Emotional and Apathetic Brands

Emotion.

It's a key component to many successful brands.

Visceral. Intuitive.

And yet, difficult to quantify.

There are brands which have such passionate fans that they tattoo the logo or other prominent graphic or tagline on their person.

There are brands that have a plethora of digital and IRL fan clubs.

These are brands that trigger chemical reactions in the brain.

They are brands that others want to be like.

But they never will.

Why?

Because they are the emotionless brands. The ones that are boring or present but don't stand for much.

They are not bad. They are not good. They just are.

These Apathy Brands deliver on a lack of feeling, emotion, interest, and concern. A state of indifference that holds no one's attention. Even one great ad, is just that for an Apathy Brand. A great piece of creative content and nothing more. A drop in a expansive ocean.

Emotional brands come from a raison d'etre. At their core, they have a meaning greater than profit. Great design. Ultimate user experience. The best customer service. Supporting local growers. A commitment to quality.

No matter what it is, it's something that drives the rest of the business. It's not something tacked on as an afterthought.

It is a central component that drives emotional responses. Emotional creative. And, passionate fans.

On Project Management

No matter how great a creative team you've got, or how receptive your clients are to brilliant ideas, there's one very important piece to running a good creative department. That, dear readers, is organization.

Without it, you cannot meet client expectations. Delivering work late, unfinished or half baked due to rushing, being overloaded or understaffed doesn't result in good results or good feelings.

There are a few elements key to achieve great organization.

Strategy

A solid creative brief can help set the stage for understanding the overall scope of work. What kind of project does the budget allow for it to be? How long does the project of this kind take to execute? These questions begin to frame staffing needs and help with overall project needs.

But the brief should also be abel to answer questions such as, Who are you talking to? What are their challenges? What is the key message? What are the key benefits? Getting answers to these questions that will frame the creative process help the creative come faster and be more on pointe from the start. You end up with less need for iteration because you'll be closer to an answer that's on pointe.

Project Managers

I've often said that a good project manager (or traffic manager) is worth their weight in gold and then some. Someone who can wrap their head around deadlines and the intricacies of different disciplines helps keep the team on track.

Project Management Systems

No matter how amazing the project manager, having a great project management system is also critical. Tracking projects, organizing information, deadlines, and much more in one place so that everyone is held accountable for their deliverables.

To-do lists & Status Meetings

Getting the team together for a status meeting weekly (or more frequently, depending on the project) helps everyone align on needs, dependencies, and work loads. It also helps to keep ownership and roles and responsibilities clear for everyone involved. Each team member should be well aware of their own to-do lists--whether that comes from the project management system, their project manager, or out of their own head.

Having certain elements organized, allows for unorganized thinking. It frees up time to put toward finding the most creative solutions to a problem posed by a brief. It Reduces the amount of stress and helps create an environment of trust and professionalism.

Super Bowl Ad Predictions for 2016

Now that the Super Bowl is past us and we have 364 more days (give or take) until the next one, I thought I'd share some predictions for next year's ads:

• A brand will create a 20-year throwback ad featuring Steve Winwood & Higher Love:
• Politically charged ads about red and blue states
• Advertisers will flip on dadvertising and try to focus on momvertising, because MOM!
• More pharma brands will advertise with their illustrated grossness
• Ads will feature less children dying
• An internet star will show some skin
• There will be slapstick humor - someone will fall down/get punched/get hurt
• Lettuce growers decide to do a :90 ad
• Ads will try to find the funny again and leave the heartstrings alone (except maybe Budweiser, if they bring that un-aging puppy back again)
• The Olsen twins will show up in a car ad
• Technology will show us how disabled people can achieve anything

Lessons from Nestle's Share Your Goodness campaign

+  Take a peek at the "Why Nestlé’s “Share Your Goodness” is More Than Good" post from Rishad, Chairman of DigitasLBi and Razorfish for some nice insights. My favorite bit from him in this post is below:

