Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Authenticity, Comment, Creative Brief, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Effectiveness, Egovertising, Fake Attitude, Honesty, Insight, Luxury, Management, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Planning, Positioning, Relevance, Resonance, Status
A client recently told me a story of a very successful client he worked with.
Apparently this person was a lover of cars and owned Ferrari’s and Rolls Royce’s.
My client asked him what the difference was between them.
Expecting some conversation about performance or comfort, he was surprised when he heard:
“When I pull into a hotel in my Ferrari, I’m treated like I’ve booked the Penthouse Suite. But when I pull up in my Rolls, I’m treated like I own the hotel”.
I really like that.
I like it for a whole host of reasons.
But the main one is the clarity in differentiating ‘success’.
So often, as an industry, we define things in absolute terms.
Good. Bad. Rich. Poor. Success, Failure.
But as with all things in life, there’s nuance and texture in there if you look closer.
Which is why planning – despite all the information that is now available to us – is still an outdoor job.
Going out to talk to people.
Listening to different viewpoints.
Watching how different groups react to different situations.
It’s not a ‘day out’. It’s not ‘superficial fluff’.
It’s the difference between doing work for people or about people.
I’ve banged on about the importance of resonance over relevance for years, but it’s never been so important … because with so much choice of who we can give our attention to, if we want to stand any chance of having people give a modicum of a shit about us and what we do/think, then we better be speaking their language and context rather than the language and context we think – or want – them to speak.
[A classic of utter bollocks is still the Gerard Butler, ‘Man of Today’ ad for BOSS. You can read the post I wrote here and see the ad it is referring to, here]
If the people behind the brilliant TV show, Succession, can talk to billionaires to ensure everything on the show reflects how the super rich spend their money – and how they act because of it, ie: they never bend their head down when entering or existing a helicopter because they travel by them so much, they know exactly where the propeller is in relation to their height – then surely we can go and spend some time with people to see what they do and hear how they think about brushing their bloody teeth or something equally inane.
If we want to get back to being valuable to clients, we’d go a long way towards that by stopping with audience generalisations – of which I am absolutely including broad – or even narrow – Lifestage segmentation – and knowing the real nuances.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Apple, Attitude & Aptitude, Brand, Comment, Craft, Creativity, Culture, Distinction, Innovation, Loyalty, Luxury, Management, Marketing, Packaging, Standards
I know lots of people are questioning Apple’s innovation … but apart from the fact the rumour is they’re going to be launching all manner of exciting new things – from Apple glasses to Apple cars – the reality is many organisations evolve into something different over time.
Part of this could be because of technology.
Part of this could be because of a new interest.
Part of this could be because they’ve just lost their hunger.
But whether it’s brands like SONY going from innovation to perfection or Queen going from rock stars to entertainers, evolution doesn’t necessarily have to mean a bad thing.
I say this because we recently bought a new Apple desktop.
Please note I said BOUGHT … no freebies here. [Damnit]
Anyway, when it came we were struck by a couple of things.
First of all, the packaging was even more beautiful.
Let’s be honest, in terms of iPhone etc, while nice … their packaging has become far more simplistic, but for the desktop, it was a celebration of cardboard engineering.
Everything was beautiful and precise … you felt the effort and time that went into it, ensuring from the moment you opened the box, you felt you were getting something truly special.
A celebration of purchase, so to speak.
The second moment was the cables.
Jill wanted a yellow desktop and while everything was as simple and elegant as ever, the cable just captured the classic Steve Jobs ‘paint behind the fence‘ philosophy.
Look at it …
Having a yellow outer makes sense, but the fact they made sure that extended to the inside of the cable is something that just smacks of attention to detail.
No one will see it once it has been plugged in.
It probably wouldn’t even be noticed if they hadn’t done it.
But by making the effort, it not only stood out … they reminded us that what we have just bought isn’t simply a computer, it’s something that has been crafted by people who care about what they do.
It helps justifies the cost.
It reassures the quality.
It defines the brand and brushes aside the competition.
For all the modern approaches of marketing spouted left, right and centre … it’s amazing how simple things done extraordinarily well supersede all the approaches, techniques and buzzwords.
And while this is all possible because the company behind it is united by an idea, an identity and a set of values that defines who they are in definitive terms, anyone who says the little things don’t matter doesn’t know what the fuck they’re talking about.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Comment, Communication Strategy, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Equality, Honesty, Management, Meetings, Nike, Relevance, Resonance, Wieden+Kennedy
A while back I was interviewed by Bloomberg Business Week.
