Filed under: Advertising, Apathy, Attitude & Aptitude, Comment, Communication Strategy, Culture, Insight, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Planning, Point Of View, Relevance, Resonance
Recently I saw this …
Quite a headline eh?
Amazingly, it wasn’t from the Sunday Sport ‘newspaper’ … though it was from The Daily Mail, so it’s kind of the same thing.
And while it makes for entertaining reading – unless you’re the vicar in question or the Henry Hoover – it did make me think about how rubbish his attempt at persuasion.
Now to be fair, being found with your penis in a vacuum cleaner while wearing stockings would test the limits of any act of persuasion, but even so … it’s just rubbish isn’t it?
You don’t believe it.
You don’t consider it.
You are not in the least moved by it.
And that’s kind of what I feel about a lot of the ads I see these days.
They say stuff but they don’t make you think, feel or react to any of it.
No persuasion … just a rather rubbish demand that you now go and do something or the insane ramblings of an 18 year old French philosophy student. In their first year.
I swear a big reason for this is the lack of actual interest in knowing culture.
A narrowcast attitude of either assuming people blindly love you and wait on your every word or only showing an interest in how people use your product. And nothing else.
An egotistical assumption audiences don’t need to be encouraged to consider why you may be beneficial to their life or the belief people are thick as pig shit and so need to be instructed in detail what to do with you.
So you end up with bullshit like:
Future is an attitude for Audi or Cure Housebarrassment for Wicks Kitchens … which are so stupid/blatant you start to think saying undiagnosed diabetes led you to stick your penis in a hoover while wearing stockings is at least an attempt to make an attempt at persuasion.
Filed under: Advertising, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Comment, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture
Timo Kiuru has written a book on creative leadership.
He said …
“I wanted to find out how the leaders of the most creative organisations in the world do their job. I contacted people I had a lot of respect for and was very thankful for their time. I interviewed countless leaders.
It was hard to narrow them down, but this book includes the fascinating stories of 15 of those inspirational people – stories that dig into your very soul. I hope that the book will encourage readers to be braver in their search for that something special”
One of the people he interviewed is me.
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
He’s utterly misguided but my parents would be so proud of me. For once.
So thanks Timo and all the colleagues, agencies and clients I’ve worked with who somehow fooled him into thinking it had anything to do with me.
You can find out more [without having to read me] by clicking here.
And yes, I fully appreciate this is a #UnhumbleBrag … but in my defence, I’m from Nottingham and the only books we tend to be mentioned in are a Police Officers.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Apathy, Attitude & Aptitude, Brand, Brand Suicide, Comment, Content, Context, Creativity, Culture, Digital, ECommerce, Environment, Social Media
Social media.
Or for some, digital marketing.
Oh the terms and the tropes.
The guru’s and the chancers.
The rules and the frameworks.
The DTC brand successes and the DTC product commodification.
Don’t get me wrong, I am a big fan of social media marketing. I think – done in the right way – it can powerfully drive brand, business and fandom in ways many other forms of marketing can’t hope to reach.
There’s countless amazing examples out there, but underpinning all of them is the inconvenient truth that they’re based on an idea. It may not always be what the ad industry likes to call a ‘big idea’, but it’s an idea all the same.
Something that holds all it does together. Guides it. Shapes what it does. Gives it a reason to exist and add to culture rather than continually try to steal from it.
But the problem is these brands are still in the minority because the vast majority still practice what my beloved Martin Weigel refers to, “the continuous production of social landfill”.
There are countless reasons this occurring …
The belief it gives them ‘free’ advertising.
Their fear they may be left behind or left out.
The attempt to look and act relevant to the times.
But without doubt, the worst reason is ‘people really are interested in who we are and what we have to say’.
Oh my god, that’s the worst of all.
A deluded state that manifests itself into some of the worst behaviour and marketing you can get … liked and supported by those who either work for the company or want to.
So what we end up with is an ever-increasing production of sheer shit.
Pointless, mindless marketing filth that doesn’t so much scrape the barrel, but is the scrapings of the barrel.
Things like this …
What. Is. That?
Seriously, how deluded and desperate must you be to think this is the sort of content the World is waiting for.
Yes, I appreciate they have almost TWO MILLION followers but come on …
And they’ve even incorporated a way to ‘vote through emoji’ to allow their ‘fans’ to interact with the content.
To paraphrase a comment once made to me by a client … sometimes, the people who like your stuff are the people you don’t want liking your stuff.
Pity the poor social media people who have to manage this stuff.
I say pity, because surely they can’t think this is good?
Surely they are the human equivalent of a battery hen … held in a small room and told to keep finding ‘ideas’ to churn out as content.
Stuff that is the very embodiment of social media landfill.
An always on strategy that turns people off.
