Posts Tagged ‘Writing’
Anybody else think an agency B-team did the latest round here?
In advertising, nothing may be harder than keeping a long-running, high-frequency campaign fresh. I give the Martin Agency huge credit for keeping the cavemen campaign at least interesting, if not odd, for it’s long run, and especially at the ridiculous TRPs they run that campaign at. But, the Progressive “Flo” campaign, well, to me it seems like they pulled their A-Team off of it (and no not Face, Murdock, Hannibal and BA) and put in their second stringers. Why? The first two or three rounds of ideas had a clear beginning, middle and end and did a good job selling the product. But the last few executions have fallen way short. They talk about the product, but the endings have been almost as awkward as a Will Ferrell/Molly Shannon sketch. The fist explosions. The awkward exchanged with the biker dude. The weirdness of introducing classic literary figure of Captain Ahab into an otherwise surreal, everyman environment. In any case, I always wonder if consumers notice it when the creative quality of a campaign wanes.
Really good stereotypers
Recently, I’ve been working on a minority-focused campaign, and it’s done nothing but made me ask lots of questions. Now, for a typical white guy working in the ad industry, I am blessed to both work for a minority-owned firm and have very candid relationships with several black people I work with, which means they will give me nothing but honest feedback on whether or not an idea is treading too close to that mythical line of offensiveness. And for our whole creative team, that’s an invaluable asset. But this process has made me analyze the way other brands flail in their attempts to market to segments by ethnography instead of demography. All that’s to say: I don’t think anybody is getting minority-targeted marketing right.
5 out of 100 is pretty sad
In the most recent issue of Fast Company, they released their list of the 100 most creative people in business. Of the esteemed 100, only 5 of them work for a company that does “marketing” of any variety:
32: Lee Clow, TBWA
39: Greg Hahn, BBDO
59: Noah Brier, Barbarian Group
81 & 82: Karin Hibma & Michael Cronan, Cronan
So, um, wow. I thought we were supposed to be the most creative people in business? What happened here? I thought marketing was the marriage of creativity and business; that we were tasked with creatively solving business problems; that the greater ad industry was the helm of creativity. Not so, according to FC.
For this, I believe there are 2 reasons. The first is far more jaded and less plausible, but requires thought, nonetheless.
1. Is it possible that the marketing industry is far more isolated from the rest of the business world that the people we consider “rock stars” of the industry are really little more than peons in the greater business world? I think it’s highly likely. Look more closely at the names chosen. Clow is an obvious pick, since he is the Michael Corleone to Ogilvy’s Vito Corleone status. Throw somebody in from BBDO, since that’s about the only agency that most people have ever heard of (courtesy of foppish depictions of ad agencies in film. I loved Alan Alda saying “BBD and O” in What Women Want). Do ten minutes of digging past Crispin, and you’ll find Barbarian Group. And, throw in an under the radar name like Cronan, and you’ve covered your bases. And make sure you leave out Bogusky. FC has had an absurd man crush (much like most of us in the biz) on AB for quite a while now. After the big splashy feature last year and the full page blurb 18 months ago, people will begin to think they pump him up because Microsoft (CP+B’s big ole client) has a pretty hefty media buy with the magazine.
Plausible? Eh, maybe. Probable? Sure. If you’re a tad jaded.
Or, there’s the other option.
2. It’s more obvious than ever that the ad industry as a whole has grown embarrassingly stale. Most of our business models are as stale as the rehashed rehashed ideas we continue to sell clients and expect them to throw money at us because we’re creative. At least we tell the we are.
For me, this theory holds a lot more water. Think about it, the basic agency model has barely evolved since the 1960s. Watch Mad Men, and you get a sense of what most agencies are still like that. (Creative team + Account team) x Media team = Agency Model. Outside of a few noteworthy shops (Mother, Creative Orchestra), we still hire people who do one thing well and throw them together with other people that do one thing well and expect a certain outcome. And we as a group are still held creatively hostage by the invoice that our clients may or may not sign based on how the last client meeting went. Until we break these two basic molds, marketers will never live up to their potential.