• Storytelling is critical: Both executions, particularly Adoption, is a well-honed story – a story with humanity that leaves enough unsaid that the viewer brings their own experiences into the experience and therefore it becomes more engaging.
• Human insights are key: The core insight is really about how food is central to human bonding and social experience. In both commercials, food serves as a bridge, a connection, an expression of love and understanding between siblings, husband and wife and just people.
• Smart marketers own the category benefit: Food is an effective way to share our goodness. This is the underlying emotional benefit of food, besides its ability to sustain us physically. By linking Nestlé to this underlying category benefit, Nestlé looks bigger, more purposeful and more relevant to life than just being a food manufacturer.
• Break The Mold: Somewhere a client or a series of clients made some bold calls. First, they decided to launch the campaign online. Second, they approved story lines where the brand is the hero without the product being the hero or appearing all over the story. Third, they approved scripts that took on out of the ordinary topics. And finally, they understood that we live in a connected world and had their agencies seed, enable and leverage sharing.
• Recognize and leverage the power of new media: Many marketers see digital and new media – even today in India and often around the world – as an after thought, an add-on or something one does to claim it is in the plan. The reality is that in places like India, which is the second largest market for Facebook with 100 million users (also Twitter’s and Linked In’s second largest market) and a highly mobile (soon in India 250 million smart phones), new media is as much media as old media and can allow for far more flexibility to create and distribute an idea. Why not start with the idea first and then determine the media rather than starting with the :30 or the print ad?

The only thing I will say is that "Good" and "goodness" are starting to become meaningless the more brands use them. As Anthony Bourdain would say, "it's ubiquitous".

Ideas matter.

+ Bob Hoffman (@adcontrarian) gave a presentation titled "The Golden Age of Bullshit" at Advertising Week Europe 2014. You can watch it below:
Throughout the presentation he hit on data that doesn't back up all the things that pundits are constantly saying about the evolution of the advertising and marketing business. And, he's right about a lot of things, some of which have always bothered me. You look at case studies that talk about "amazing, great success" because 1,000 people participated in a contest or 10K watched a video online. We work the data to tell the story that we believe to be true (hence bullshit), and sell it in like snake oil salesmen. We care more about channels and the medium than the ideas. I remember someone once told me that ideas didn't matter anymore--what a horrible, sad state for this business if that was to be true. Ideas are not just for creative, they're a part (or should be) of each step in the process of creating advertising, branding, marketing and communications from strategy to development.

At the end of the talk, Hoffman is interviewed and in response to a question of an audience member he says this:

"We are so obsessed with delivery systems, with what media you're going to use. We have to get back to ideas. That is what has always built brands. Great products and great ideas about those products that can be delivered in any advertising channel. A good idea is a good idea in any channel. A bad idea is a bad idea in any channel." - Bob Hoffman

Yes. Yes yes yes yes yes. Yes.
How and why we as an industry have gotten away from this basic thinking is just crazy. Ideas matter. It's what we do. It's what we sell. It's our value to our clients. Pretending that it's not is just absurdity.

Super Bowl ad fumbles and themes

+ Last nights Super Bowl was a blow out, at least in terms of the game. The ads? Not so much. Some shared themes and tactics by brands came through.

Bears

A good 'ol Super Bowl creative standby...bears. Nearly as expected as dogs these days.

• Chobani
• Beats Music
• CarMax

Borrowed Interest

Rather than focusing on their own unique points, brands have piggybacked on other things. Not like it's new this year though.

• Bank of America with U2 and RED
• Chrysler and Bob Dylan
• T-Mobile - Tim Tebow - the only upside on this one is that it was at least connected to the celebrity in some way. But the thought of him as an OBGyn increases the creepy factor.
• SodaStream and Scarlett Johansson
• Toyota and Muppets
• Kia and The Matrix
• Okios and Full House
• Microsoft
• Honda and Bruce Willis

America & Patriotism

Nothing's more American than football and the Super Bowl so these brands felt it was the perfect place to tout their ties to the American spirit. Strategy was showing through a bit much on some of these.

• WeatherTech made in America
• Coca-Cola America The Beautiful
• Chrysler and Bob Dylan with the opening line "Is there anything more American than America?" Sounds like it came straight out of the brief.

Attempts at Epic Copywriting

Anthemic spots are nothing new to the Super Bowl. In fact there have been some decent ones in years past.

