Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Brilliant Marketing Ideas In History, Comment, Creativity, Culture, Cunning, Marketing
Welcome back.
Hope you didn’t vomit too much with all the chocolate eating.
I didn’t eat any.
No seriously.
I fell ill on the Thursday with a virus and basically spent all the time in bed.
No food. Just feeling sorry for myself.
But of course I felt better just in time to come back to work. Bloody karma.
So with that, shall we get on with things …
Over the years I’ve written about the hilarity of naming strategies.
Specifically those from consultancies who sell their process as a proprietary system and then talk about how they start with 10,000 possibilities and then use their filtering algorithm to whittle it down to 3 bland or meaningless options.
Except they don’t say that last bit, obviously.
I still remember working with a client who had paid for this ‘expertise’ only to end up with a name recommendation that [1] wasn’t actually a word and [2] sounded like a cheap water brand than an international digital services company.
This is also the company that tried to charge the client for a ‘signage’ strategy.
By that, I mean they wanted to be paid to help the client know where their signage should placed on their building to achieve maximum effectiveness.
I almost caused World War 3 when I said,
“In my experience, placing signage outside – at the top of the building – works best”
Anyway, the reason I’m saying this is Briar, one of my colleagues came to work with a new set of glasses recently and the company behind them had the best name ever …
How brilliant is that?
Of course it’s provocative … risqué … challenging … but it’s also hilarious, fun and memorable.
The thing is, I doubt most of the consultancy naming processes would even come up with it as an option to dismiss.
In addition, Happy To Sit On Your Face put their glasses in a custom made case that folds flat. This might not sound much, but it means you don’t end up with your drawer or bag filled with a bulky, odd-shaped lump.
While I appreciate the name of this brand may not travel easily … it’s also a brand name that has made glasses memorable and if you can do that, then you are already doing better than 95% of brands.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Brand, Brand Suicide, Comment, Communication Strategy, Confidence, Context, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Experience, Management, Marketing, Marketing Fail
A few weeks ago, I posted this on Twitter …
Quite a lot of people liked it for one reason …
It’s kinda true.
For all the shit people throw at the younger generation for chasing the next shiny thing, the same can be said for business.
Worse. In my experience, the younger generations are far more committed to what they think is the right thing and stick with it, even in the face of other things coming up.
OK, so there may be some subjects where they are quick to switch, but it’s not the stuff that costs tens of thousands of people their livelihood just because someone at the top wants to look like they have their finger on the pulse.
Seriously, the way some companies behave is like watching a massive game of Hot Or Not … just with billions of dollars riding on every decision.
Once upon a time, a planning colleague – Rodi – once said the biggest problem with business is they remain interested but never want to commit.
He was – as usual – bang on.
And while there are many schools-of-thought that suggest that because of the speed of change ‘those who commit, lose’ … they’re really missing the point.
Because while you have to know what is happening and shifting, it’s only those who commit to what they believe in who can create something that leads culture to them … rather than continually chasing where they’re going.
It doesn’t mean it will always work out, but we know the alternative achieves that even less.
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, Advertising, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Brand, Brand Suicide, Comment, Context, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Cunning, Devious Strategy, Effectiveness, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Martin Weigel, Mischief, Relevance, Resonance
In April, I have been asked to speak at a conference in Croatia.
Croatia! What a country … I cannot bloody wait.
I know … I know … I can hear you all from here, screaming ‘another holiday freebie’. And while I accept this is a terrible misjudgement on their part, does the fact I have to take 3 planes over 24 hours to get there from NZ make you feel any differently?
No … didn’t think so. Doesn’t for me to be honest.
Now this conference is apparently a big deal with some very big names appearing so when they asked what I would be talking about, I thought it best to honour the occasion while representing my abilities, which is why I told them this:
There are many ways I could describe this talk. I could say it’s an investigation into why so many brands fail to connect to audiences despite having more data, research and marketing investment than at any point in history. Or I could take a more controversial path with ‘What if the tools and processes of modern marketing are wrong?’ And while both of those questions will feature within this talk, the real narrative is if you want to be culturally, commercially and creatively powerful … please stop being so bloody boring.
And to double down on that premise, here is slide 2 from the upcoming preso …
While I fully appreciate this seems like I’m not taking things seriously, I am.
Very seriously.
Because the industry seems to only have 2 settings: serious or stupid.
Or said another way, purpose filled or sponsored comedy.
And while they can both work in the right context – and with real talent creating it – it’s all got so expected that it wins by relentless repetition, rather that intrigue and interest.
At least with agencies like Mischief – who I adore – they are painfully aware of who they are, what they do and how they do it.
They’re less ad agency of brand communications, and more meme agency of the internet. And they do it so, so well.
