Filed under: Advertising, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Brand Suicide, Communication Strategy, Crap Marketing Ideas From History!, Creativity, Culture, Embarrassing Moments, Management, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Music
First of all, this is the last post for a week.
I’m away next week for a talk – I know, I know – and not back till Thursday evening so you can go into the weekend with an extra big smile on your face. Assholes.
Anyway, back to the post.
Over the years, this industry has shown an alarming lack of judgement in how it presents itself.
However, of all the terrible ideas, the absolute worst has to be when they decide to show how ‘fun’ they are through the art of song.
There’s been so many examples.
Sapient Nitro – remember them? – started it with something I can’t remember.
Then Mindshare Amsterdam got in the act saying they ‘work hard for your money’.
Not to be left out … Leo Burnett Sydney did – I think – a Sister Sledge song for a pitch.
Then Ogilvy Athens wrote a ‘ballad’ dedicated to David Ogilvy.
And then – one of my car-crash favourites – the Singapore Media Development Authority did a rap that, rumour has it, almost stopped Eminem wanting to continue his career. Maybe.
Despite having written a few times about these symphonies of shit, the reason there are so few links is because over the years, the guilty parties realised it made them look like a bunch of lunatic impersonator ‘entertainers’ appearing on a revival of Stars in Their Eyes.
Which is why I’m so happy that someone has decided to revive the trend with an epic re-write of Elton John’s ‘I’m Still Standing’ … filmed where the original video was shot. Cannes.
Better yet … at Cannes while I believe the festival was on.
Now, to be fair, it is way, way better than the other films mentioned and shown in this post.
That doesn’t mean much given they were worse than the worst musical duo on Britain’s Got Talent musical duo in history, but beggars can’t be choosers.
But I still can’t grasp why anyone would do this.
Don’t get me wrong, you don’t have to take yourself seriously while still taking what you do seriously … but to decide you have to ‘show’ you’re fun outside the context of how you’d actually interact with a client seems crazy. Almost as crazy as thinking this shows you’re ‘fun’.
And remember, this is coming from me … who did iPod Singing and wear birkenstocks!!!
So with that, let me send you off to your weekend with this rendition of I’m Still Standing … which still you might think is a joke but I can assure you isn’t as bad as sitting in the Majestic during the festival and watching people pour 2 grand bottles of champagne down their throat while publicly banging on about the economic crisis facing them and their clients.
Happy weekend.
Filed under: Attitude & Aptitude, Brand, Brand Suicide, Complicity, Context, Corporate Evil, Creativity, Culture, Innovation, Management, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Teamwork, Technology
I always laughed when people blamed Microsoft Powerpoint for bad presentations.
The idea that this program was purely responsible for you choosing to write 15,000 pointless words on a page in small font.
Sure, it had limitations … sure, it could encourage a certain ‘look’ for what you wanted to present … but fundamentally, that was on you, not it.
Don’t get me wrong, for a tech company … I’m shocked at how bad their user experience is.
If you think their classic platforms are bad, you should see the utter shit show that is a parents account on X-Box.
Or Microsoft Teams.
Oh my god, how can a company that can so carefully and considerately design an X-Box controller for those with disability make such a shit show of everything else.
I literally don’t understand it. Honestly.
Teams is the most user un-intutitive experience I’ve ever had.
Things don’t make sense. Things are unnecessarily complex. Things are hidden.
And yet, instead of fixing this – it seems their focus is to land-grab the video collaboration market, regardless if people like working with it or not.
You can’t go a week without being told Teams now offers a new feature.
Some – as you can see from the photo above – are relatively big things.
Most, aren’t.
A range of tools/functions that seem to only cater to the most niche or nerdy of Teams users.
It all feels like Samsung phones.
When you start one up, you see a bunch of apps that seem to serve no purpose whatsoever other than to be able to say you can do something with it that no one will ever want to do something with.
Ego rather than value.
And here lies the problem with Microsoft …
They claim all they do is about aiding collaboration, but in practice, it appears they have no understanding of how teams – or humans for that matter – actually work together.
For all the efficiency they claim they want us to be able to operate at, they are – arguably – making us more inefficient, either by making things more difficult than it should – or needs – to be, or trying to push us to answers without any capacity for giving the situation some thought to make things better.