But my god, what if they think this stuff is good?
What if they believe people wait with baited breath for the latest piece of content they literally are churning out?
What if the client thinks it is driving ‘powerful user interaction metrics’?
I know Colgate Palmolive make many products.
Some of which have become brands that are very, very popular.
But maybe someone needs to tell them that just because people buy them, doesn’t mean people care about them … certainly outside of the environment they inhabit or in the detail Colgate finds fascinating.
Or to paraphrase another old client of mine:
Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.
Filed under: Advertising, Attitude & Aptitude, Cats, China, Comment, Culture, Martin Weigel, Paula, Planners, Planners Making A Complete Tit Of Themselves And Bless, Planning, Relevance, Resonance, Respect, Revenge
As it is the first of August, I thought I’d change the tone of the posts from the rather heavy ones of July to something a bit more ‘light’.
Which is why today I’m writing about cats.
As you know, I love those feline sods.
Specifically my feline sod … Rosie.
The things I’ve done for her.
Taken her around the World.
Got an import licence in China so we could get her her favourite treats.
Built custom ‘penthouse cat houses’ for her, so she could enjoy the outdoors in safety.
Got a company to make a bloody stuffed toy version of her for us.
In fact, it’s so realistic a client once thought she was stuck on a wardrobe during a zoom call.
And what do I get in return?
Complaints.
Demands.
Distain.
And a distinct lack of love or emotion.
Oh I know she loves me really.
Not as much as we love her, obvs … but there is affection there. Deep down.
However I recently saw something that not only summed her up, but summed all cats up which perfectly explains why some people hate them, and why some – like me – are at their mercy, will and command.
If humans treated humans this way, it would be considered an abusive relationship.
But cats powers of manipulation has managed to reframe that as ‘personality’.
Seriously, if you want to know the art of strategy, forget the Weigel’s, Bloodworth’s, Ritson’s and Collin’s and just study cats.
They’re bastards. But they’re brilliant bastards … as demonstrated by this photo that, for me, is the best encapsulation of cattidude you will ever see.
Filed under: Attitude & Aptitude, Comment, Culture, Education, England
Rishi Sunak, the potential Tory leader, has laid out a three-point plan to transform education in the UK – including that statement in the photo above.
Yep, he wants to ‘phase out university degrees that do not improve students’ earning potential’.
What the absolute fuck?
Apart from the fact the easiest way to transform education is to actually invest in schools and teachers across the country rather than continue to see anything other than private education as a wasted expense – mainly because they all went to private schools so have a misguided and warped view of what teaching, learning and intelligence actually is or can be – can you imagine what their idea of subjects worthy of a degree actually are?
There will be no arts. [Waste of money]
No history. [Except about Britain, presumably]
No languages. [As it supports Brexit and immigration]
The only thing we’ll see are subjects related to business, maths and maybe law.
I cannot tell you how angry I got reading his ‘plans’.
Those degrees he hates, aren’t worthless. They’re life.
They’re what helps stops society fall down a blackhole of endless repetition, mediocrity and middle-management.
A production line of duplicate attitudes, approaches, values and experiences.
Not only that, those degrees that ‘do not improve earning potential’ contribute far more to the economy than he knows or wants to admit … even with their best efforts of killing it.
Like those gun lobbyists in America whose attitude towards stopping ‘gun attacks’ is to either give more guns out to people or make schools buy bullet proof rooms… not forgetting those pricks who have decided woman can/can’t choose what is right for their own bodies … Sunak and the rest of his Tory scum seem to think the best way to help a generation they’ve actively and purposefully robbed of hope through deliberate acts of underfunding, denial and obstacles is to tell them what they should find valuable and what they should do for the rest of their life.
10 years ago I wrote a post about a Dad who wrote a letter to his son about his impending liberal arts education.
I suggest every Tory – and parent – should read it, even if they will never understand it.
We all want the best for our kids.
We all know education is a vital part of that.
But it blows my mind that so many people – including those in power – fail to understand the better the education we give to all – not just the privileged – the better the chances people, communities and the country as a whole will have to prosper.
Or said another way …
Education can help a nation achieve what all politicians say they are there to make happen.
Which highlights that Tories don’t actually want that to happen. They just want it to happen for people like them. Rich people. Rich, white people.
But here’s the thing, private education does not automatically guarantee smart people come out the other side. Yes, they have more advantage and opportunity … which they would pretty much have anyway given they generally come from affluent families … but there is plenty of evidence to suggest many create more myopic, self-focused and damaged individuals.
And here’s the thing …
In a world that is increasingly encouraging, valuing and producing the same thing over and over again, we need to remember the arts aren’t worthless to society and economies … they create the value in the known and reveal the opportunities in the things Rishi and mob would never see on their own.
Fuck the Tories.