Get Real

The gear shift is pushed higher. The throttle is pressed hard. The car leaps and zips along a beautiful highway. The car swerves dramatically a full 360 degree. The car screeches to a halt. Steve McQueen steps out of the car. 

This car.

BTW, I was kidding. About Steve McQueen.

Seriously, if ever there was a lemon it is the car above. No amount of dramatic television spots will move this beyond a taxi-wallah’s favorite. 

I have not singled out this brand for special treatment. This malaise of ‘stupid’ hyperbole cuts across brands and the evidence is there for all to see, on television and online. I must also admit that I have been part of such work. I must also admit that in all the instances, the client was told of the ‘stupidity’ of such an approach. But then, we were clobbered with logic, stats and the ultimate crutch of marketers, research. We had to quietly relent.

Call it mid-life crisis or burn-out or whatever, I am increasingly finding it difficult to be part of such an exercise. It is to my mind a case of 'good money behind bad money'. 

Is there a way to call the crap on this kind of marketing and advertising? 

Why don't marketers and agencies realize that there is merit in being honest and real? The creative possibilities are far more interesting with such an approach. The believability and empathy is also likely to be more. I am not saying no to hyperbole. But hyperbole for a product/service that is at best a ‘turkey’ should be avoided.

I recently read a charming post by an UX expert that beautifully captured this thought. Here are some gems from the post.

“Our best chance for establishing trust with our users is to be honest. After all, trust inspires confidence. And it’s confidence—not just a knowledge of differences—that compels decision-making.

Perhaps we should stop fixating on what makes us different and, instead, acknowledge the real aspects of who we are, what we do, and why people choose us.

We often overlook our own assets because they’re real. Real things aren’t flashy, polished, or perfect. That’s often what makes them an asset in the first place.”

Finally, there can be no better validation of this approach than from The Master. Recognize this?

(via)

Conformity

Solomon Asch conducted the above experiment in 1962. This experiment was repeated in recent times by USF with the same results.

People will agree with others or follow them even when others are wrong. Conformity is everywhere. Government, industry, marketing and advertising. People think they are setting out do something different and yet all they wind up doing is more of the same.

Conformity of the group is the reason great ideas get mauled in research, much like a hapless victim getting mauled by hungry lions in a Roman Colosseum.

'Innovation', is the most powerful word invented to help us live in a state of denial about being conformists in our actions. This is specially true of marketing and advertising. In recent times, I have been to meetings and presentations that I can recall were seen as 'innovative' fifteen years ago. Innovation is used to describe anything from a front-page takeover of a daily to creating a Facebook page. 

I guess, being a conformist must be lucrative. There are a lot of them around.

Dan Weiden - Marketers and agencies better listen and learn from him

(via)

Dan Weiden is one of the few people left in the agency business who talks sense. Not only does he talk sense, he has demonstrated it in the work created by his agency.

I picked up these two gems from the video.

"This business(agency) is about creating strong provocative relationships between good companies and their customers. Those relationships will then feed the business(sales). But you have to feed the relationship first."

"We are not in a place where we can chose between doing broadcast and interactive. That is ridiculous. It is like saying do you want the right hand or left hand. I want to use both my hands and some other appendages too. It is not a choice. It is just expanding the opportunities."

Well said, Dan.

Viral

Une Fille Comme Les Autres from Jalouse blog on Vimeo.

This is a smart ad for a French fashion magazine Jalouse. It is scripted in the manner of agencies making a viral video pitch to clients. What I like about it is that it mocks the whole viral pitch agencies make without appearing to do so.  

I am still surprised and bemused when clients and agencies alike in their pompousness think that their product or ad or digital engagement is going to go viral (or an idea will become ‘big ’). One would think that by now these professionals would have realized that nobody knows when (and why) something is going to go viral. 

These people seem to forget that viral is an effect, an outcome. They also seem to forget that it is next to impossible to predict this outcome. In most cases, it is on hindsight that one identifies the reasons for something becoming a viral. And that the very same reason(s) will not work another time around. 

