashion group, that’s a whole other level of sensitivity and yet he has been nothing but open to us because he knows we’re not doing it for any other reason than wanting him to win better.
And when you’re talking about creating Mars on earth, ‘winning better’ is going to be crazy fun, whatever way you look at it.
But back to the interview.
So off we head to China for the opening.
It was packed with press and celebrities.
Billionaires mingled with paupers – errrrm, me – fashionistas rubbed shoulders with fashion disasters – errrrm, me again – so imagine their surprise when the start of the official opening included this …
Yep … that’s me.
Yep … that’s my interview.
Yep … no one understood why I was there or what I was saying.
I’d love to say I was all cool, calm and collected, but I – along with my colleagues – were pissing themselves laughing.
It was madness and awesome all at the same time.
I didn’t know whether it was like a remake of the classic 1984 Apple ad. or my attempt to be the leader of a Birkenstock cult … but it was like nothing I had experienced in my life.
Which is another reason I love this project and miss China.
Because when you are working with someone who believes anything is possible – and has the drive to make it happen – the journey is equally as much fun as the destination and I feel massively fortunate to be on it.
Even if there are people all around the World asking themselves …
“Who the fuck was that old guy in the camo Nike hoodie?”
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Authenticity, Brand Suicide, Cannes, Chaos, Content, Context, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Differentiation, Experience, Honesty, Imagination, Innovation, Insight, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Martin Weigel, Professionalism, Relevance, Resonance, Unexpected Relevance
I love chaos.
Always have.
In fact, my approach to work can be summed up in 3 words.
Culture. Chaos. Creativity.
And yet, I do appreciate the importance of some sort of process … some sort of systematic thinking in terms of approach … because ultimately we are in the commercial creativity business, so we need some guide rails to ensure we’re heading in the right direction, even if I am removing any specific destination.
Where things go wrong is when people care more about the process than what the process is supposed to create.
Where systematic thinking goes from direction to dictation.
That’s when things go wrong.
That’s when potential and ambition are killed in the quest for control.
But here’s the thing …
For all the processes talked about.
For all the proprietary tools hyped.
The system agencies tend to end up adopting – even when they’re hidden inside a beautifully constructed, clearly planned out, client facing framework – is this.
This is not a criticism.
To get to somewhere new … somewhere interesting and intriguing … you have to take a leap of faith at some point, even in the most well-organised, well thought-out of processes.
Some people don’t like admitting that.
Some people don’t want the pragmatism of creativity to overshadow the ego of their process.
Some people don’t even want to accept creativity rarely follows a straight line through the entire process.
And yet it is creativities ability to solve problems in lateral ways that makes it so valuable and powerful, which is why for me, those who are comfortable with uncomfortable are the ones who create the most enduring ideas for brands, business and culture.
And the ones who aren’t?
Well they tend to be the ones who use words like operationalize or optimise or codify or, the old classic, ‘proprietary tools and processes’ a lot … the ones who want to feel in control, despite the fact what they’re actually saying is they want to replicate creativity rather than ignite it.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s always some element of process in any development of creativity – whatever form that manifests – but there’s also messiness and chaos and to remove that, not make room for that or go around that is either a lie or an act against the incredibly infectious possibilities of creativity.
As Martin and I said at Cannes, chaos creates what order can’t.