We should hire multi-talented, smart people who are both creative and business savvy. We should work with clients that respect the value of a good strategic partner, but first we must re-earn that title. We still have a lot of work to overcome the Charlatan stereotype that we will do or say anything for money, because the reality is that stereotype is still resoundingly true.
So, why is it that if we are so creative that we don’t focus that energy on our own business model? I have 2 explanations. 1. It’s scary. 2. Most advertising/marketing folks are bad businessmen. They mostly don’t understand it, outside of the context of a brand. If they did, things would be way different.
Hopefully, it’s just the first reason. But I have my doubts.
Creative quote of the day
Productiveness is your acceptance of morality, your recogniztion of the fact
that you choose to live–
that productive work is the process by which man’s consciousness controls his existence, a constant process of acquiring knowledge and shaping matter to fit one’s purpose, of translating an idea into physical form, or remaking the earth in the image of one’s values–
that all work is creative work if done by a thinking mind, and no work is creative if done by a blank who repeats in uncritical stupor a routine he has learned from others–
that your work is yours to choose, and the choice is as wide as your mind, that nothing more is possible to you and nothing less is human…
-John Galt (Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged)
Meet BuddyPress
Now that WordPress has been out for something like 10 years, people of all different web abilities and knowledge are jumping aboard like it’s the second coming of the iPhone. And don’t get me wrong, I myself am a 5-year fan of WP; I just find it staggering that it’s all of a sudden the favorite program of agencies and blowhards everywhere.
And now, a breakthrough that will surely be having every self-proclaimed “web 2.0 and new media expert” blogging like madness and selling “social media networking services” to every small business on the planet. Introducing BuddyPress, a sister project to WordPress transforms your favorite open source, free content management system into a social network platform.
Don’t get me wrong: I think this is an awesome bit of software and a great development in the social networking space. However, I know it’s going to be repackaged and resold to every pest control business, restaurant and church out there as a customer retention system. I hope that all who come across it will use it wisely.
Lots of good content. No conclusions.
Has anybody else noticed that most social media, web 2.0 and “the future of advertising” presentations have absolutely no conclusions?
Those of you who work with me know that I am a presentation junkie. I scour the web for really good ones, constantly try to up my game on style and do things that break the rules whenever possible. Because of that, I have become a pretty harsh critic of most presentations and a huge fans of the ones that are solid on communicating their intended purpose. But what’s the point of presenting information to someone without making some sort of recommendation for how they use it?
I base this on a point of view on a deck that I viewed yesterday by David Armano, who just left Critical Mass to join the unaptly titled Dachis Corporation. Here’s the deck:
Employment Branding: A Defense
So, over on another blog, I read an article insinuating that employment branding was nothing more than a way for agencies to schnooker money from talent managers. You can read the initial article here.
Here’s my response:
Wow.
So let’s all take a step back from the rhetoric so we can analyze this problem objectively. First of all, I can easily say that no one of competence has ever really explained employment branding to you or shown you numeric results of how it can positively affect a company. And, I assure you from experience, it can.So let’s start with the basics:
Employment branding refers to a larger group of services that treat recruitment and retention efforts like building a brand. It has nothing to do with creating brand-building tv spots like Nike or Apple, rather it has everything to do with using the same emotional triggers (often seen in good advertising and design) that draw someone to a brand outside of just rational benefits. Think Nike or Apple. Their products are more expensive, but their branding makes people want to buy them for the association and perception benefits.Case in point, the EVP, or employer value proposition, is an attempt to define the intangible qualities of working with your company. Other than their balance sheet and dental plan, what motivates me to want to work for Google over Yahoo; Nike over Reebok; or The Home Depot over Lowe’s? Sure, many of those things will be tertiary employee benefits, like bringing your dog to work or not working in a sweat shop, but they make a difference. Recruitment advertising throws a laundry list up on an 8.5×11 flyer and hopes somebody notices. It’s a classic push strategy. Employment branding takes those ideas and shapes them into a message that features the benefit of working with that company to a candidate. It uses both emotional and rational messaging to draw them into that company.
