Anyone who has ever taken a fiction writing class has heard "Don't say it. Show it." You can tell me that Mr. Perkins is a cantankerous son-of-a-bitch, or you can tell me that he kicks a stray cat in the ribs and spits his wad of tobacco into the cup of the blind panhandler.
The same is true of brands. Brand building is character development.
Or another analogy I like is the comedian who gets on stage and talks about how funny he is versus the comedian who tells funny jokes.
In short: don't say, do.
Here's a slide show from Zeus Jones. I couldn't agree more with their philosophy.
And here's something that my agency did which I think is pretty cool (I had nothing do do with it).
What Is The National Interest?
I just read this article on CNN.com that the cute little Chinese girl who sang at the Opening Ceremonies in Beijing was actually lip synching. The actual singer was chosen for her voice, but deemed not cute enough for TV. CNN quotes the ceremony's musical director saying, "The reason was for the national interest. The child on camera should be flawless in image, internal feeling and expression."
It cracks me up that the Chinese officials (who are used to controlling their media) did this "for the national interest" and may have made the country look like more of a joke. One thing I love about communists: they're a very consistent brand.
I bring this up because it reminds me of clients who think that they are still in 100% control of what their brand is and how others will interpret it. Jim recently wrote about the knee-jerk reaction some clients have, assuming they're in complete control of their brands.
It's easy for creatives to snigger and poke fun of clients like this. And, yeah, maybe they deserve it. But when it's our own clients, and when they start talking to themselves, and when we start listening, I think the onus is on us to raise a red flag.
SXSW II: Social Marketing
The buzz this year at South By Southwest, and one of the big buzz words in the industry right now, is social marketing. Getting people to talk about your brand. Using people as a medium. Relying on a social network rather than a television network to create buzz.
One reason good social marketing is so coveted by marketers is that it can be cheap. Think about all those people running around talking about how great their iPhone is. Apple's not paying them for that. And partly because Apple's not paying these people, you get the second great thing about word-of-mouth: It's trustworthy. People are more likely to value a message that comes from a friend than one that comes from an ad, a paid celebrity or the news.
There's nothing inherently new about social marketing. It's really just another name for good old-fashioned word-of-mouth. What has changed is that technology has hyper-charged these word-of-mouth social networks. Because of all the social networking sites, I have 400 readily-available social connections. If I find a message worthy of it, I can easily disperse it to all of my "friends."
Companies were originally excited about how the Internet could change change the way they could speak to their customers. But what it's really done, more importantly, is change the way customers speak to each other.
The question companies have, of course, is how do we use these incredible social networks? How do we get people talking about our brands? The answer is to support these communities. Make ourselves useful to them. Become a generous member. Stop talking about ourselves and start making social gestures.
Here's a crude drawing of the mass media way:
That's us, up there in our ivory tower, shouting our message to the masses we hope are out there. And our message is usually about us.
Now here's the social gesture model:
When we start thinking about ourselves as members of a community rather than marketers to a community, we look at the landscape in a completely new way. A few observations about this shift:
1) Come down out of the ivory tower. Talk to the people, not at them. Have conversations. You have all the tools to do so. It's not as easy as mass media, but with a little legwork, there's a much greater upside.
2) Stop talking about yourself. You're a member of a community, and nobody likes selfishness.
3) Stop trying to make a buck and start trying to build communities. Stop selling to people and start helping them make good purchases. Sales are the byproduct of good relationships.
4) Really, don't be selfish. Don't pretend to back a community. It has to be genuine, because if it's not, people will turn on you. All those social connections can also work against you.
Is social marketing appropriate for every product? Probably not. But every brand should stand for something around which a social network can be built (if one doesn't already exist).
This way of thinking is about doing rather than just saying. I'll post more about that soon.
One reason good social marketing is so coveted by marketers is that it can be cheap. Think about all those people running around talking about how great their iPhone is. Apple's not paying them for that. And partly because Apple's not paying these people, you get the second great thing about word-of-mouth: It's trustworthy. People are more likely to value a message that comes from a friend than one that comes from an ad, a paid celebrity or the news.
There's nothing inherently new about social marketing. It's really just another name for good old-fashioned word-of-mouth. What has changed is that technology has hyper-charged these word-of-mouth social networks. Because of all the social networking sites, I have 400 readily-available social connections. If I find a message worthy of it, I can easily disperse it to all of my "friends."
Companies were originally excited about how the Internet could change change the way they could speak to their customers. But what it's really done, more importantly, is change the way customers speak to each other.
The question companies have, of course, is how do we use these incredible social networks? How do we get people talking about our brands? The answer is to support these communities. Make ourselves useful to them. Become a generous member. Stop talking about ourselves and start making social gestures.