Simply put, nobody knows anything and there is the consumer to remind them just that, time and again.

Therefore….. 

An intelligent person saying 'viral video' is like a beautiful woman picking her nose.
— Bud Caddell (@bud_caddell) January 26, 2012

  

This is why you work in advertising

"Don't tell my mother I work in an advertising agency - she thinks I play piano in a whorehouse". Jacques Seguela


The picture and the oft repeated line above made me smile. I came across it in an interesting post here. The author quoting Jaron Larnier the digital visionary extensively, makes lot of interesting points. You might want to check them out.   

Do This Or Die - A message from Bill Bernbach

(Via)

This message is as relevant today as it was when Bill Bernbach wrote it decades ago. Marketing and communication(creative) without lies and hypocrisy can work magic. Bill Bernbach has proven it many a time. And so have quite a few like him. Therefore, what is stopping you?

The Great Indian Digital Fault

(Warning: A longish post. Now that you are here, you might as well read it!)

Indian digital agencies are sitting on a seismic fault of their own making. The fault is that they are scraping the bottom of the marketing value-chain showing little or no intention of trying to move up. Now it must be mentioned here that even traditional advertising agencies are fast sliding down the marketing value-chain. This is a topic that is much debated across agency forums and therefore we will skip that for now.

What is the reason for this sorry state of affairs amongst digital agencies?

Digital agencies in India do not talk the language of the brand and business. They have no perspective on the digital revolution and its impact on culture and behaviour. The fact that digital is about ‘doing ideas that work’ is missing when you take a look at the body of work from these agencies.

Digital agencies in India are busy selling their ‘tech’ expertise. So it is all about SEO’s, SEM’s, PHP’s and SQL’s. They are great implementers and therein lies the problem. Clients view and treat them as ‘production shops’ in the much the same way they would treat a print production company – only difference being you get a digital ‘brochure’ instead of a printed one.

All this has resulted in digital agencies fighting amongst themselves for the miniscule budget that clients dole out. It is not surprising to see clients having more than three agencies in a panel with ‘jobs’ going to the lowest bidder. In many ways the current Indian digital agency scenario closely resembles the Indian IT services business. The main value they bring to the table is the low value of their services. 

A quick scan of the Indian digital landscape will reveal the following types of agencies. This is by no means exhaustive but only representative.

Gremlins: Like Gremlins they replicate at an alarming rate and hence are all over the place. They normally consist of a motley crew of ‘tech’ guys who want to do ‘something digital’. 

Flash Gordon: Any digital solution has to involve flash. An animated film that is a spoof of a Bollywood film that is somehow integrated into a brand constitutes a viral. It is a joke – literally and figuratively.

Master Yoda: You cannot miss them as they are the guru’s who-know-it-all on the world of social media and digital. To them it is all about conversations or collaboration or whatever is the latest jargon doing the rounds. You can see in their eyes (and mouth) the zeal and fervour of the convert and nothing else.

What unites these and other types of digital agencies and its people is their total lack of brand experience and perspective. They have never experienced the magic that comes into play when strategy and creative intersect. They have never seen how ideas, big and small, can power brands (and individuals) to another level together. They have never dared. 

Take a look at this amazing collection of great digital work and you will understand what I am trying to say. We in India have not even attempted to think like this, leave alone doing it. I am aware that there are many sceptics out there who think all this is a bit too much for India. 

In the digital space there is no such thing as an Indian standard and a global standard. Hey, a similar view about loos in recent times drew a great deal of flak. Anyway, this is my belief and the basis for questioning some other established notions like:

We do not have clients who are prepared to take the leap: I agree. This is true even for majority of the work on TV and print media, what to talk of digital. However, this is a journey in which the agency has to take the lead...er...leap. There is no silver bullet. They have to constantly demonstrate passion with a capacity to come up with radical ideas. There will be rejection not once but many times over. Hopefully, one day they might get lucky. I am talking from experience here. 