Just like in a retail brand, the manifestation of an employment brand is the combination of several talent facing and employee facing concepts, including talent management software, referral programs, college recruitment programs, signature experiences, internal communications and recruitment. Shaping a consistent look and feel that delivers on a company’s core values is really where the agency comes in. They should be able to help a CTO or HR manager extract most of the core ideas for the employment brand from the company vision statement and extended intangible benefits. Then the agency can help them express that creatively in a campaign. Also, the agency should help them place it in different media that just classifieds and Monster. There are too many opportunities out there to get in front of potential candidates that just “the old standby’s.”
And with the economy in the shape it’s in, it’s more important than ever to make sure you’re getting the right people, not just warm bodies. Because your applicant flow will be far greater now, you need to be actively screening for good people that share your core values. Again, this is where EB comes in. Not only should it screen in the right people, it should effectively screen out the scrubs you don’t want. In work that we’ve done in our past, we’ve flat out told people that “this job isn’t for everyone.” You know what that effectively does? It tells the lazy dude to buzz off and encourages the competitive candidate to step up and apply. We’ve also done work that showcased different working environments that stiffer, more corporate types would hate. And in numeric, quantifiable ways, it has worked. But don’t just take it from me, take it from the Marine Corps. They used the “We’re looking for a few good men” line starting in 1776, and for over 200 years it helped them attract a different breed of soldier. Screening worked then, and iit will continue to work today.
I know you like to think that agency folk don’t know what they’re talking about because it’s easy to hate on agencies. We lie, cheat and steal just like Darrin Stephens or Mel Gibson from What Women Want. However, some of us actually do our homework, know what we’re talking about and make a difference for our clients. Some of us do great creative work that’s strategically sound and helps HR managers get better people. So before you cast wide aspersions that employment branding is throwing millions of dollars away, dig a tad deeper. It does work.
Actually, check out a presentation I did on the basic case for Employment Branding.
It’s featured on www.Insightory.com this week as their key insight.
The client relationship
I often ponder the ad industry. Where it’s going, who’s going to be the next big player and what’s wrong with it.
Many times nothing comes of it, but today my ponderings drifted into a far more philosophical territory. What truly makes a good client relationship? What is a client’s ultimate loyalty to? Is it the cost of doing business with you, whether high or low; is it the location of their ad agency, whether local or NYC; is it the quality of the service or the quality of the creative; or is a combination of all of these things. But beyond the why, the real point of ponderance I had was, “why does a client choose to stay with you?”
See. The boys from Sterling Cooper now how it's done. A good looking CD.
There’s one type of client that I like to refer to as a “Golf Course Account” or the type of account that simply picks their agency on the golf course. That’s the kind of account that agency principle’s love and creatives despise. When the client relationship is based on nothing more than an inferior handicap, a few Michelob’s and a wager on a missed putt, there’s nothing that awesome creative and strategy can do to save a business when a better schmoozer in a foursome comes along next time that dude is at the country club. It’s a dangerous way to construct an agency and an even harder way to keep talented people around. They want to win business on the merits of their work, not on the ability of their boss to shank a drive.
Read more »
I really loathe Popeye’s new stuff
Wow. I couldn’t believe the first few Popeye’s spots when they aired recently. I honestly thought I was watching a spot from the 70s when racial stereotyping was the way to go in advertising. Not only is the character portrayal amazingly stereotypical, but it’s also just bad work.