Here's a crude drawing of the mass media way:
That's us, up there in our ivory tower, shouting our message to the masses we hope are out there. And our message is usually about us.
Now here's the social gesture model:
When we start thinking about ourselves as members of a community rather than marketers to a community, we look at the landscape in a completely new way. A few observations about this shift:
1) Come down out of the ivory tower. Talk to the people, not at them. Have conversations. You have all the tools to do so. It's not as easy as mass media, but with a little legwork, there's a much greater upside.
2) Stop talking about yourself. You're a member of a community, and nobody likes selfishness.
3) Stop trying to make a buck and start trying to build communities. Stop selling to people and start helping them make good purchases. Sales are the byproduct of good relationships.
4) Really, don't be selfish. Don't pretend to back a community. It has to be genuine, because if it's not, people will turn on you. All those social connections can also work against you.
Is social marketing appropriate for every product? Probably not. But every brand should stand for something around which a social network can be built (if one doesn't already exist).
This way of thinking is about doing rather than just saying. I'll post more about that soon.
Portfolio School Lies to You, Part 4
Another lie that took me a long time to recognize:
Great creative sells itself.
This is one we want to believe. That you’d present something so groundbreakingly brilliant, the client has no choice but to run it.
But here’s the reality:
The Apple “1984” spot was never supposed to run. The clients hated it. The only reason it ran was because the media – a Superbowl spot – was already purchased.
The clients initially hated Wendy’s “Where’s the beef?” campaign. Cliff Freeman was told, “Under no circumstances should you run this spot.”
You need to be focused on creating great work. But great creative will not sell itself. You have two choices:
One way or another, I can pretty much guarantee that you’ll have to do some presenting at some point in your career. This is especially true if you want to become a creative director.
Learn how to sell your work. Not like a used car salesmen. Be able to communicate why the spot works beyond, “It’ll look cool.” If public speaking’s a challenge for you, take an improv class and expense it to the agency. Do whatever you need to do. Because the work isn’t going to do it for you.
Great creative sells itself.
This is one we want to believe. That you’d present something so groundbreakingly brilliant, the client has no choice but to run it.
But here’s the reality:
The Apple “1984” spot was never supposed to run. The clients hated it. The only reason it ran was because the media – a Superbowl spot – was already purchased.
The clients initially hated Wendy’s “Where’s the beef?” campaign. Cliff Freeman was told, “Under no circumstances should you run this spot.”
You need to be focused on creating great work. But great creative will not sell itself. You have two choices:
- Develop the presentation skills you’ll need to sell your work.
- Find someone whose presentation skills you trust to sell your work.
One way or another, I can pretty much guarantee that you’ll have to do some presenting at some point in your career. This is especially true if you want to become a creative director.
Learn how to sell your work. Not like a used car salesmen. Be able to communicate why the spot works beyond, “It’ll look cool.” If public speaking’s a challenge for you, take an improv class and expense it to the agency. Do whatever you need to do. Because the work isn’t going to do it for you.
How to Juggle
Currently, I’m juggling four projects at work. I prefer juggling assignments like this. It’s keeps my thinking fresh. It keeps me from being bored. If you’re in a position where you’re multitasking, here’s a little tip: Give yourself mini-deadlines.
- Two hours concepting on project 1.
- An hour writing headlines for project 2.
- Two hours re-working the scripts for project 3.
Interview Questions
Peter posted a great comment a couple posts back. He asks “how to kill in an interview” and posted a short list of questions he had so far:
When Mark Figliulo hired me, he admitted I might be the last nice person he’d hire. He’d already hired too many nice people, and thought it might be good for the agency if he hired a jerk. I don’t think he ever did, but it was probably in the back of his mind every time someone came in. Maybe he just never met the right jerk.
Point is, don’t fake yourself. Don’t be who you’re not. Don’t try to be bubbly Mr. Personality if you’d really rather be listening to darkcore techno and brooding in your office. Maybe brooding fits the agency.
- What's the creative dept like, working with partners or mix and match?
- How often do you do new business pitches/what accounts do you go for?
- Where do you see this agency in 5-10 years?
- What's it like working here? (best asked to juniors)
- What's the best and worst work that's come out of here in the last year?
- What will your expectations of me be?
- Specifically, what will you expect to have seen from me within the first six months?
- What are the biggest challenges the agency faces right now? What are you doing about them.
When Mark Figliulo hired me, he admitted I might be the last nice person he’d hire. He’d already hired too many nice people, and thought it might be good for the agency if he hired a jerk. I don’t think he ever did, but it was probably in the back of his mind every time someone came in. Maybe he just never met the right jerk.
Point is, don’t fake yourself. Don’t be who you’re not. Don’t try to be bubbly Mr. Personality if you’d really rather be listening to darkcore techno and brooding in your office. Maybe brooding fits the agency.