• Jeep - Restless

Are you among the restless many? Each tick of the old clock a reminder, that stillness is what actually kills us. When the walls close in, do you climb out? When the road ends, do you go on? Restlessness starts with an itch. And ends in progress. It is your ambition refusing to be bottled up. Begging for a little blue sky time. Genetics have a voice that you can only deny so long. They scream GO. RUN. ACT. FIND. DARE. Where you go when you have the itch is free will. How you get there, is why we made the new Cherokee.

• Chrysler - Bob Dylan

Is there anything more American than America? 'Cause you can't import original. You can't fake true cool. You can't duplicate legacy. Because what Detroit created was the first and became the inspiration to the rest of the world. Yeah, Detroit made cars and cars made America. Making the best, making the finest takes conviction. And you can't import the heart and soul of every man and woman working on the line. You can search the world over for the finer things. But you won't find a match for the American road and the creatures that live on it. Because we believe in the zoom and the roar and the thrust. And when it's made here, it's made with the one thing you can't import from anywhere else. American Pride. So let Germany brew your beer. Let Switzerland make your watch. Let Asia make your phone. We will build your car.

• Maserati

The world is full of giants. We have always been here. Lumbering in the school yards. Limping through the alleys. We had to learn how to deal with them. How to overcome them. We were small, but fast. Remember? We were like a wind, appearing out of nowhere. We knew that being clever was more important than being the biggest kid in the neighborhood. As long as we keep our heads down, as long as we work hard, trust what we feel in our guts, our hearts. Then we're ready! We wait until they get sleepy, wait until they get so big they can barely move. Then we walk out of the shadows. Quietly walk of the dark. And strike.

• Microsoft - Empowering

What is technology? What can it do? How far can we go? Technology has the power to unite us. It inspires us. Technology has taken us places we've only dreamed. It gives hope to the hopeless. And it has given voice to the voiceless.

Most uncomfortable ads of the evening

Title says it all.

• Butterfinger encouraging threesomes
• Okios with Bob Saget getting familiar with John Stamos

Brands that could have spent money better

It seems a lot of brands decided on the PR strategy of having an ad in the Super Bowl vs. actually doing a Super Bowl-worthy spot. Which is a pity because it's really a waste of dollars that could have been spent more wisely and creatively.

• Budweiser new bottle spot
• WeatherTech
• Squarespace
• Sonos
• Beats Music

Let's stop thinking about media and focus on the bigger picture

I've been doing some thinking. I have drafts of posts in the queue on themes about how agencies and clients need to restructure their processes, value of creatives with a copy background in the digital world, generalist vs. specialists, and other big thinking ideas. Things I am still playing with in my head in terms of telling the story.




But, the other day I tweeted:

Brands and companies that look at the bigger picture are going to win vs. those that look at media channels. Evolution of the ad/marcom game
— Jane (@caff) January 13, 2014

And, when we get down to it, this is the best simplification of it all (that's not to say you won't see those other posts in the future).

What I mean by it is that right now both agencies and clients are still stuck thinking about media. I can't tell you how many projects I've had where the media comes before the idea. The funny thing is, that's not how I was trained. And yet, for a good part of my career, it's always been about the allocation of where they media spend is going to be. Granted, the fact that agencies made their money based on a percentage of the media buy, I understand why. But that doesn't make it right or the most effective thing to be doing for your communications.

Even more so than before, it's imperative to look at the bigger picture first and answer strategic questions that set up a network of ways to communicate an idea and tell a story. That larger picture has to include all aspects of the business, especially the ones that can have an affect on any and every customer touch point, and most critically, the product or offering. As William Bernbach was quoted as saying in a 1965 interview with the Wall Street Journal, “Great advertising can make a bad product fail faster; it gets more people to know it’s bad."

Agencies can't fix something that is broken from inside. They can help guide brands, but brands have to be willing to listen and change. And, once that aspect is in progress, then we can focus on the story and big idea. And, if it's big enough, it will work across any media channel you can throw at it.

5 Tips for Becoming a Better Presenter

+ If you work in advertising or marketing, at some point you'll need to present work to a client, internal team, or maybe at a conference. Here are five tips to help you present better.

1) KNOW YOUR MATERIAL
One of the best ways to be a great presenter, is to know what you're talking about. Practice your presentation. Know your material well. Preparation is key to feeling confident in front of a room of strangers staring back at you.