Now, I can easily say that about 10% of my loathing is nothing more than jealousy to work on a brand like Popeye’s, and about 40% of it is the fact that an Austin agency did a horrendous job representing the flavor of New Orleans. For someone who once lived in the Crescent City, I am really disappointed at the rebrand. They aimed incredibly low (fleur-de-lis and saxaphones) to hit people’s trite, hackneyed stereotypes of New Orleans with the brand work, so why would I expect anything less from their tv work? I mean, really, has anybody on that account been to New Orleans other than the Quarter or during Mardi Gras? OK, and the Garden District to see Trent Reznor’s house? There is so much life and culture and color that bubbles out of every stinky sewer, sweaty restaurant and great recipe in that retchedly awesome town that you would think somebody could throw up a red flag and say, “Um, this work is incredibly lame.” It’s like doing a MEGA-DEALS promo for BMW. That’s not how you sell something as awesome as the food of New Orleans. Granted, I kinda dig the tagline, but the rest of the brand is really just lame. Anybody could slap a Church’s, Captain D’s, Long John Silver’s, Chubby’s, etc logo on the work, and nobody would know the difference.
What’s that?
You used orange?
That’s what makes it unique?
Oh, and you slapped a fleur-de-lis all up on it.
Got it. My bad.
The fact is, it’s just over the top, stereotypical, mediocre work. This looks somebody brought in some old hired guns that was passed their prime when Copperplate was in vogue. The tv in particular is just awful. Granted, there’s a nugget of a good idea in there. I can see it, but it doesn’t come out on the screen. Having a “fried chicken expert” in the kitchen of your store is neat. Real neat. Like this one sassy lady cooks all the chicken in all your stores, or at least macro manages all 400 of your corporate and franchisee stores across the country. That seems very plausible. Wait a minute, scratch that nugget comment.
So where does the campaign go from here? Do we get more racial, more trite and more muddled with other fried-centric brands? Or do you focus on the idea that makes Popeyes unique among all QSR competitors: Louisiana, Fast.
And I hate to say this (because PC I am not), but if their agency were at least a minority owned firm (like we are), you could give Popeye’s a pass. But GSDM is definitely not. So good luck, Popeye’s, in cleaning this up. I think you might want to hire a minority firm to step in, clean up your work and prove that you’re not in bed with racists.
But that’s just me, the jealous, New Orleans ex-pat CD who loves good advertising and Cajun food.
Never abandon your post
Somebody recently tweeted a great list of Twitter applications that everybody should check out. There are a few of the obvious ones (Twistori, Twitterverse, etc) that are completely designed to destroy productivity in the work place, and then there are others that you can search people by their interest or description. So, after playing with Twellow for a while, I realized just how dangerous social media can be if you don’t stay engaged in the conversation.
There are lots of C-Level executives on Twitter from companies of all sizes, and there are a lot of them who have done nothing but show there ignorance toward social media. Type in CEO, and you get over 5300 people who list that in part of their description. Type in Chief Executive Officer, and the list is quite small. So what’s embarrassing for their companies is when they have no followers and no updates in 6 months. And it gets worse when that update is a mundane fact about their life at home or how then need to better engage with people online. That kind of malfeasance is dangerous on the web. It lets everybody know that you’re not serious about it.
Which really brings me to my point: the only thing that’s as important as transparency in social media is diligence. For people who get into Twitter and proudly display their title and company name in their profile, there is a real need for them to consistently get online and contribute to the conversation. Not talk about their dog’s shedding problem. Not talk about waiting at the doctor’s office. But adding value to the online conversation. A lot of people have been preaching that CEOs must be on Twitter. Your CMO must be on Twitter. Nonsense. That’s like saying every kid needs to play football at 6. No no. They need to engage when they are ready and can dedicate the necessary time to actively contribute and have a smart point of view on things that affect their industry. It’s way better for executives to wait until they understand what to say and how to say it, that it is for them to get on and not say anything of value for months.
Take my hero, Alex Bogusky, for example. He was on Twitter for only a few months, and while he was active, the dude dropped bombs. He had a great mix of Retweets, insight and personal stuff. He did a bang up job. Then, his final statement was a sign off. He said it wasn’t for him. Awesome. Let everybody know you’re not a Tweeter. And, it’s not like he doesn’t contribute content all over the web all the time, too. He engages everywhere, so for him, Twitter was just something else he didn’t have to take up.
For executives, you can’t take the plunge without dedicating serious time to keeping your profile intact. It hurts your credibility and your company’s when you simply abandon your post.