But even they run the risk of their approach ending up being expected. A bit like brands who ‘hijack culture’ … which has now got so common, you have to ask if it is hijacking anything.
Thank god in Mischief’s case they have the brilliant and irrepressible Greg Hahn at their helm – someone who not only is phenomenally creative, but also can read and play with the pulse of culture – so just when things get expected, he takes people somewhere new and interesting.
Or said another way, he kills boring before boring takes hold.
But the reality is what Mischief do is not new.
There are many brands – even industries – who have been doing this sort of thing for decades.
Fashion. Gaming. Hell, even certain TV shows have been doing it.
[Albeit, to different degrees]
And they do it in ways that builds their brands role and position in culture more than just gaining a moment of space for it to be seen and discussed in culture. [That sounds like a diss, it’s not meant to … it’s just my bad writing because Mischief already have achieved more than companies who have been around a century]
The real issue is that in our desperate need to be validated by business, we’ve forgotten what business we’re in.
Because to use creativity just for short-term sales goals robs creativity of it’s true commercial value and power for brands, products, tools and services.
To be intriguing … enticing … interesting and inviting.
Because as the title of this post, stolen from my beloved Martin Weigel so perfectly states …
“You can be relevant as hell and still be boring as fuck.”
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Attitude & Aptitude, Audio Visual, Brand, Comment, Confidence, Context, Craft, Creativity, Culture, Emotion, Experience, Legend, Loyalty, Management, Metallica, Music, Relationships, Relevance, Resonance, Respect, Trust, Truth
Late last year, Metallica launched a new song called LuxEterna, from their upcoming new album, 72.
While it is a brilliant return to their roots, the choice of ‘yellow’ as a key colour was met with some negative commentary from ‘brand purists’.
I don’t mean fans, but brand and design folks.
This was amazing for 2 reasons.
The first is our job is to keep things moving evolving rather than continually replicating what’s gone before, so if anyone should be open minded to change, it’s brand and design folk.
[It also highlights my problem with people who keep banging on about ‘brand assets’, because they are confusing recognition with interesting. Or worse, thinking recognition beats being and doing interesting stuff for audiences]
Secondly, the album was designed – as many have been – by the brilliant folk at the wonderful Turner Duckworth … and given their body of work, if anyone knows about designing modern iconography, it’s them.
But overall, I just found the whole debate amusing.
Metallica have always approached albums as a way to express their current frame of creative mind … and given they always look to inject something new or challenging into their work, the choice of yellow seems the perfect way to communicate ‘next chapter’.
In the case of 27 Seasons – also known as the first 18, and arguably, most significant years of your life – James said this …
“There’s been a lot of darkness in my life and in our career and things that have happened with us … but always having a sense of hope, always having the light that is in that darkness, keeps us moving. Without darkness, there’s no light, and being able to focus a little more on the light instead of how it used to be and how horrible it is, that can only be a good thing. There’s a lot of good things going on in life — focusing on that instead helps to balance out my life. And there’s no one meaning to it — everyone has some sense of hope or light in their life, and, obviously, music is mine.“
When you read that, it’s not hard to work out that the use of yellow is part of a bigger idea around the album rather than a desire to build a one colour brand which some have claimed.
Unsurprisingly, they’re the same people who talk about brand assets like you can just buy them off the shelf rather than make them a byproduct of what you do, so that they have value in them that you also keep building.
By pure chance, I was asked by people connected to the band to do a talk to a music publishing company.
While not specifically related to Metallica, I was asked by someone in the audience for my opinion on their ‘new image’ and whether it risked upsetting their core audience.
I had thought this question may came up, which is why I had prepared an answer.
After informing them I had never known a brand – let alone a band – who knew their audience as well as them … and if you listen to the track, I doubt any of their fans would mistake a revitalised Metallica for Ed Sheeran … I said this.
“If Rock n’ Roll is about rebellion, then surely there’s nothing more rock n’ roll than Metallica using yellow rather than the category norm of black?”
It was met with applause.
And some disgust, hahaha.
But here’s the thing …
Brands – and bands – don’t move forward if all they do is give audiences the same thing over and over again. Nor will they if they just give audiences exactly what they want over and over again. Longevity is as much about keeping people on their toes as it is satisfying their passion and curiosity and you only stand a chance of achieving that by following what interests you, not what interests everyone else.
Metallica get this more than most.
It’s part of the reason they have stayed at the top … because by doing things that interest them, they do things that interests more people rather than just the same people.
As I wrote for MTV years ago, brands can learn a lot from bands … because while brands may think finding shortcuts or disguises allows them to optimise their efficiency, everyone else can tell it’s because they’ve run out of ideas or energy.
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By the way, 72 Seasons comes out tomorrow. This is not a sponsored post. Well, not directly anyway, hahaha.