2) TELL AN INTERESTING STORY
Keep them interested. Think and plan your presentation around telling a story. Set it up, explain it, summarize it. But also consider what is going to resonate with them. When you have people paying attention to what you're saying, it can help remove some anxiety when you're standing in front of them. Getting them to smile or laugh also helps.

3) BE CONFIDENT
Knowing your material is one way to get to confidence. But there are many others. Psyche yourself up with the fact that you're giving a presentation for a reason: they think you're an expert, they want your point of view, etc. Feed on that.

4) FAKE CONFIDENCE
Still not feeling confident? Fake it. Put on your acting shoes and think about someone you look up to who is confident. Pretend to be them. It could be a coworker, someone from a movie, or even just how you imagine yourself as a confident, take-charge presenter.

5) RELAX & PSYCHE YOURSELF UP
Take deep breaths. Put on music that calms you, or, psyches you up. I like music with a beat that gets me rallying. Some prefer calming music. It all depends on how you react to the pressure of presenting.

The other thing is that practice makes it easier. The more you do it, the better you will be. Start practicing with your coworkers, friends, or family. We all know that presentations should have a good number of dry runs but that doesn't always happen. So as much prep as you can do yourself, even in your head (I tend to do it in the shower), will help.

Good luck!

Buzz around Vine TV spots indicate confusion over tactic vs idea

+ The buzz over Dunkin' Donuts and Trident airing the first TV spots using Vine is indicative of the misunderstanding of using technology as a tool verses it being the idea.

What average viewer is going to care that the spots were done using Vine? Zero.

I'll give the companies and their agencies props for using it as a tool. But, beyond that, there's a major "who cares?" question to answer.

The brevity of the spots isn't anything new. For example, in 2005, Cadillac aired a series of 5-second ads during the Super Bowl as part of their 0-60 campaign.


The bigger problem is that agencies and brands seem to keep confusing tools with ideas. And that is the greatest shame of all.

2014 planning will be the same as it has been

+ As summer draws to a close, it's time to return to the office and start planning for 2014. Clients are making wish lists and putting together their metrics for determining their indicators of success for next year, along with goals for revenue, new sales, retention, and the ilk.

Agencies are getting ready to dig into research, build strategies and get the creative teams churning out the ideas that will bring these things to life.

If a brand has multiple agencies, then it could mean it's time to put on the war paint. You're fighting for dollars against the other agencies for your speciality. The traditional/brand shop usually gets the largest piece of the pie. And then the rest is scattered amongst the digital, PR, CRM, social or whatever other agencies are left.

But perhaps it's time to rethink this methodology.

What if budgets were based solely upon the goals of the client? Not about allocating $X million to each agency?

Problem is that it wouldn't work for the agencies. They need to know what funds are being set aside to make sure they have the right staff and other resources available.

These are just some of the fundamental issues needing to be resolved before the ad biz can make leaps forward from where it has been. Which means the planning process for 2014 will be the same as it was last year, and the decade before that.

Data and creativity

+ A great read about the shifting landscape and battle between data and creative, Are Creative Agencies Becoming a Point Solution? Below are some excerpts and my thoughts.

As big data has reduced the stature of the creative agency, the big idea has yielded ground to the "always-on" campaign. As a result, the creative "services layer" now finds itself at risk of being supplanted as the crucial marketing partner to large brands. Who is doing the supplanting? The list includes consulting firms (McKinsey, IBM, Accenture), enterprise software stacks (Adobe, Google, Oracle, Salesforce.com), digital agencies (SapientNitro, AKQA) and media agencies.

But the big idea still needs to remain. Even with "always-on", there's a bigger idea at the core. Shouldn't "always-on" be tasty nuggets that come from that? Yes (I know, I'm answering my own question.)

Perhaps the bigger problem is that too many creative agencies have lost their way, going for new and shiny instead of smart and effective. We have confused trendy with interesting.

According to Matt Britton, CEO of Publicis agency MRY, "CMOs are looking for people who can create business strategy – who can translate their brand into a consumer-need state and build content around that. Creative agencies are investing in creative talent, but not necessarily talent that can sit across the table from the CMO and have a tough discussion."

But isn't this what agencies used to do? Even creative ones would leverage insights to find brand truths, then execute on that in a creative way.