Match Wits With Professor Layton
I’ve been playing Professor Layton and the Curious Village on my Nintendo DS. It's a very addicting puzzle game. Here’s the trailer…
What does this have to do with advertising? Almost without exception, the puzzles in this game are solved by looking at the problem from another angle. They’re deliberately phrased to make you assume one thing, but it’s not until you see past those presumptions that you’re able to crack the code.
Like approaching a new assignment, you go in with some presumptions. Like you can’t do award-winning work on packaged goods. Or the client never buys humor. Or the answer is a full-page print ad. Or any kind of an ad.
Presumptions. Scrap them. Ignore them. Pay them no mind. That’s what Professor Layton does.
There are over 100 puzzles in this game, from simple riddles to chess games to jigsaw puzzles. A famous riddle that appears in the game is this: “If A is the first letter, and B comes after, what is the last letter of the alphabet?” Of course, you immediately answer “Z,” which is incorrect. Because the question's really about the last letter of the word "alphabet" and not the 26 letters.
I was really stuck on another one where I had to create a + on a field of pegs. Given the parameters, it seemed impossible. Until I realized that if I tipped the + on its side to make an X, the problem was workable.
What does this have to do with advertising? Almost without exception, the puzzles in this game are solved by looking at the problem from another angle. They’re deliberately phrased to make you assume one thing, but it’s not until you see past those presumptions that you’re able to crack the code.
Like approaching a new assignment, you go in with some presumptions. Like you can’t do award-winning work on packaged goods. Or the client never buys humor. Or the answer is a full-page print ad. Or any kind of an ad.
Presumptions. Scrap them. Ignore them. Pay them no mind. That’s what Professor Layton does.
How we're going to kill the viral video
First off, I need to get this off my chest. Stop saying "We're going to make a viral video." I hear creatives, students and clients say that all the time. You create an Internet video. If you do it right, and if you're lucky, and if you seed it and do all the legwork, it might go viral. But don't say you're going to create a viral video. It's like saying "We're going to create a word-of-mouth phenomenon."
We're in an interesting time right now, because with the economic crunch and the shifting media landscape, clients are more and more willing to take chances with Internet videos (partly because it's not that much of a financial risk--it's really cheap). And they're also willing to put material on the Internet that they wouldn't be willing to run on TV. Stuff that's edgier. This is probably due to the antiquated belief that the Internet audience is a completely separate animal, younger and edgier. But I think we'll see that distinction disappear soon. If it's not fit for a brand to air on TV, why would they air it online? They're not a different brand with a different voice just because they're online.
Which brings me to my main point. Every brand, regardless of whether they're connecting with customers online or on TV, is trying to sell something, yes, but also trying to build relationships. Which is why it baffles me to see the number of "fake stunt" videos that marketers are doing and students are proposing in their books. It's one thing to create cool content, whether it's blantantly branded or not at all. Levi's created this cool "Backflip Into Jeans" video.
No harm there. Do we need to know it's from Levi's? It's a cool video either way. But then there are the popcorn + cell phone videos.
These were created by a bluetooth headset company to take advantage of the buzz in the media about the possible link between cancer and cellphone use. It's a completely rigged stunt used to drum up fear. Or, as they used to say, it's a lie. We're going to get customers by lying to people. Brilliant. Here's a more in-depth story at Slate.com.
The worst part of it all is that the company's website got tons of hits and their sales went up (I'm not mentioning the company name because the last thing they deserve is more press). For students, there are two things to take away from this. The first is that this kind of stuff has been done before. The Blair Witch Project and Sega's Beta-7 campaigns pioneered the fake background story years ago. Done=bad for book. But secondly, it's crappy marketing. Not because it's immoral (which should be reason enough), but because you're duping customers. I didn't know that headset company before the hype around these videos. Now I know them and I hate them. I can't think of a worse way to start a relationship (well, maybe killing customers, but the cigarette companies already did that, so don't put that idea in your book either).
We're in an interesting time right now, because with the economic crunch and the shifting media landscape, clients are more and more willing to take chances with Internet videos (partly because it's not that much of a financial risk--it's really cheap). And they're also willing to put material on the Internet that they wouldn't be willing to run on TV. Stuff that's edgier. This is probably due to the antiquated belief that the Internet audience is a completely separate animal, younger and edgier. But I think we'll see that distinction disappear soon. If it's not fit for a brand to air on TV, why would they air it online? They're not a different brand with a different voice just because they're online.
Which brings me to my main point. Every brand, regardless of whether they're connecting with customers online or on TV, is trying to sell something, yes, but also trying to build relationships. Which is why it baffles me to see the number of "fake stunt" videos that marketers are doing and students are proposing in their books. It's one thing to create cool content, whether it's blantantly branded or not at all. Levi's created this cool "Backflip Into Jeans" video.