Low internet penetration: I am not denying that India is largely a TV and print media market and will continue to be so for many years to come.  I am also aware that digital is at a nascent stage. However, that does not mean that digital has no role or that one cannot try and produce work that we can be proud of. More importantly, 5% penetration translates to over 50 million internet users and this number is growing rapidly. There are some categories, especially aimed at urban youth and young professionals, where digital possibilities are enormous. More importantly, with over 55% penetration (that is 600 million users) mobile is virgin territory!  

Digital budgets are so low: Not all ideas require a large budget. If one can demonstrate a clear benefit in terms of brand growth – sales as well as reputation – budget will be no constraint. More importantly, clients need to see value from the engagement for them to scale up the budget. They do not see it now amongst any of the agencies and therefore are unwilling to loosen the purse strings.

Amidst all this you might ask what happened to those large agency networks with their ‘integrated marketing’ approach. The only thing they are busy integrating is profits. The large agency networks are fast asleep at the wheel. They do not get digital and they do not care. I have already explained why.

But things are changing elsewhere in the world. Traditional agencies are fast closing the tech divide. It is led by relatively smaller agencies like Wieden&Kennedy and Goodby,Silverstein who have developed a strong digital soul. Not only have they developed a strong digital soul, they have also demonstrated it with some outstanding work. This they do by experimenting with an interesting mix of people and by rapidly scaling their ability to navigate the digital landscape. Pure-play digital agencies are watching this development with interest and even a degree of apprehension. 

Wieden&Kennedy’s views best exemplify these developments and are music to my ears as they mirror mine.  

Digital and traditional are anachronistic way of categorizing agencies.Digital is not a channel. It is a context in which everything lives. New campaigns and ideas must combine an understanding of tech and media along with ‘traditional’ skills.  

Unless Indian agencies, both digital and the older agencies trying to develop a digital soul, have a strong perspective like W&K and put it to practice, the seismic fault will result in tremors pulling everybody down. And remember you heard it here first.

(Image courtesy)

Bridging the gap: Madison Avenue vs Silicon Valley

Via George Nimeh

This presentation by John Keehler (Director of Interactive Strategy at Click Here ) is brilliant, balanced, insightful and extremely relevant.

Creative process gone wrong (a.k.a Designing the Stop Sign)

Deja vu?

(Video courtesy: Bob Sutton)

Google Chrome Advertising Campaign - As unconventional as the browser

How do you tell the world that you have the fastest browser in the world?

You don’t.

You show it.

This is exactly what Google and their agency BBH NY did with their latest campaign for their Chrome browser. The campaign had an unusual beginning. They launched it with ‘behind the scenes’ video which has helped create incredible buzz online for the campaign as well as the browser. As Griffin Farley points out, this is a departure from the norm. Normally the ‘making of the ad’ video is released on the internet after the ad campaign runs its course in paid media as a way for agencies (and clients) to extend the story.

But then you can always expect the unexpected from Google and BBH. Sit back and enjoy this great work from them.

Calling the bullshit on integrated marketing communication campaigns

(Video courtesy: Ben Kay)

Everyone in the agency business knows that come awards time, agencies will be busy 'creating' integrated campaigns to justify entering the holy grail of all awards - 'The Campaign of the year'. What a bloody waste of time. Instead, agencies are more likely to win an award by doing great work that works. Remember Honda Cog?

This advertiser, Swedish newspaper Dagens Industri, brilliantly spoofs this practice while plugging a case for advertising in their magazine. The video documents how a Japanese car company promoted the launch of a new model … by building an entire zoo.(Source: Adfreak)

Ad Agencies! Bring back fun, audacity and dreams to the business

Below are two awesome speeches from the Ad Agency Association of America (4A’s) Conference on transforming the ad business. The speeches are raw, short and punchy.