I know … what the fuck eh?
And more amazingly, it’s not the first time.
OK, so it has taken them 5 years to forget what a stupid mistake they made the first time, but they asked me what I felt was wrong with modern marketing.
I thought about it for a while.
Let’s be honest, there’s many things I could say … but after a while, I felt I had it worked out.
It’s the image at the top of this post.
Too many clients saying no to good ideas and too many agencies saying yes to bad ones.
There are many reasons for this but underpinning them all is a lack of trust and a blind belief in formats and processes.
Or said another way: Ego and confidence.
Either too much of it or not enough.
Of course, people will say adland have got what they deserved.
That they were indulgent and never cared about their clients business.
Which is – frankly – bullshit.
Not just because that abdicates any responsibility of the clients who hired the agency … gave the brief … and approved the work, but also because I’ve never known an agency who do not give a shit about their clients achieving success.
However somewhere along the line, things have changed 180 degrees and now we’re in this weird situation where everything is upside down … with the great irony being in this new world order of marketing, we’re making less work that is impacting cultures attitudes and behaviour and building fewer brands people give a shit about.
And yet despite this, both parties are carrying on, reframing the situation so they can both feel they’re doing the right thing.
It’s a bit like this scene in Spinal Tap where the bands manager attempts to reframe why they’re playing to 1500 seat theatres when on their previous tour, they were playing to 15,000 people in arenas.
Now please don’t mistake this as a ‘poor agency’ post.
Nor a ‘clients are evil’ bitchfest.
All I am saying is the best work and results always come from parties who trust each other, are open and honest with each other and want/value the same thing.
It’s truly that simple.
It’s why, for example, the Wieden and Nike relationship has not only stood the test of time, but has also consistently made great work.
That doesn’t mean there’s not debate, discussion and, at times, bloody arguments [for example the 3+ years I took the same idea into the same client every month to try and get them to say yes because I thought they were missing a massive opportunity] … but it does mean the conversations are about how to make the best work, not the easiest.
And while that is a rare relationship with a rare body of work, the principles of getting to that position are not that difficult.
However today, we seem to be seeing more and more clients choosing agencies on complicity rather than creativity. Dictating what they want and how they want it rather than identifying problems they want their agency to solve in interesting ways.
They may not realise they’re doing that, they may not want to do that … but they’re doing that, reinforced by countless ‘guru’ dot-to-dot strategies that seem designed to build the guru’s business than the clients who follow it.
What this has resulted in is an attitude where some clients think any agency who has a different – but informed – point of view is out to rip them off, which is hilarious given thinking differently is literally why you hire an agency.
The whole situation is horrible.
No one wins
No relationships gets built.
Instead we have clients using processes and procurement to dictate and control what they want and we get agencies fighting for the chance to do it, because they’ve sold the value of creativity so far down the river, that the only thing they can offer is speed.
What a waste of opportunity, potential and talent on all sides.
Thank god not everyone is like this.
Thank god there’s people, companies and agency relationships who demonstrate what you can achieve together when you trust each other. When you want the best for each other. When you are transparent and honest with each other.
Enough to say yes when it’s easier to say no.
And no, when it’s easier to say yes.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Apathy, Attitude & Aptitude, Comment, Confidence, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Differentiation, Effectiveness, Experience, Innovation, Insight, Perspective, Planners, Planning, Prejudice, Relevance, Resonance, Respect
For an industry that loves to talk about doing new things – chasing new things – it doesn’t half hate trying new things.
The moment someone dares suggest something different, more often than not, they are shouted down by people saying it’s wrong … it won’t work … it’s foolish.
Even before anything different has been tried.
Now I appreciate we live in a world where clients want effectiveness and so the margin for error is getting ever smaller, but no one who is suggesting something new has the objective of being less effective, literally the opposite.
But if we can’t explore then we can’t move forward and instead of blowing things up, it may be interesting if we started building things up.
I say all this because I recently read a quote from the Chairman of Crystal Palace football club.
This year they have adopted a totally new philosophy.
Not because the old one had failed – quite the opposite, in many ways it had exceeded expectation – but because context had changed [their long-term manager retired] and they thought this was the time to try something new.
And while some have immediately come out to say what they’re doing is utterly reckless to the stability of the club, their chairman – Steve Parish – countered it with this lovely perspective on the situation they have chosen to enter …
I love that. I love how he dismisses the validity of any criticism and simply focuses on the fact.
