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How do you get people’s mouths watering? How do you get them salivating? Flipping the stations recently, I realized that PBS's Lidia Bastianich always does it for me. There's something about her auntly appearance and her genuine Italian-ness that I trust. I can see visiting her, gorging myself at her country table and then waddling to her living room to nod off in her La-Z Boy, completely content. (I don’t know why exactly she would decorate her house with a recliner a la Frasier Crane’s dad, but she’s all about comfort so it seems fitting.) Lidia, oh Lidia... 

And this reminds me of a night on vacation in Mexico a few months ago. My wife and I were out to dinner at a new restaurant and we struck up a conversation with the maitre d’. It being new and all, we were curious. And being just before the rush of reservations, the room wasn’t too busy for him to chat with the friendly Americanos.

 We asked what he was doing to get the word out. I mean, we had just had a scrumptious, lovely meal––people should know about this place. 

 He said he was relying a lot on word of mouth. To spark some buzz, he was doing various things, like collecting email addresses and inviting hotel managers in with the hopes that they would recommend it to guests. He qualified, however, that he didn't feel comfortable with advertising. An ad agency would presumably want to photograph the food, and the chef would never allow that. The chef wanted his guests to be “surprised” by how good the food tasted and that photography would set up “false expectations.” The chef was firm about this.

 And that reminds me of something I recently read in “I Wonder,” a truly wonderful book by Marian Bantjes. Apparently, in Islam, Muslims have an aversion to the depiction of heavenly or earthly creatures, so as not to challenge God. There’s a desire not to stunt the imagination with the depiction of things; but rather to create amazingly intricate and beautiful ornamentation. The thinking is that the greatest sense of awe and respect comes from the release of the imagination, unrestricted by literal thinking.

 There’s something to that. Done right, it demands the highest level of creativity, which will seem to most people a lot riskier than a nice product shot.

 And the restaurant? As this was an inspiring meal, I am compelled to say that if you ever vacation in Cabo San Lucas, give Casianos in San Jose Del Cabo a try. Call for a reservation at +52 624 142 59 28. I’m hoping it will be very busy.

Deep tissue global advertising

 

A couple of months ago, I was on a much-needed vacation to Mexico. I had been wound pretty tight so I signed up for one of the hotel’s massages. La-di-dah, right?  Well, it was nice, really lovely, and it made me imagine how regularly transforming one’s body into jello might be a healthy thing for me to do.

  Anyway, about halfway through my hour, there came, I sensed, an awkward silence. It felt like I should say something. I mean, it’s sort of like being stuck with someone in an elevator for 20 floors, except that one of those people is completely naked (granted, with a towel draped over his butt) and the other person is dangerously (or wonderfully) close to rubbing someone’s private parts. These are intimate circumstances. Maybe someone should say something.

  I really did want to compliment her, though. Her hands were magical, the way they rubbed out the tension with the oil. Instead of just lying there like a lump, luxuriating in each ooh and ahh, I should make the effort to speak. How selfish and one-way of me. After a deep inhale, I re-entered the world of the social.

 I actually got a little chatty. To no avail, though. She hardly responded. I had forgotten completely that she didn’t speak English very well. Yes, she had greeted me when I entered the spa, directed me to the little room, and I had indeed heard her thick accent. How could I forget that? Albeit only for a moment. Well, for a moment, I assumed we spoke the same language because we had communicated; we covered territory, in fact, that I wouldn’t experience with any other person on the planet except my wife.

Some things are universal, I was reminded. The right touch, the right glance or the right idea translates everywhere, across borders and barriers. I mean, she spoke to me! And I was completely sold on her services. 

Me, me, me.

As a kid, I was obsessed with biographies. While other kids were reading this and that, I was devouring the books on a half a dozen shelves that made up the biography section of the elementary school library. George Washington, Ben Franklin, Jim Thorpe –– I gobbled them up. But then, just like that, I lost interest. A few rows down, I found the Hardy Boys, Treasure Island, Charlotte’s Web and more.

I think biographies became too much about other people. I still read one occasionally –– in fact, Patti Smith’s Just Kids is on my nightstand right now –– but biographies are generally not my thing. Fiction was able to take me to more places that I wanted to visit, places with treasures that were valuable to me.

It’s a pattern.

Just after college I had a girlfriend who accused me of being self-centered. She was probably right. So I moved on, most likely in search of a relationship in which it could be all about me without culpability.

Then I was an early adopter of Twitter. I lost interest, ignored it and eventually dissolved the account. People’s little trivialities weren’t important enough to me.

Ah, but then I re-engaged with it.

Twitter had become something quite different. It could convey something important or potentially important to someone I valued. Currently, Open Culture, Brain Pickings, Mashable and Dave Trott, make it feel like my own personal newspaper. In Conan’s tweets, I even have my own funny pages. It’s been around awhile now, but it feels like it’s been around forever, the way I rely on my little stream of bits and bobs and, often enough, inspiration.