Sean Boyle, Planner JWT NY (Courtesy and via @gapingvoid)

Boy, he does not mince words. More importantly, he not only rants but also gives valuable suggestions. He brutally dismisses all things shallow that is pulling the industry down and wants the fun back in business. 

Rishad Tobaccowala (courtesy Tim Malbon) 

This is an inspiring speech doing the rounds of blogosphere. Taking a leaf out of Silicon Valley companies, he says that only talent matters and that the ad business needs now is ‘builders’. He signs off beautifully by saying, “You came in with dreams, and now you stand with spreadsheets. Let’s get back to the audacity and the dreams, and the spreadsheets will fill up beautifully.”

The Agency is a business

I read this provocative post about the reasons for the decline and fall of the newspaper business in the US. The comments below made by two prominent personalities will strike a chord with anyone who is from the agency business.

Sean Paul Kelley says, “The primary culprit is the same as it is all over the country, in every industry and in government: equity extraction.

Let me explain, in short: when executives expect unrealistic profits of 20% and higher per annum on businesses, something has got to give. It's an unnatural and unsustainable growth rate. For the first ten or so years of a small to medium size company's life? Sure. But when you are 3M, or GE? Unrealistic and ultimately impossible.

That is what has happened to the news industry in America. The excessive obsession with unnaturally high profits has led to a vicious circle of cutting budgets, providing less services, which is then followed by even more drastic cuts.”

Michael Moore puts it across bluntly, “It’s their own greed, their own stupidity,”

Isn’t this true of the agency business, especially in the developed markets?

The unfortunate outcome of all this was that agency operations in booming markets like India were not spared. They were choked to ‘make up’ for the numbers lost in the developed markets. Pay cuts, hiring freeze and mad scramble for all kinds of business were symptoms of this malaise. Managers in the Indian operations of international agency networks were stressed (and stretched) beyond limits, with some of the offices were almost on the verge of a flameout. Now, this is a myopic way to operate.

India, China and other developing countries will continue to be a traditional media market for a long time to come. Read this case of Baidu vs Google if you want to know what I mean. To large corporations that run agency networks, these markets must be to them what California must have been to prospectors during the Gold Rush. However, instead of stripping it bare, they can reap far greater rewards (and bonuses) by nurturing it. Hire more people, train them well and pay good salaries. This is not wishful thinking but an inevitability that agencies will have to follow if they want to survive.

Newspapers in the US might die. Agencies will not, more so in countries like India. The Agency is a business, a thriving one at that. This is because the growth story in markets like India has just begun.  Hey, you never know. In the process of making tons of money, they might even produce some decent work!

(Image courtesy)

If everything is the same, where on earth is creativity?

Couple of days back I dropped by a friend’s place. He is a super-geek working for an IT MNC. He was watching India hammer Sri Lanka in the third cricket test match along with his colleagues. This being an unusual event, India hammering Sri Lanka that is, the decibel levels were way above normal. The only time the noise levels dipped a little was during the commercial break. That was when they recharged their batteries with some beer and by letting off steam against any easy target that came their way. The easy target happened to be ads that was aired with annoyingly high frequency on the screen.

My friend, whose sense of humour could be measured in nanobytes, thought he will add to the fun. He mentioned to his inebriated colleagues that until recent past I was an adman and that I was largely responsible for rendering large sections of India catatonic with the ads I had created. It is true, the catatonic part.

These blokes, whose mouths were in a race with their respective bladders for loss of control, decided to play judge and jury by putting me on the dock on behalf of the entire ad industry. They started grilling me about all things advertising. They wanted to know how commercials were made, monies, impact and so on. These were the kind of questions, many of which, even the most knowledgeable ad and marketing bloke would have found daunting. But then they were dealing with me and my bullshit factory with years of practice was on an overdrive. I laid it on thick by describing research, positioning, scripts, storyboard, producers, budgets etc. When I finished my speech, there was the kind of silence wherein you could even hear an ant fart.

