Sunday, December 13, 2009

Talking To Myself. And A Few Others.

True story: A recent incident at the office reminded me of an episode of Mad Men. When I confronted the plotting self-promoter, I became convinced that said person was not enlightened by my concern for the conditions that would create better work. Now, as this is a blog about communication, and not a dumping ground for whining about the advertising business, I wonder how I could have gotten through to this person.

Well, I haven't a fucking clue how to get through to this person. Once again, I've been reminded that, like any effective communication, we have to have realistic expectations of our subjects and know them well enough to know what will move them. In this instance, I have no idea what I could have said to attract her (or his) self-interest. And damn, how I grapple with being patient.

Managers in this business should be focused on managing creative people, and if everyone isn't creative, then you can't talk about building a culture that would thrive, at least not effectively, to people who take pride in other things. Right? The harsh reality is that someone hired the wrong square on the Myers Briggs chart. The person isn't evil, though sometimes––I admit it––my emotions might give the contrary impression––the person is simply the wrong person for the job.

Look, I'm tired. This piece is tired. I'm tired of dealing with people who shouldn't be in a place that is now striving to build a culture for greatness. I'm tired of wasting my communication skills.

Is it me? Do I have a problem accepting the ad game for what it is? And does that explain why I can't bring myself to watch every episode of Mad Men––because I don't want to deal with the truth, because, no, I can't always handle the truth?

I guess this turned out to be a whiny post, huh? Did I say that I'm tired of whining. I'm sooo tired of whining. But sometimes you just need a place to vent. 

And see, blogs really are good for something. My venting will be safe here. On the web, people only click on the things that interest them most, so I can breathe easy that this article will never strike the eyes of said political monger. Most likely, only the people that agree with me will read it. You see, while I wouldn't be foolish enough to divulge names, I do know who my target is. I'm talking to myself and a few precious others. And right now, as I feel a little better, kind of like a blues singer that has just sublimated some pain, that works for me.

Sunday, November 8, 2009

A Cynical Ode To Those Without An Idea

The following is part of "If a Clown," a poem by Stephen Dunn that I saw in The New Yorker. It reminded me of a few clients that come from cultures that don't make it easy to communicate beyond the hard-sell tv spot. Unable to see Importance through the hard-sell trees, they seem to want to push people into doing stuff and reluctantly accept that––damn!––they need a little joke, some levity in a spot. To me, it seems like empty wit.

If a clown came out of the woods,
a standard-looking clown with oversized
polka-dot clothes, floppy shoes,
a red, bulbous nose, and you saw him
on the edge of your property,
there'd be nothing funny about that,
would there? A bear might be preferable,
especially if black and berry-driven.
And if this clown began waving his hands
with those big white gloves
that clowns wear, and you realized
he wanted your attention, had something
apparently urgent to tell you,
would you pivot and run from him,
or stay put, as my friend did, who seemed
to understand here was a clown
who didn't know where he was,
a clown without a context?
What could be sadder, my friend thought,
than a clown in need of a context?...

When brands are either commodities or perceived to be commodities, the thing that can, over time, make a brand important to people is a point of view. Without it, we are, at best, witty communicators making goofy faces to get attention.


Saturday, September 5, 2009

October 23, 1940 – August 26, 2009

Imagine if a teen brand could capture teen emotion the way Ellie Greenwich did in her music. If a brand is the feeling a consumer has for a product or service, it would definitely be unique. "Be My Baby," "Leader of the Pack," "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)," "River Deep, Mountain High," "Tell Laura I Love Her," "It's My Party," "Maybe I Know," "Today I Met the Boy I'm Gonna Marry," "Chapel of Love," "Hanky Panky" and so on, they had all the intensity and the melodrama without cliche or Hallmark card sappiness. It's not difficult to imagine those feelings depicted in a Gap or Juicy Couture video...an acne cream, a hair product, a teen site, a back pack, a phone, whatever. And the bonus? It would be a tribute to a woman who wrote some of the greatest songs of our time (!).

Sunday, August 9, 2009

Losing the brand by a nose.

One Monday morning, my wife ripped an ad out of a magazine and handed it to me as I was on the way out of the house. It was an ad for the Vera Wang line of Wedgwood china. Being that our agency had just won the Wedgwood/Waterford account, she wanted to make sure I had seen their latest ad. I didn't really have time to look at it, so I folded it up and slipped it into my briefcase for later.

Later was only a few minutes. As I was on the train to work, I unfolded the ad and, for moment, thought about the style of the china. It reminded me of Giorgio Armani. Vera Wang's sensibility is not all that dissimilar to Mr. Armani's. It's a simple design, it's graceful flowing lines were in fact very Armani-ish. 

