Little thinking

        I’m kind of tired of everyone worshipping the innovation gods, as if every innovation is a sign from above. Of course no one knows if the innovations will be good for us –– that’s irrelevant. All we need to know is that this is the innovation age. Go with it. Be optimistic. Have faith.
     But the Doubting Thomas in me seems to remember that hydrogenated oil, at its inception, was an innovation. So was the Ford Pinto, Betamax, Subprime Mortgages, DDT, Tanning beds, Crocs and Phone Fingers (remember them!). So was Foursquare. 

     Emerson wrote, “The foolish man wonders at the unusual, but the wise man at the usual.” He was referring to the really big stuff, the timeless, universal meat on the bone.

     I can't help but think that a preoccupation with innovation blinds us to wisdom and simple truths, limits us to the general surface of things so we never reach the heart. It's created the assumption that something is better because it comes from tech, thinking that doesn't give us a chance to ask if, you know, it’s just better for us.

     I think we need to remember what a big idea is.

If it’s not advertising, WTF is it?

    “I’m a little afraid,” an ex-client of mine recently confessed, “to use the words “brand” and “advertising.” He made it sound like he tip toes around them, concerned that a growing number of people use “brand” interchangeably with product, while “advertising” connotes something leftover from the dark ages. Mind you, this isn’t just any client saying this; this is a client that has spurred a lot of great work with Weiden, Crispin and BBDO.

    I’m not entirely sure what’s happened to “brand.” Perhaps everything is now a product. Maybe our content is on level with the widget on the shelf, so if consumers like the communication, they will like the widget, as well. And, if there are only products, there doesn’t need to be a distinction, right? Or, maybe it’s being confused with the identifying mark burned on cows. Regardless, shouldn’t the communication have some different specs from the actual product? If it doesn’t, what about it will change consumer behavior, assuming that changing consumer behavior is what we’re paid to do. As it has been defined, “brand” is what the consumer thinks and feels about a product, and as such, it labels what we’re supposed to be working on. I think it helps to know what one should be working on.

    And what about “advertising?” Admittedly, for most of my career, I’ve preferred to use “communication” over “advertising,” because I wanted my work to communicate, genuinely, if not sincerely. For me, “communication” was just a way to separate the wheat from the chaff –– like, I hate advertising but I don’t hate good advertising. The fact that it was meant to shape a consumer’s attitude toward a product was assumed. Hey, we’re accountable for the brand; maybe we’re in accounting.

    What if we call it “persuasion?” To my way of thinking, if our work were formulaic and feels “traditional,” it cannot be persuasion. The word may be a little antiquated but at least it states a purpose. And, as Bernbach wrote, “Advertising is fundamentally persuasion and persuasion happens to be not a science, but an art.” Without the art, the communication can’t make people feel something powerful and if you can’t be artful, you can’t compel people to change. Without the art, it’s dreck.

    This is not a picayune argument about semantics. Words are symbols; symbols motivate; and symbols actually direct behavior. We ought to know that.

    Wait a second. Isn’t advertising “any paid for communication intended to inform or influence one or more consumer?” What’s wrong with that again?

Google searching for life

    A Sunday or two ago, The New York Times Magazine reminded me how much Cartier Bresson affected not only the way I view the world, but my perspective on how I can communicate better. It was a short article called “Perfect and Unreahearsed” by Teju Cole that alluded to Bresson’s book, The Decisive Moment.

    It’s a simple notion: we need to closely observe life in order to capture something true and resonant. And Cartier Bresson stalked life. With his “tutored instincts” he could compose, adjust his settings and click at just the right millisecond to capture a moment that rippled with resonance. In life, at just the right instant, he could create incredible art. It’s a philosophy that can guide all “style, content and construction:” for great ideas, look at life.

    Even if it’s only in our memory, look at life. At one time, this was perhaps obvious. But right now it needs reminding because we’re not looking in the right places and discovering personally wonderful things. For that, we need to set our computers aside and look beyond the screen –– to the heart in our head.     
    When you discover things on your own, the discovery has impact and that impact makes you feel something powerful, so powerful that you want to capture it, share it and somehow convey it to others. You also want to figure it out, because it is in that figuring out, that search to explain the ineffable, that we land on originality. We can’t get that from inside the internet.

    Granted, on the Internet, we can troll for ideas more quickly than ever. At our fingertips, we have tons of research. But just because we can find zillions of facts, mash two of them together and create an idea in no time at all –– however tempting and however good it makes us feel to be so quick –– it doesn’t mean that we are at our best. Without the self-discovery, there isn’t that same impetus that comes from life. There isn’t that intensity or, ultimately, real originality. (Freelancers know this better than anyone because they have to work at super human speed and only have time for the mash ups, as opposed to the discovery.)

    So, lets distinguish between ideas and powerful ideas. It’s not about connections; it’s about strong, meaningful and important connections. To create that, we have to turn down the screen and push the laptop aside. That’s our first decisive moment.