Like some other creative agencies (AKQA, R/GA), Goodby does offer media strategy, and clients like Adobe have used it for "the full buy," but such campaigns are rare. Media agencies still control the vast majority of media spend, thanks to the bulk-buying efficiencies and negotiating leverage clients can realize through them. That spending clout, combined with client confusion about media strategy, has played to the advantage of media agencies. Many of those firms are even staffing up small creative and content departments of their own.
"I know the financial reasons, but it's crazy that we as an industry spun those units off. It was greed. It was absolute greed, and it may come back to bite us at some point," Kay says.

And the sad thing is, more often than not these days, the media is what drives the creative, not the other way around. Not only does media control the dollars, they can, at times, control the way in which the ideas come to life. There have been many instances where I've worked on projects where we have had to fight to get the media buy changed to better support the concept. Which seems so backwards. Perhaps back in the day when buying air time was going to be on X channel or in Y magazine, it made more sense. But in many ways, this limits the creativity of the ideas as well. Placement can play a huge part in the execution of a concept (but please remember it should never be *the* idea).

Don't get me wrong, media is important, especially to digital campaigns. It's essential awareness. The "build it and they will come" mentality is completely ineffective. But, in many ways, this is also where all those espousing "integrated campaigns" make things fall apart. You need to use your mass media to create awareness of digital engagements if you want them to be successful. But if you look at overall budgets, rethinking how they are divvied up will have to be part of the future.

Brad Rencher, who leads Adobe's digital marketing business unit, says, "What's driving change in marketing and advertising is data, but we don't believe that data is going to replace creativity ever. A highly targeted message that's poor will be outperformed by a great creative message with no targeting." Rencher adds, "Today we're hindered by a lack of creative, or the creative we need. We're awash in data."

Or is it because too much creative is being dictated by data? Or is it that if data is now "king", we're drowning in it to the point of not being able to see clearly through it and how to apply it? I've had clients who wanted tons of data, but then do nothing with it. So what's the point? I will say that some of the most interesting, smart media and analytics people I've worked with also had a creative spark in them. That's to say they were able to make interesting connections and observations about the data and how to best apply it for change for the better. For creative change. All those creatives who think of themselves really as novelists, artists or something other than people in business could be what Rencher is talking about, for they are less likely to want to leverage the data to help drive their creative ideas. And, that is a shame.

Which begs the question: If the automation of creativity is still science fiction, what's preventing creative agencies from capturing digital opportunity today? Put another way, why is digital-ad creativity so often seen as a wasteland? Part of the answer has to do with the economics of digital ads.

But why should ad creativity be valued at less than traditional? If you look at the numbers, the data points and the conversations happening in the industry, we have allowed clients to think that if it's digital it should be faster and cheaper to produce than traditional communications. But why? Doesn't it take just as long for someone to come up with the ideas? Doesn't it take a writer just as long to create outstanding copy? Doesn't it take a designer just as long to come up with the layout? Doesn't it take just as long for a developer to make something out of nothing as a director, editor and production crew? In some ways, with digital, you should say you should be paying more, especially if you're creating something that is brand new, which unlike traditional doesn't fit neatly into a template. Code is much less forgiving than FinalCutPro. Resizing a print ad is a lot easier than cross-platform development or responsive design. And yet there is the perception that it should cost less.

And, I agree, the model is broken. But we have also set ourselves up to fail in some regards. We, as an industry, allowed ideas, strategy, and the talent it takes to produce excellent experiences to be devalued through perception.

The fact is that we've always had data. We now just have the ability to have more of it. The bigger question is whether or not that is a good or bad thing. It's definitely a bad thing if we let it overrun creativity, instead of working together. Because, the the reasons people like and buy haven't changed, we've just increased methods and locations.

Bernbach on creative talent & qualities

+ I stumbled upon this great interview of Bill Bernbach about creative talent and qualities. Watch it.



"The real basis for persuasion is to understand what motivates a man," says Bill. He also talks about how it's not just the words that are written but more so what the reader takes away from it. Which is a little funny as earlier today I saw a tweet fly through my feed that mentioned that, which linked Social Brands 5: Comms Leitmotifs, a post about moving from our obsession with media efficiency to right-siding it with effective communications based on a shared understanding through a better interpretation of motivations and the dynamics that drive exchanges.