And then, coincidentally, a man walked down the aisle wearing what I presumed was a Giorgio Armani suit. He sat down one row up and across the aisle from me. He was indeed put together, this guy. He was thin, his hair was neat; he had nice shoes. If Mr. Armani needed a middle-aged model for one of his ads, this guy would fit the bill.

That is, until he started to pick his nose. And this wasn't an attempt to preserve one's dignity by, say, inconspicuously picking with one hand while the opposite hand is cupped over the proboscis. It was completely lacking in nose-picking etiquette. No, Mr. Snazzysuit went digging––first in one nostril and then up the other. If he could have mined his entire finger up there, he would have done so––there was gold up in them thar hills.

As I looked away, I was thinking, "Ugh!"

A moment later, I was thinking, "Ugh!"

My third thought was reassuring. I've never considered myself an Armani kind of guy and darn if that moment didn't spark some pride in me. I concluded that I was much too evolved to ever wear Armani.

I looked back and still (still!) he was picking his nose. "Ugh!"

I began to make assumptions, brand associations based on what I was witnessing. I bet his hair was fake––I bet he wore a rug. I bet he worked as a public relations advisor for Joan Rivers. I bet he had a condo in Palm Beach. I bet his kid had a pet rock. I bet he listens to Celine Dion and drives a Lexus with gold chrome. The guy was gross.

The experience drove home how advertising continues long after the print ad. The world is one big media stage, every single point of contact with a product contributing to our sense of the brand. Obviously, not every consumer makes a good testimonial. And when you think about the web and how things become viral, it simply compounds the fact that we simply do not have have entire control over our brands. 

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Peak Seasons and Points of Differentiation

Perhaps I shouldn't be admitting this, but I was once kicked out of fourth grade homeroom because, when the teacher asked the class what we wanted to be when we grew up, I stated, "A Playboy photographer." This is true. Naturally, the boys in the class laughed and then couldn't stop laughing and that forced old Mrs. Miller to restore order to her classroom by exiling me to the hallway. I can still remember standing outside the door pretending to repent.
 
I recently thought about that while mulling over an article I had read in Psychology Today ("Peek Season: In winter, oglers aren't choosers." January/February 2009). It was about research revealing that men find women's bodies and breasts sexiest in the winter and least arousing in the summer. No kidding. And I thought to myself, 'Self, those researchers are pretty smart guys,' (safely assuming, I believe, that all the researchers were guys). Further, I would bet that some of those researchers have wives to whom they have given some sort of scientific jibber jabber to justify such studies. Now, if I had only said to Mrs. Miller that I wanted to grow up to be a social scientist to analyze the effects of the seasons on men's primal urges, who knows, I may not have been kicked out of class.

Anyway, it seems that during the summer months, when on the beaches and on the streets female flesh can be seen in abundance, men's standards go up. And it is during the winter months that men sink to the lowly level of a hound dog.

No shit.

I mean, on the surface, this may seem like very respectable research. It may even have preserved the marriages of those researchers, but I don't buy it. Actually, it's not that I don't buy it––it's that I don't think the conclusion warranted serious research. It seems like common sense to me. All smart advertisers know this.

Isn't it the thinking behind differentiation?

Differentiation isn't just about being different. It's about standing out when it counts. The thinking goes back to Aristotle.

Aristotle understood that in comparing things, we sometimes discover not a difference in kind, but a difference in degree. It's not that during one season women aren't sexy and in another they are. After all, to most men, breasts maintain a certain year-round attraction. The choice isn't between having something and not having something, or between good and bad, but between a greater good and a lesser good.

In cases like this, Aristotle had a principle: What is scarce is greater than what is abundant.

Like, let's say you have the Vale, Colorado, tourism account and your target is the aforementioned hound dogs. One approach would be to portray the bits of rosy red cheeks that one would see on the slopes as precious flesh to be savored, enticing specimens with which to rendezvous at the lodge bar over a mug of spiked hot cocoa. You could also appeal to the man's intelligence: What a man of rare, practical wisdom would choose is, for instance, a greater good than what the common, ignorant, sex-craved hound dog would choose. In other words, the brisk outdoors is healthier for one's mind and well being than lying on the beach of say, Jamaica, ogling bimbos and smoking weed.

So, yes, I do believe that those researchers were correct. And I do hope they had a good time at work, too, but it really wasn't necessary, was it, to make it one's life's work. Or was it?


Sunday, March 22, 2009

Spring: when a creative director's thoughts turn to advertising numb-nuts.

People often say to me, "Mart, when you get all pissed off at people who take research at face value, is it because you're really pissed off at them or is it because you hate all research." Seriously, people say that to me all the time. And the answer is inevitably, "Oh, I'm sorry." I sincerely don't mean to offend anyone and I don't, in fact, hate all research. Researchers have feelings, too––I know that. It's just that by the time we're working on the creative, we're not having the right conversation if we're still talking about the damn research.