Such are human beings. People want to connect. They are driven to connect. It’s like there’s an automatic yearning, and an implicit standard that pertains to relationships ­–– it says that if the relationship is superficial, press on. So press on we do for something deeper and meaningful. Or we move out. It depends on how much me there is for us.

If brands are like relationships, and I believe they are, this is why social networks are not enough. Commerce and real brand building takes place in communities of interest. And the best communities are communities of importance. That’s where we ultimately find a home in which we can thrive.

It’s also why creativity is so important. Because nothing can communicate real love like something that has been supremely crafted, and nothing can communicate real love more than mediums like film and installations. Those things can become personal. They speak directly to me, with deep emotion, just like the best fiction engages me and allows me to discover stuff, all on my own. Conversations are a good starting place. Biographical facts about what I do and about what you do are necessary to gather information and establish common ground. But art –– or even something with a little art in it –– speaks to me like nothing else.

I was never interested in advertising, not really. But communication and the power of ideas – that’s been my obsession. I’ve remained, and will probably remain, obsessed with how to really move people, compel them. For me, nothing is more fascinating. And I will find out ways to do that – Wherever. And if Wherever can’t do it for me, I will go elsewhere.

Don't hate them because they're beautiful.

The other night at a restaurant, a gorgeous couple, the kind of absolutely gorgeous couple you’d see in a Paul Mitchell commercial, was sitting behind my wife and I. The guy was ripped and pony-tailed and totally inked. He was a hunk. She was also a hard body, which included her boobs, and she had a really short white-and-black-striped knit dress to showcase her tanned legs. She was blond.

  Naturally, I made some assumptions about them, though this couple proved me wrong. That’s not to say I discovered they were in the Peace Corps or were professors from the mid-west or poets specializing in the Victorians or something. No, they were sort of what I imagined, just way more extreme. They were beyond what any researcher could have profiled about the stereotypical LA-type Adonis.

  I know, I know, it’s sort of desperate and elitist and judgmental to eavesdrop like that but I honestly couldn’t help it. Believe me, if you were there, you wouldn’t have been able to help yourself, either. You’d find yourself presuming that they were a bit Fabio and Anna Nicole, and then you’d be drawn to the details, too. First of all, they weren't from LA; they were from Chicago. Go figure. These people were fascinating and became more so as dinner progressed.

  I was all ears. Here's the thing: they seemed to be reflecting about the burdens of having a perfect body. It was tough, apparently, to be so perfect. I had no idea! I was unaware that such perfection could be stressful like that. Mind you, I have no reference point for such thinking. If you know me, and have seen me, you understand that I have little in common with these people. So I was fascinated.

  She said, “I don’t feel insecure about my body.” It was like she was saying that she doesn’t let it get to her, though the potential for psychological turmoil is always looming.

  He confided that he struggled with it sometimes, that he wasn’t always, “comfortable that everybody wants a body like mine.” Now, to be fair, maybe he was wondering if everyone believed they should be muscle-bound like him and he wasn’t explaining himself very well, but it sounded to me like he believed his pulchritude was universally admirable and he was struggling with that.

  She assured him, “Oh, but you seem to handle it very well, “ as if he was truly courageous for braving the pressure.

  To each our own burden, I guess. Personally, while I more often than not don’t like what I see in the mirror and while I can euphemize those things below my ribs as love handles all I want, they are excess fat and, I guess, that’s my burden.

  I have to say, I enjoyed learning about a new point of view. This is one of the things I continue to enjoy about the business of advertising. With every new assignment, I get to put myself in another’s shoes, or alligator cowboy boots, as the case may be. I like that. I still like that.

  And it’s good to be surprised at the endless variety of characters out there. At the outset of every new challenge, it’s healthy to assume one doesn’t know the target. Even if that target turns out to be a little fucked up.

Rocks In Your Head

Recently on vacation, just barely awake on my lounge chair beside the pool, I rolled over and noticed a wall. I was still in one of those sunny hazes, when it caught my eye. What struck me about it was the detail. Between the large rocks, there were slivers of little stones in a shape that, had I been on the beach, would have made them perfect for skimming. Each one was meticulously inserted between the larger rocks to create these capillaries, flowing around and about the blocks. I thought about the people who took the time to do this. I imagined their pride. I wondered if they took a picture of it after they set the last rock in place. I wondered if one or two of the guys took their spouses to the site to show off. I wondered if they took pictures of their section. It was pretty cool. I mean, the hotel didn’t have to build the wall like this. But these guys graced it with details -- a wall, a wall that would ordinarily just separate us, but in the end, a wall that gives something to connect us.