No one knows if Crystal Palace’s new approach is better or worse than what has gone before – at least not yet, and maybe not for a significant period of time – the only thing people do know is the approach is different.
Different.
Not better. Not worse.
A simple change to the usual approach.
A change that will reveal, in time, how effective it was. And even then, it is still only an indicator as there are so many external influences that may affect it.
But for a moment, imagine if it works.
Imagine if Crystal Palace do better than they ever have.
That they consistently elevate their standing and success?
It could happen. It stands as much chance as the opposite right now … and yet people are so quick to jump on the ‘disaster’ bandwagon.
Adland is exactly the same.
We like the idea of different but not the reality.
We choose to hide behind certainty and history, even if we didn’t have anything to do with the work we use to assert our argument. We grasp at learnings from other industries despite their context being vastly different. Or we state the fucking obvious but pretend it is an act of genius.
Maybe if stopped having the need to loudly proclaim something is right or wrong and just embrace the fact someone is doing somthing different, we may be more positive about change as an industry.
And maybe … just maybe … if more people focused on building things up rather than tearing them down, we may end up creating possibilities that encourages clients to embrace different rather than see it as an act of commercial defiance.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Attitude & Aptitude, Authenticity, Comment, Communication Strategy, Confidence, Creativity, Culture, Differentiation, Disney, Egovertising, Experience, Innovation, Marketing, Truth
I’ve talked a lot about how the industry loves to talk about innovation when what they actually mean is evolution.
Hell, sometimes it’s not even that … sometimes it’s just a new name for an old thought process or discipline that was expressed as part of what people always did rather than split out in an attempt to make more money or gain more influence.
I once said to the wonderful Martin Weigel that I am pretty certain marketing is the only industry that would make a paper plane and claim they invented flight.
Now that doesn’t mean people aren’t adding to what is being done … or bringing new thinking and craft to it … or finding new ways to incorporate it into work … but it does mean they’re trying to maybe ‘own’ too much of the narrative of the discipline. Suggesting they’re inventors when they’re actually craftspeople. Valuing ‘theory’ rather than actually making something truly interesting with it.
Now there’s many possible reasons for this.
+ We’re in marketing and so they’re marketing themselves.
+ Being a craftsperson has lost the value it deserves.
+ It’s cheaper to badge than to actually create.
+ People don’t know their history.
Now I’m sure I’m going to be accused of being a prick … an old, condescending prick. And maybe I am. But I am also not claiming I’ve invented anything and I’m just pointing out neither has many of the people who do.
And there’s nothing wrong with not inventing something … because doing your job really well is something worth celebrating, especially when you see what passes for ‘good’ in so much of what is put out these days.
But it appears the allure of pioneer is infectious these days.
Case in point is the talk around eco-systems, flywheels, multi-platform DTC/e-comm and the like. Yes, it’s amazing. Yes, it driving new ways for brands to behave and earn. Yes, technology has allowed this to be done in more powerful and profound ways. But in many cases, it’s not revolution, it’s not really even innovation … it’s evolution.
And why do I say that? Have a look at this.
That is from 1957.
NINETEEN FIFTY SEVEN.
It’s Walt Disney’s ecosystem/flywheel/multi-platform DTC, e-comm [without the e] for the Disney corporation.
The blueprint for how he would use creativity to fuel his business in ways where every division is helping another division.
And while modern expressions of this have evolved and added more nuance, it’s not miles off, which is why whether you like/hate/respect/loathe him or the Disney Company, that’s pretty progressive thinking.
Or it was in 1957. in 2021 maybe not so much.
[Though, being honest, it probably is – which is even more worrying]
And yet we read so much from people acting like Walt Disney … except they’re not building their own brand, they’re selling their concept to build your own brand.
As I said, there’s nothing wrong with that.
Fuck, there’s a lot of value and money in that.
It’s genuinely exciting when you see someone identify opportunities in old approaches and habits that millions have missed. And for that, you should absolutely be using it to build a platform for your future success, growth and change.
I am literally cheering from the sidelines. All I ask is you please don’t act like you have invented flight when you’ve actually made a more efficient and effective paper plane. Not because I’m a bitter bastard – OK, let’s not go there – but because the future of this industry requires bigger leaps not better wrapping paper and the more we manage up our abilities, the more we lower the reality of our potential.
Christ, that’s a heavy post for a Monday isn’t it.
Given I know what the rest of the week has in store, it gets worse. Eek.