No harm there. Do we need to know it's from Levi's? It's a cool video either way. But then there are the popcorn + cell phone videos.
These were created by a bluetooth headset company to take advantage of the buzz in the media about the possible link between cancer and cellphone use. It's a completely rigged stunt used to drum up fear. Or, as they used to say, it's a lie. We're going to get customers by lying to people. Brilliant. Here's a more in-depth story at Slate.com.
The worst part of it all is that the company's website got tons of hits and their sales went up (I'm not mentioning the company name because the last thing they deserve is more press). For students, there are two things to take away from this. The first is that this kind of stuff has been done before. The Blair Witch Project and Sega's Beta-7 campaigns pioneered the fake background story years ago. Done=bad for book. But secondly, it's crappy marketing. Not because it's immoral (which should be reason enough), but because you're duping customers. I didn't know that headset company before the hype around these videos. Now I know them and I hate them. I can't think of a worse way to start a relationship (well, maybe killing customers, but the cigarette companies already did that, so don't put that idea in your book either).
Love Is In The Air
This is not an endorsement of either John McCain or Barack Obama. I don't want to bring politics to this blog. But communication stategy? That's worth talking about in this forum.
Frustrated with the media attention Obama's been receiving, the McCain camp created the following ad (I assume as online content as it's way too long for primetime)...
Does the McCain team have a point that the media is favoring Obama? Sure. Is it fair to say that just because the media prefer one candidate, that's no reason to vote for them? Again, sure. What the McCain people really want to say is, "Don't listen to the talking heads. Look at the issues and make your own decision. Ignore the media." That's a decent argument. But, at least with this piece, it's communicated all wrong.
And here's the problem: When you try attacking emotion, you're fighting an uphill battle. I wrote about this in an earlier post. Whether you agree with Obama's politics or not, you can't attack him by discrediting the way people feel about him. You end up insulting the people you're trying to communicate with. "That's how you feel? Well, let me tell you why you're wrong." Not the best way to be persuasive.
How does this affect you as a young advertising professional? Understand that facts are good. And you should use them to your client's advantage. But you can't build your entire case on them. You need emotion. You need that thrill going up Chris Matthew's leg.
(As a side note, the original piece featured Frankie Valli's "Can't Take My Eyes Off of You." But since the rights to the song were never cleared, the original was pulled. What you see here is a second generation edit with some elevator music and the "Paid for by John McCain for President" stripped off the back end.)
It's the music, stupid. Part I
Everyone knows how big a difference music can make. The right song can make a movie scene unforgettable, or turn a commercial about two dudes driving around in a car into a classic. Here's my favorite new example of how radically music can alter the tone and meaning of picture (a tad long, but makes the point):
Traditionally, the music is the responsibility of the copywriter (though I've worked with many art directors and producers with encyclopedic music knowledge, which is awesome). But it's one of those things that you don't learn about in ad school.
What I'd recommend to any aspiring copywriter (and art director, for that matter), is that if you're not into music, get into it. Force yourself to listen to types of music you wouldn't normally listen to. Expand your musical world. There are tons of great resources out there to help you do this. Read Pitchfork. Listen to the podcast of Sound Opinions. Listen to Pandora. Or check out one of my favorite Internet communities, the International Mixtape Project.
The point is that, as Greg pointed out in an earlier post, you need to be able to communicate with your vendors. This includes musicians. Having a decent working knowledge of music types and being able to speak the language makes the process a lot easier. You don't need to know the difference between an 8- and 12-bar blues, but be able to give direction to a musician in a general sense. Like whether you want Johann Sebastian Bach or just Sebastian Bach.
Those of you who are into music, where do you find new stuff?
Traditionally, the music is the responsibility of the copywriter (though I've worked with many art directors and producers with encyclopedic music knowledge, which is awesome). But it's one of those things that you don't learn about in ad school.
What I'd recommend to any aspiring copywriter (and art director, for that matter), is that if you're not into music, get into it. Force yourself to listen to types of music you wouldn't normally listen to. Expand your musical world. There are tons of great resources out there to help you do this. Read Pitchfork. Listen to the podcast of Sound Opinions. Listen to Pandora. Or check out one of my favorite Internet communities, the International Mixtape Project.
The point is that, as Greg pointed out in an earlier post, you need to be able to communicate with your vendors. This includes musicians. Having a decent working knowledge of music types and being able to speak the language makes the process a lot easier. You don't need to know the difference between an 8- and 12-bar blues, but be able to give direction to a musician in a general sense. Like whether you want Johann Sebastian Bach or just Sebastian Bach.
Those of you who are into music, where do you find new stuff?
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