Gifts For All Seasons

To step off the elevator and hear the receptionist say, “Good morning,” is nice and just fine, but you really haven’t been given anything special. When you read the brief and the brief is clear, that, too, really isn’t a big deal. And when you’ve answered that brief, so what. When you’ve delivered the deliverables, included the mandatories, utilized all the equities, big whoop. When all your decisions were sensible, you covered your ass, covered your client’s ass, did everything you should do and everything your client believes his or her boss thinks should be done, it’s no big deal. Compiling a fat deck of research? Absolutely no big deal. When you’ve been current and fashionable and “on trend,” it’s no biggie. When your client is pleased, when she is impressed that you’ve done so much work, when he compliments the coffee and cookies, it’s not that big a deal. When your meeting began by reviewing the objectives, wrapped up by going over “next steps” and ended on time, it is not worthy of applause. After the meeting, if you can’t, in hindsight, think of anything you could regret, that, too, is not a big deal. When the creative director doesn’t kill the work, the work is merely alive. When you’ve scored just above the ASI norm, what’s the big deal? When the client does all the talking and the agency all the listening, it’s not ideal. When you know exactly, exactly! what it will take to make the client happy, that’s not even a big deal. Where’s the gift in that?


Yes, we often wish that we could be satisfied with meeting expectations. Having done so, usually takes a big load off our mind, but it shouldn’t really warrant the boss’s deepest gratitude or instill the greatest pride in the people who create the work.

The thing is, creativity involves a leap in the dark, fundamentally in search of something new, something unpredictable, something for which there is no precedence. But what kind of culture is wired so you feel something’s wrong when you’re feeling kinda good? What kind of attitude assures that we will find spectacular things when we don’t know what we’re looking for? What if we were wired to always exceed expectations?


What’s a big deal? A big deal is considering important decisions to be only those that cause people to think and respond in ways they hadn’t thought of. It’s knowing that great work may not contain any of the words stated in the RTB. It’s arriving on a Monday morning and the receptionist telling you a dirty joke. When the earth moves, that’s a big deal. So is pushing against the gravitational pull of what has worked in the past. It’s a big deal that play be more important than predictability, when our greatest service is to service serendipity. It’s a big deal when we get to work out the details and fix the mistakes as we go along, when the most motivating thing in the world is, “I wonder what will happen if I do this?” and the greatest reward is hearing, “Holy shit! Where’d that come from?”


When working to meet expectations, we look forward to satisfaction from a predictable process that will produce only what we––and our clients––have the right to claim. Exceeding expectations goes beyond what anyone can claim, or take away from us. That’s why great ideas always feel like a gift or, rather, like you’ve arrived at a destination that is both surprising and wonderful. 


So, let’s be thankful for the most amazing and wonderful gifts of all. Why not slip a bonus in the stocking of the account person who got the client to veer off a differentiation map and feel lost, if only for a moment. Let’s toast those amazing ideas that weren’t bought –– because we should never forget how precious they are. Let’s put our thanks and our inspiration where it counts, embolden the creative spirit.

And here’s to keeping the holiday spirit alive throughout 2013.

Decisive Moments

 

I went to see the Cartier-Bresson exhibit at MOMA the other day and like a lot of people I was struck by how many of those moments are powerfully relatable. With his Leica, he seemed to catch moments in mid-air. Face to face with these images, we find ourselves thinking, "I know that. I have felt exactly what that person was feeling."

Sometimes they are big moments and sometimes they are the most incidental aspects of life that he somehow poured into a mold for eternity. That exchanged look, that gesture of simple affection, that mannerism, that hop we all take over a puddle, that raised eye we give when we look at someone with doubt, the sigh we take between poses. These moments are universal and timeless.

How great is it when an ad conveys something like that. Capturing something basic to everyone and telling people about it in an artful way is as good as it gets. But, really, how often do we see an interesting side to ourselves in advertising, a side that we feel we haven't seen before? Not too often.

Even still, precious miracles happen and they become memorable. I think of so many Nike ads, like the new online film for the World Cup that captures an athlete's grand desire to make history. If you've competed in sports, you know the feeling. I think of eBay's "Shop Victoriously," that depicts the Rocky-like moment when you finally win an auction, "Wassup," that caught a slice of every guy's frat life, and who doesn't identify with, "I can't believe I ate the whole think." There's the Priceless spot, about how bridesmaids always end up wearing embarrassing gowns in colors like sea foam green. And... you know how every time you eat peanut  butter you practically choke and desperately want milk to wash it down? What about the Cadbury gorilla that makes us recognize the primal impulse for something sweet. 

These are moments we recognize, where the moment of recognition itself gives the argument impact.

You have to see the Bresson exhibit. Anyone interested in insights and capturing relevance and understanding human behavior should see it. If you can't get to New York, order the book.

Peoples' need for happiness and good will are manifested in numerous minute details. When just the right details are creatively presented, they will strike us with their freshness, but also with their familiarity. Perhaps we could get a consumer to recognize that moment when a particular need arises so that the client's product appears to be the perfect solution. Better yet, perhaps we could get a consumer to think, "So that is what life is like at the moment I use that product––looks like a better life to me!"