Then one of them burped and said with his tongue rolling out-of-control, “whyyy ish everytheeng shame?” (Translation: Why the f*ck does everything look the same?)

It was true. In a short span of time we saw ads for different brands in the same categories all looking the same. The only ad that was interesting and memorable was the Vodafone series. Continuing my role as a defendant, I gave them a corny answer for this obvious lack of differentiation amongst ads. I said something to the effect that “different people can have the same creative idea”. It was very evident that I was desperately scrapping the bottom of my bullshit barrel and that it was time to make a quiet exit.

Fortunately, the discussion took an interesting turn. They turned their attention to the tech industry and started debating as to how software and other tech stuff did not differ from one company to another. Interestingly, the word they used was ‘mimic’. Then the discussion moved to cars. One bloke said that he had recently purchased a Honda City and that he found very little difference between various car models when he did the homework for buying a car. In fact, the debate only brought to light the fact there were little difference between various products and brands.

Therefore the question, “If everything is the same, where on earth is creativity?”  

I found the answer in this interesting post in Fast Company, courtesy Ana Andjelic. It says:

“Their key insight is that creative ideas can only spread if they're actually adopted by others. Too much creativity, and there's not enough imitation--ideas die on the vine, because there are so many of them and few ever catch fire. For good ideas to spread, there's an optimal balance to be reached between creating and imitating.”

The figure by some gobbledygook magic is that only 30% create and the rest imitate. In my opinion that is a very optimistic figure. In the case of ad industry it is likely to be much lower. Even the scam ads seem to ‘mimic’ one another.

In a different and lighter vein, John Dodds says in a post on big ideas that “probably only fire and alcohol could be classified as a big idea and the rest debatable”. I concur. I might have included the wheel to the list. I am not fussy, though.

So folks, if you copy you are in good (and large) company. So set forth and copy. If you do copy, be smart enough not to get caught. And if you do get caught, be smart enough not to get caught with a bunch of drunks. If you copy, get caught and find yourself in the company of drunks, be kind enough to buy them a round of drinks. Cheers!

(Image courtesy: Olivander)

Is selling creative without the bullshit possible?

It was close to midnight. The agency was abuzz with frenetic activity for an important presentation in the morning. The client was a large MNC with an extremely tough marketing head. The agency had failed couple of times before in trying to sell their campaign ideas. The agency team was at their wits end. My boss had rounded up the entire team to discuss the presentation strategy. He was trying to develop a ‘rationale’ for each of the creative idea in front of us. Being the junior-most at that time, I was perplexed at the contrived explanations that the team members were coming up with. It was a whole lot of bull-crap. I was not alone in thinking that way.

The consequences suffered at the presentation could have been a little less painful had we carried a jar of Vaseline. We paid the price of bullshit overshadowing the creative and therefore becoming the point of debate. It is critical not to fall into this trap and important to sell the creative, not the bullshit. This is the problem with ‘rationale’. It is a logical or process driven explanation of a product (creative) that triggers an asymmetric, non-linear process within the mind. One is on a slippery and dangerous ground with it as clients can easily identify with logic.

Sometimes I wonder what Michelangelo’s pitch to the Vatican was when he shared his idea for the Sistine Chapel. Or for that matter that of the architect of Taj Mahal. Did he, for instance, tell the Emperor that the four minarets represented the eternal hard-on he had for his beloved?  

I suspect there has always been an element of bullshit that is used to sell creative. It will always be that way. Eminent designer Michael Bierut in this brilliant and candid post explains why. The post has its LoL moments one of which I have copied below. 

Every once in a while, however, there is satisfaction to be had when design bullshit attains the level of art. I remember working years ago with a challenging client who kept rejecting brochure designs for a Francophile real estate development because they "weren't French enough." I had no idea what French graphic design was supposed to look like but came up with an approach using Empire, a typeface designed by Milwaukee-born Morris Fuller Benton in 1937, and showed it to my boss, Massimo Vignelli. "That will work," he said, his eyes narrowing.