I strongly agree with this thinking and feel like sometimes we get too wrapped up in the technology or message that we forget some of the basics. In a way this is Advertising 101 (or even Marketing 101).

What is digital?

+ About a month ago, I was at a 2-day interagency session for a client. The goal was to come away with an integrated plan. We started off by doing some group work where there was a mix of clients and folks from different agencies. Day two included breaking out by channel. And that's where the confusion began. And, prompted me to write about it.

These days, digital is a term that I think has taken on the role as "traditional" terminology. It's broad, it has many things living under it. Yet, one of the things that sets it apart from "traditional" is that these days, many brands have different agencies owning different pieces of it. One agency for website, one agency for SEO, one agency for social, one agency for emails (mobile often becomes a undefined group). You don't often see this on the "traditional" side where different agencies are in charge of TV, radio, outdoor, print, etc. So, why do we see it in the digital space?

Anything that gets published to the web requires some kind of SEO. Posting to social networks now is also scraped by bots helping pull up results when someone does a search. Yet, it's often only considered as a piece when doing a website, or SEO campaign.

And that's just one example of this fragmentation that causes confusion. Another is social. Does it fall under PR/Media Relations? CRM? Digital? Who owns it? It all depends on the brand. In some cases, multiple agencies and/or brand groups touch social at the same time.

It's a weird thing that digital has become so spread out and specialized in and among itself.

Personally, I think too much agency fragmentation is a bad thing, especially if the goal is integration. It creates issues of coordination on the brand side. Getting agencies to play nice can be complicated. And, there can be complications with budget issues (which can also effect agencies playing nice).

Rethinking how marketing and advertising works overall requires brands to internally restructure. It's a daunting task but the result can be harmful in the long run if we keep it status quo.

Social Era

+ Traditional Strategy is Dead resonated with me this week when I read it. I've been saying some simliar things lately and it's nice to see others thinking the same way (and that I'm not just off ranting.)

It's helpful to call this new context the Social Era to emphasize a point: while in the industrial era, organizations became more powerful by being bigger, in the Social Era, companies can also be powerful by working with others. While the industrial era was about making a lot of stuff and convincing enough buyers to consume it, the Social Era is about the power of communities, of collaboration and co-creation. In the industrial era, power was from holding what we valued closed and separate; in the Social Era, there is another framework for how we engage one another — an open one. 

Here's the simplest way to define the Social Era. The industrial era primarily honored the institution as a construct of creating value. And the information age (inclusive of Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 phases) primarily honored the value that data could provide to institutional value creation. It allowed for greater efficiency to do the same things that were done in the industrial era. The Social Era honors the value creation starting with the single unit of a connected human. In this framework, powerful organizations look less like an 800-pound gorilla and more like fast, fluid, flexible networks of connected individuals — like, say, a herd of 800 nimble gazelles.

I agree and think there is over-simplification of "social media" and have long been an advocate of dropping "media" from the term. There still seem too many who are seeing social as a silver bullet and looking at it with too small of a scope. Sure, your brand can be on Facebook or Twitter or Pinterest, but why? What are you doing there? And how does it tie in to the larger picture of your brand? If I have a bad experience in your store or with your product, social networks and social media aren't going to help solve that, unless brands start implementing changes from feedback they get on their Facebook wall or in tweets they receive.

This has started me thinking that the next "fad" in advertising and marketing will be a full, holistic approach about what the brand is doing at every consumer touchpoint and how those human interactions and connections are treated. But that's only if companies are able to organize from the inside out to agree to a strategy that takes coordination and sign off across multiple groups in an organization.

10 ways we can improve how we work

+ Some things to work on within the ad industry:

1) Respecting other people's schedules.
If I tell you I'm going to have X done by a certain time, and you schedule your day around that, and I don't deliver, or even notify you of the change, you wouldn't be happy. Don't expect others to move the world around for you if you have epidemic issues with completing your work on time.