And maybe that’s the next gen of their business model.
A desire to make efficiency about quantity than quality … a way to help their corporate clients keep their staff costs lower by not allowing any one individual to rise while also giving them more opportunities to sell tools, like their new AI model which will be incorporated in many of their products.
Yeah … I know, I sound like a conspiracy nutcase and I don’t really believe this is the reason, which means it’s something far worse.
They make for what they wish we did rather than who we actually are.
Or said another way, innovators of control, rather than efficiency.
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, Attitude & Aptitude, Authenticity, China, Colleagues, Communication Strategy, Content, Context, Craft, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Customer Service, Differentiation, Emotion, Empathy, Experience, Food, Happiness, Honesty, Imagination, Innovation, Italy, Leadership, Love, Loyalty, Management, Marketing, Mischief, Packaging, Resonance, Singapore, Social Divide, Standards, Strategy, Viz, Wieden+Kennedy
In the UK there was an adult comic called Viz.
It was filthy, hilarious and – for a long time – very successful.
And while they had many ‘star’ characters … from Sid the Sexist to errrrm, The Fat Slags … my favourite part of the magazine were the publishing company details.
Tucked at the bottom of a page, in extra small font, were a list of the people behind the magazine. Most people wouldn’t even see it, let alone read it … but if you did, you found magic in that small print.
Mischief. Personality. Information.
Nothing told you how much this was a labour of love for the people behind the magazine than their dedication to instilling their personality into every nook and cranny they could find … whether people would see it or not.
Brilliant stuff.
I say this because I saw a label a friend had put on a product they were selling at their shop.
Ai Ming was a planner in my team at Wieden+Kennedy.
She was very good … but decided one day, it was time for a change and so she went back to Singapore to open a Cheese Shop.
I know … sounds a bit random … but wait, it get’s better.
You see Ai Ming had an idea.
A way to combine her love of cheese and travel and be paid for it.
So she started The Cheese Ark … a cheese shop in Singapore, dedicated to selling cheeses from small, independent makers across Europe.
Oh but that’s nowhere near the end of the story …
So when she left Wieden – and before she returned to Singapore – Ai Ming went to work on a small farm in Italy for a few months. [I think]
While there, she discovered how amazing cheese tasted when it was made by people who loved and nurtured their product.
To her, it was a whole new world of taste and made every other cheese she had tried, feel unworthy of being labelled as such.
But she also learned something else …
You see she discovered many of these small, independent cheese makers were in danger of going under, because they didn’t have a way to compete with the big boys.
Said another way … this incredible tasting cheese could become obsolete.
So rather be sad, she decided to do something about it.
Enter The Cheese Ark … a shop that only sells cheese that originates from these small independent farms. A shop that is one of the only places in the World where you can get your hands on this incredible produce. A shop that charges enormous amounts of money to own a piece of their incredible cheese … not simply so you can have your taste buds tingled in ways you could never imagine … not simply because it allows you to show off to your friends about your good taste and status … not simply because it pays for Ai Ming’s travel, shop, employees and profit … but because by buying so much from each of these small farms across Europe, she can ensure that these small, independent cheese farms not only survive, but thrive.
Hence it’s called ‘The Cheese Ark’ … because its literally saving the lives of cheese.
How fucking incredible is that?
But Ai Ming is not just a creative business thinker, she’s full of personality and passion … which leads me to the point of this post.
You see I recently saw something that reminded me of those Viz publishing details I loved.
Something that communicated more than just the necessary details.
It was this …
How good is that?
I bloody love it.
A notice on a packet of cheese that’s more interesting, engaging, compelling and charming than 99% of ads – or any marketing material – out there.
Sure, not many people will see it.
Most may actively choose to ignore it.
But for those who do, they’re not just rewarded with the thrill of discovering something as enjoyable as the product inside it, they know they’re dealing with someone who really cares about what they do.
And they do. Because what Ai Ming has created is the Noah’s Ark of Cheese.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Apathy, Attitude & Aptitude, Authenticity, Brand Suicide, Business, Comment, Complicity, Confidence, Consultants, Context, Corporate Evil, Corporate Gaslighting, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Fake Attitude, Imposter Syndrome, Leadership, Management, Marketing, Marketing Fail, Mediocrity, Prejudice, Professionalism, Relationships, Relevance, Resonance, Respect, Succession, Toxic Positivity, Trust, Truth
I appreciate that at my age, the title of this post may suggest I’m going to whine about companies overlooking people of a certain age for younger, cheaper, hungrier individuals.