Take today. Today I went for a short walk and recognized the chirping of a particular bird. It was lovely. It was a moment I'd like to share. But I'm not really into birds, so I don't know the name of the little fella; so what do I do to get you to know that sound, what the day was like, what the air smelled like and what the heck I'm talking about.
 
Now, there is probably a certain demographic that would recognize that sound, is inclined to buy certain clothes, listen to certain types of music and drive certain cars with preferences for certain colors and options, but this sound is one of those sounds that, for me, signals spring––and, my soul that it will soon be lifted. When it gets right down to it, research doesn't help me a whole lot. Initially, it's good to know how familiar the audience is with birds, how technical I can get, how much of a picture I need to paint, and so on, but it won't tell me squat about how to make someone experience it. Research is only the beginning; execution is what we should be talking about––how we use art and design and some well-crafted words to help someone feel something cool. Research abandons me when it comes to making something compelling.

You can always identify work that has been burdened by research because it tells you about the experience rather than making you experience the moment. It would say, "The chirping sound will move you" instead of creating something that actually moves you; it would say, "If you're a Nature lover, blah blah" instead of making you realize you loved Nature. Such communication is born from research that indicated that Nature lovers will be moved by that chirping sound. How's that for creativity.

So as far as today goes, well, you had to be there, if not in actuality, then at least in spirit.

Monday, February 16, 2009

Polluting the airwaves with green messaging.


I have recently seen a zillion advertisements about being green. While no doubt some good will come of them...c'mon, if we were to believe everything we've been hearing, the planet would be in tip-top shape by next Tuesday.

You have to admit that our industry has, oh, just a slight propensity to exaggerate. And, to pander. If research identifies a hot button then by golly we'll push that consumer's buttons and expect her to love us. But there's more to persuasion than pushing the right buttons after you've been pushing buttons for the sake of pushing buttons.

Indulge me here a little. When I was a kid, I teased the hell out of my two sisters because, well, I was a little boy and being a little boy, there is, in my DNA, a teasing gene that endows me with the ability to assess a sister and know exactly what buttons to push to get her screaming, "Mommmmmy!" In such little boys there is also a gene that finds it rewarding to hear, "Mommmmmmy!" if only for a millisecond of sniggering––a millisecond being all it takes for the screamed-for Mommy to lunge in from the kitchen, grab you by the hair and ground you for eternity. But I digress.

Point is, my pushing of buttons didn't accomplish much. It certainly didn't communicate to my sisters that I had their best interests at heart. How could it? All it did was incur vile hatred toward me.

Now, what if you've been teasing people for a long time? What if you've been promising them good things only to have them discover that there was––fooled you again!––no good at all in your actions? Given our history, we need to do more than project images of polar bears on melting ice caps. We need some serious evidence to change people's opinion of us.

One time I hanged my sister's Barbie doll from a cellar beam. I hanged it with a rope and then smudged ketchup around Barbie's mouth to look like blood. (This is very sick behavior, I know, even for an eight-year old.) For a brief moment, when my sister seemed to burst with hysterics, I felt badly, so I offered to maker her bed, a chore we had to perform on the weekends. This only exacerbated the problem. Apparently, it takes a lot of good to reverse a sister's hatred after slaughtering her Barbie doll.

After something like that, it takes really, really good deeds to convince people that we have their best interests and the best interests of the planet in mind. A few tweaks to a product or facility, or a slight adjustment to a service, but nothing that could be construed as a systemic change, won't be enough of an RTB. The consumer's hearing has been dulled by years of our greenwashing. Recycling the same old advertising won't impress anyone. It's time to realize that.

Friday, January 16, 2009

The following post was written by a male boomer advertising professional and may therefore only interest male boomer advertising professionals.


In the past year, I've read a few books and seen a few movies in which not one person looks like me. I won't bore you with all of them, but here's a range of what I'm talking about.

I read the sequel to The Woman Who Walked Through Doors by Roddy Doyle. In Paula Spencer, we check in to see how Paula, the once battered house cleaner in Dublin, a widow and alcoholic, is getting on 9 years later. And you know what? She looks nothing like me. She didn't in the original and now, at 48, the dissemblance has not decreased. She is an amazing woman, with an inspiring tenacity and sense of humor, but she doesn't even look like my sister.

Last week I read P.D. James's book, Cover Her Face, the first of the Adam Dalgliesh murder mysteries. And Adam doesn't look like me either. Actually, the way I see Adam, I wish that I resembled him––he's so suave and cool, so much more together than me. 

A couple of months ago, I finally read One Hundred Years of Solitude. Nope––I don't think I look anything like its Juans and Aurelianos. They all have mustaches.