2) Understanding when someone says, "I'm busy now, let's schedule a time later."
Walking up to someone's desk and demanding their time right then is rude. If someone is in the middle of the creative process, or even writing a business proposal, there should be enough brain cells in your head to understand that "I'm busy, let's talk in a little while or set up a time to talk" doesn't mean "Yes, I'm free to spend 20 minutes reviewing your changes because whatever it is that you have to talk about is more important than anything else I could be doing at the moment". In fact, the majority of people who tend to pull this wouldn't stand for it to happen to them for a second. The only time this is even remotely acceptable is if you're speaking Greek and the person you're talking to doesn't understand a lick of the language. And let's just say the chances of that being the case are about as slim as


3) The bullshit artists. Kill them now.
There's always someone who seems to trollop through the mire and yet always end up smelling of roses. How? They pawn work off on other people. They manipulate others, craft emails to make others they work with look bad, and generally refuse to take any blame for poor work or lack of work. Stop letting them work their way up the ladder. If you don't stick your foot out and trip them, you're responsible for making other people's lives hell, until someone has the balls to do it. Dead weight does not help you get anywhere…


4) Communication.
I find it extremely depressing, considering the field we are in (communications, if you didn't know), how many people are very poor communicators. It's really not all that hard. Just think for a second before you shoot off an email, even take the extra minute to re-read what you wrote so you can be sure it makes sense. Keep people in the loop. Let them know of changes in schedules. Tell them the information that you just received from a client about the project you're working on.


5) Time management.
People who love to have meetings for the sake of having meetings. Those who give themselves a week to do their work but make others turn it around in a day, sometimes less. Continual revision after revision. Having no idea what you want but you need it yesterday. These are all things that can be avoided. Yet it happens all the time.


6) Taking credit for other people's work.
Advertising is a team business. You work together. Ideas build off other ideas. It's cumulative. It's difficult to be good and not be a team player.


7) Play your roll, let others play theirs.
There's a reason you're an AE and not an art director or copywriter. There's a reason you're a media buyer and not a planner. Sure you can have ideas and work together (see #6), but respect the fact that someone who is laying out an ad or designing a website knows what they are doing to best communicate to the user/consumer/etc. And, yes, you can have an opinion but, when it comes down to it, the reasoning to use X font size or a certain phrasing should be left to the experts. Knowing how to use Word does not a copywriter make. Being able to create a PowerPoint presentation does not give you a degree in graphic design, so put away your fade in reveal skills and leave it to the professionals. P.S. - we use real tools like Creativity and Common Sense.


8) Respect the process.
Just because your boss or client lights a fire under your ass to get something completed does not mean that you can skip the set up channels to get your project to the front of the queue. There's a reason why creative briefs were created. Complete one. It won't kill you. Half-assing the process just leads to more wasted time in getting your project done.


9) Respect people's intelligence.
Don't ask the same question over and over. Especially right after another. It makes you seem like you don't ever listen or think they are a moron. "Did you send the PPT doc? So, they got the doc? Are you sure they got it? So, they should be all set?"



10) We're not saving lives. Have fun.
Let's not kid ourselves here. Sure we're dealing with lots of money in some cases, but no one will die if something goes out late. Keep it in perspective and have fun. You're doing something that many others would like to be doing. Don't forget that.

Dads In Briefs

+ Love this ad for BGH Air Conditioners from Del Campo Nazca Saatchi & Saatchi. Titled "Dads in Briefs" the product is the solution to stripped down dads in the heat of the summer. Nice product as hero. (via Brandflakesforbreakfast)

Pinterest is just a sign of a more visual web

+ Pinterest is the hottest social network right in terms of buzz right now.  I had signed up ages ago and when I first played with it, I didn't really get it, to be honest. Then around the end of the year, I poked around a bit more. I'm one of those types that signs up for the beta of anything, only because I want to see what's coming and be aware--even if I don't want to use it myself.  I'm always curious to see if there are cool ways for my clients to engage using the platform.

What's interesting about Pinterest is more the trend toward the type of network setup more than anything else. There's also The Fancy and minglewing. The Fancy seems to be more higher-end, big dream kind of stuff that describes itself as "a place to express yourself around things you see that you find interesting". Minglewing calls itself a "public discussion board" with loads of social reposting options.

All of these new platforms have some similarities that point to a more visual representation of things we want. In the past, it was just link farms and less imagery. Now the format of these sites, along with flickr's recent redesign, tumblr and other similar visual sites, are putting the photography on center stage. One might say that this is due to the proliferation of tablet and mobile device browsing. And it is much more conducive to that kind of web surfing than trying to read tiny type on a phone. It's an evolution of the way content is being displayed, that's all.