I’m not. I get it.
Not only that, while age and knowledge have some level of interconnectedness … I’ve met countless young people who are bloody brilliant [not relative to their age, just bloody brilliant] as well as plenty of people with ‘experience’ who, frankly, aren’t.
What I’m talking about is the blinkered confidence some companies place in their people simply because they’re their people.
On one hand I suppose I should celebrate it, given its not that long ago that companies overlooked internal capability for the external shiny and new.
And while this post does not reflect any of the clients I specifically work with directly, I am seeing and hearing more and more companies go to this other extreme and worse … enabling a level of arrogance in their people that results in any objectivity they face – regardless of the knowledge and expertise of the person delivering it, let alone the desire to help make things more successful – as a threat.
Complicity is the name of the game these days.
Blind acceptance that whatever the person ‘in charge’ says, is right.
A belief internal employees are better informed about every topic than people who are experts in specific topics … so companies can feel great about themselves.
Of course, the issue with this approach is that when things go wrong – or don’t go right enough – everyone else gets the blame. Not just by the person in charge [which you almost expect] but by the company they work for, despite the fact the only reason they gave this employee the project is because they knew a bit more about a subject than senior management, so they saw them as [1] an expert in the field and [2] a cheaper option that bringing in external expertise.
Now you’d think the fear of this outcome would ensure people would stand up for what they believe is right.
Not because they’re arrogant, but because they know their experience and knowledge can disproportionally benefit the end result.
And some do. At least the really good ones …
But even they are under increasing pressure to go along with the whims and wants of certain people/companies … because the whole industry is seeing more and more work being handed to people and companies who simply say yes to whatever is wanted.
Or said another way, convenience and fawning is more valued then expertise, knowledge and standards.
Now of course, it’s human nature to believe we can do more than we actually can.
We all like to think we are ‘special’.
We all like to be acknowledged as important.
We’ve all heard the ‘fake it till you make it’ philosophy.
But the truly special are the ones who know that however good they are, having people around them who are better than them – in different fields – can make them even more effective.
It’s why the World’s best athletes have coaches.
It’s why the World’s best musicians have producers.
It’s why my brilliant ex-NIKE/FFI client, Simon Pestridge, said: “middle management want to be told they’re right. Senior management want to know how they can be better”.
The reason I say all this is that I recently reached out to one of the best organisational psychologists in the World. They work with the CEO’s of some of the most respected and successful companies in the World including Apple, NIKE, Ferrari and Electronic Arts to name a few.
This is what they said when I talked to them about what I was seeing:
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“I call them professional imposters and the reason so many succeed in corporations is because they target other imposters. It becomes a co-dependent relationship where they ensure their ego, status or promotion opportunities won’t be challenged.”
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To be honest, I was not shocked by their view, I was more shocked by the acknowledgment.
Of course, I probably shouldn’t be. It’s hardly a new phenomenon and we also had one of the most successful shows in TV history shine a light on it …
Succession was a celebration of the role of co-dependence and complicity within organisations.
As I wrote recently, Tom was the epitome of it.
But this post is about Tom before he ‘won’ [even though he is still a pawn to the real power] … this is about Tom when he just wanted to please to win favour. Where he thought nothing of being vicious and vindictive to those beneath him because he knew that didn’t just please the people above him, it let him feel he was above everyone around him.
And so Tom eventually gets promoted beyond his capability …
Where the illusion of power and external fawning is more important to him than pay checks.
Where his belief is he is superior to all, regardless of knowledge or experience.
Where his understanding of situations is the only understanding of a situation.
Yeah, it’s bleak. It’s fucking bleak. Because while Tom was fiction, Trump got to be President of America. And what makes it worse is we all see it. Hell, we’ve probably all been exposed to it. And yet it goes on.
If companies truly want to be great, then they’ve got to kill and stop rewarding toxic positivity … because value will be revealed when they allow more people to say no to them and they say yes to more people.