As far as the other books go, they were more of the same–-no one looked like me.

And what about the silver screen? Could I be seen anywhere on that? No, I did not appear there either. I look nothing like the stoners in Pineapple Express, nothing like Batman or the Joker, or the one-eyed blinker in Diving Bell.

Oh it's okay, really. It may come as a surprise to some people that it doesn't bother me, but it really doesn't. I didn't even seem to miss me. The fact is, it's not important. It's about the stories. And in one capacity or another, each of those works moved me. I like being taken away from me.

Now this observation came about as the issue of diversity resurfaced in the trades last week, prompted by the study, "Perspectives on Race and Employment in the Advertising Industry" (Adweek, 1/09/09). Let me say outright that I am not disputing any of it. My commentary is more about a slight omission. I have seen no mention of those client mandates about the target audience being in the commercials and photo shoots, or that scenes reflect perfect percentages––you know, so that every gathering looks like the UN, everyone all toothy, happy and plastic. (I once did a spot for a diner-style chain that started out with one couple and ended up with 3–-one white, one African American and one Asian couple. The setting was Utopian, though the spot turned out cheesy.) It happens all the time. Yes, yes I sympathize with the pressures that HR directors confront and understand that it's all for a good cause––I get that. But given that this effects the work and therefore, potentially, lots of consumers, I am compelled to point out that whether I appear in ads for products I might consider is, also, not important. Should we see more diversity? Absolutely, but we should realize that seeing one's likeness is not the magic key to feeling welcomed to Walmart, and we should stick to what we know about communication that communicates. So, if a story doesn't provide the proper visual, we should probably recommend a different story.

Seriously, was the target for Bugs Bunny silly slavering rabbits that own a television?

I have an inkling that if we focus on touching  people's hearts, speak to people as if they are more than their skin color or gender, diversity––at least in the advertising––would be a non-issue. Either that, or consider reverting to ads with only copy, like this post. Assuming that research indicates that your consumer reads such things. 


Monday, January 5, 2009

50,000,000 music fans can't go wrong.

It didn't cause major pile-ups in Manhattan, but Elvis's photo on the side of a bus did stop me short and send the pedestrian behind me swerving and grumbling to avoid a collision. It was sensational––not the accident, the photo, that is. It was one of those ultra close ups, Elvis's Buddy Holly glasses filling a quarter of the ad space to promote his show, Spectacle. Whoa. Not only is Elvis no Brad Pitt, but, now, having seen the show, I believe the ad is a bit misleading.

The show, which appears on the Sundance Channel, is not, ultimately, about Elvis Costello. You don't have to like Elvis to like the show; his persona is not the reason this may be, right now, the absolutely best thing on TV. Spectacle transcends our expectations of a celebrity hosted chat show, transcending any of Elvis's and any of his guest's accomplishments, which are not insignificant––I mean, so far he's had Elton John, Lou Reed, Bill Clinton and James Taylor.

  Each week one guest appears for the whole hour, and not because he or she is promoting a new release. They are not there to make Elvis look good, either. They are there because at some point Elvis, the fan, was moved by something they composed, or in the case of President Clinton, was curious about Bill's passion for the saxophone. Elvis wants to know how they do it; he's genuinely into them. You can see him stretching. And if you're an Elvis fan, well, you're probably going to have to stretch, too, because––let's face it, Elton John and James Taylor probably don't come up on your Amazon "also recommends" list.

In turn, Elvis interviews them about their inspirations. And you should hear the way Elton John talks about Laura Nyro, David Ackles and Leon Russell, and how Lou Reed goes on about Doc Pomus and how Pomus came to write "Save the Last Dance For Me." (Pomus got the idea at his wedding reception while watching, from his wheel chair, the happy guests dance with his new bride.) James Taylor is still in awe of George Jones, just as he was when starting out as a young picker in North Carolina––he played a few bars of one of Jones' songs, twang and all, and then played a section of one of his own songs that was clearly indebted to the master. And, without the glint of an agenda, Bill Clinton almost boyishly related the time he met the great Al Hirt.

Now this is cool.

In not being about Elvis, but rather Declan Patrick MacManus, and not being about his big headliners, a selflessness comes through. The title of the show, Spectacle, is ironic (Elvis apparently insisted on it, he being a true Brit and loving his irony.) It's about music that inspires. It's a twist on celebrity endorsements, only the guests come off as real people, humbled before the inspirers, and the people are not endorsing anything or anyone specifically, except the wonders of music. It's the gold standard for promoting, isn't it: to convey one's passion for what one does, give others a sample of greatness––no schmooze, no hype or kitsch––just a sense of a real, dare I say, authentic appreciation for a product.

I'd buy one of those any day. I believe there are 9 more episodes, all of which my Tivo is set to record.