At the presentation, Massimo unveiled the new font choice with a flourish. "As you see," he said, "in this new design, we're using a typeface called Ahm-peere."

I was about to correct him when I realized he was using the French pronunciation of Empire.

The client bought it.

Now is the time for the million dollar question. What if the bullshit becomes the creative, which is the case most of the time?

(Image courtesy: Haags Uitburo)

Why does it have to be either this or that?

What will you choose when the genie in your computer pops out and offers you the following:

A. A dream date (and much more) with the person of your fantasy (HORNY)

B. A billion dollars in your bank account (MONEY)

C. All of the above (BOTH HORNY AND MONEY, WOW)

The correct choice will only be known at the end of this post. So I request you to control your primal urges and read on.

I am relatively new to blogging and the whole social networking she-bang. However, I am not new to the world of internet and I am not talking about my email account :-) I can claim to have worked (?) in this space for nearly three years of which two years was spent in a full-blooded dotcom. In fact I entered the world of internet just when the dotcom bubble was about to burst. There is a sense of déjà-vu when I compare the dotcom days with what is happening today.

This sense comes from the ongoing debate (noise) between the agency types (advertising and related) on the one side and the social media mavens on the other. Both of them have drawn a line separating ‘mainstream advertising’ (TV, Print, Experiential etc) and the ever-morphing world of internet. Some of the agency types question the efficacy of ‘social media’ while the mavens keep predicting the death of advertising as we know it.

In the dotcom days there was a similar debate about how advertising was going to be eclipsed by anything prefixed with an ‘e’ (Remember it?) The dotcom bubble burst. Did it mean that advertising won and internet lost?

No.

Dotcoms lost, though. However, the bursting of the dotcom bubble was the best thing to happen to the world of internet. The VC’s moved away. The internet companies that were serious like my company focussed considerable efforts on achieving great UI, outstanding customer service and innovative marketing (I had a zero-budget for marketing) They continuously experimented, started building robust revenue streams and were eventually rewarded. Most of them are going strong even today.

In my opinion the current innovations in social networking owes its development to the critical period after the bursting of dotcom bubble. User Groups, Message Boards, Forums and other online interactions were the backbone of internet companies in those tough times especially for people like me in Marketing. They are probably the catalyst to today’s popular destinations like Facebook, LinkedIn and so on.

Am I suggesting that the current bubble on Social Media should burst?

In the first place there is no Social Media bubble, only hype. Social Media is yet another manifestation (Avatar if I were to use a popular jargon) in the wonderful world of internet. Therefore, the debate between ‘Advertising’ versus ‘Social Media’ is erroneous as the comparision is erroneous (Apples & Oranges)

Companies like IBM, CISCO and suchlike have realized this. They embrace both mainstream advertising and the opportunities emerging technologies that internet is providing (of which Social Media is a part) to succeed in the marketplace. This should be a lesson to other companies and to the people who debate either this or that.

Like IBM and Cisco, I love both the worlds. I have spent most of my career in advertising in arguably one of India’s finest and as mentioned before also have a reasonably decent exposure in the world of internet (1 month = 7 internet years) I am aware that like dotcoms, Social Media might see a lot of churn. But that is a good thing as this will only make internet stronger.

Internet will continue to grow at a frenzied pace offering endless opportunities to one and all, including advertising. Its footprints via its various avatars will steadily pervade all aspects of an individual, corporation and society's life. In that sense it closely resembles our nervous system with synaptic pulses carrying information to and fro in many ways, to many destinations. Some of the tools, like email for instance, have already become so ubiquitous that we only realize it exists when there is a problem. Like our heart!

Now that I have finished my rant, let’s move on to more important matters.

I am talking about the multiple choice question posed by the genie – horny, money or both.You might think that keeping in mind the nature of this post, the right choice is ‘both’.

That, my dear friend, is called ‘wishful thinking’. The genie was lying, you horny loser.

(Image courtesy: Talie)