Here's some related links and further reading I've bookmarked over the last month or so:
+ Yup, there's PinClout and PinPuff to see how you rank on Pinterest. My rank was nearly twice as high on PinPuff than PinClout which is odd if they are using similar metrics (PinClout: 40/ PinPuff: 70).
+ Pinterest Infographic: US vs UK Users. Some interesting data, and it's pretty much the reverse demographics.
+ You think Pinterest is big? Here comes The Fancy, with a brand spanking new e-commerce platform.
+ How brands are using pinterest (download PDF)
+ Threadless and Pinterest Valentine's Day promotion
+ Pinterest from a "bros" point of view
+ Pinterest Drives More Traffic Than Google+, YouTube and LinkedIn Combined
+ Pinterest a traffic driver for online retailers + 21 Must Follow Pinterest Users
+ Pinterest Data Analysis: An Inside Look

This and That: 02.25.12

+ With all the hub-bub around Pinterest in the last month, it's no surprise someone pulled out PinClout. Yup. PinClout.


+ Need to work on your presentation skills? Even if you don't, you'll find some good refreshers here. Key takeaway? Practice.


+ One of the folks I follow on Twitter pointed me to this list of 85+ Copywriting Resources post. I haven't had a chance to go through them all, but looks like there are at least a few goodies in the mix there worth checking out.


+ Now that the web seems to be going more to a visual format with the likes of Pinterest, Flickr, Tumblr, etc, there's also a newish site called Cowbird that I am thinking of checking out. They are invite only right now and describe themselves as:

Cowbird is a small community of storytellers, focused on a deeper, longer-lasting, more personal kind of storytelling than you’re likely to find anywhere else on the Web. Cowbird allows you to keep a beautiful audio-visual diary of your life, and to collaborate with others in documenting the overarching “sagas” that shape our world today. Sagas are themes and events that touch millions of lives and shape the human story. Our short-term goal is to pioneer a new form of participatory journalism, grounded in the simple human stories behind major news events. Our long-term goal is to build a public library of human experience, so the knowledge and wisdom we accumulate as individuals may live on as part of the the commons, available for this and future generations to look to for guidance.

A look back at posts from 2011

Everyone does it. I know. But this was less for you and more for me to take a trip back through my activity on the blog here over the past year. Below are some of my favorite posts or ones that I feel had some meaning or value.
+ John Cleese on Creativity
+ Why a Good Brief Leads to Good Creative
+ Why Social Should Drop the Media
+ Creativity in the Digital Space: Part 2 & Part 3
+ QR Codes: Hot or Not?
+ 6 Tips for Ad Peeps, Old and New
+ Why Copywriters Need to Care About Typography
+ Your Ideas Are Your Value
+ Using Websites to Tell Stories
+ 10 Things That Scare Creatives
+ Branding and Digital: Part 1 and Part 2

Branding and Digital: Part 1

+ You so often hear about branding and broadcast, print or even out of home. But what about in relationship to digital? Social? Email? 

I recently watched Art & Copy. Yes I'm late to viewing this film. But that's not really relevant. I spent an hour and a half listening to some of the greats talk about the business. Talk about branding and the work they've done. Folks like Lee Clow, Hal Riney, George Lois, Dan Weiden, and Mary Wells Lawrence. They talk about finding key ways to talk to people. Finding the nugget of truth about a product or life and wrapping them together. Making someone feel something. Telling a story of what the company could do for you. Campaigns like "Just Do It", "Think Different", and "I Want My MTV" struck a chord. They're as Weiden says like lightening striking. Concepts and ideas that resonate with the population and become part of pop culture.

It's all about branding. But what is branding? Branding is defined as "the promoting of a product or service by identifying it with a particular brand." So, then what is a brand? 

David Ogilvy's defined a brand as: "The intangible sum of a product's attributes: its name, packaging, and price, its history, its reputation, and the way it's advertised."

The American Marketing Association defines a brand as a "Name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller's good or service as distinct from those of other sellers."

For a very long time, the role of branding has been held by TV spots, radio ads, print ads, billboards and the other rash of tactics in the realm of traditional advertising. That role has been all about storytelling, image and the emotion it conveys to the customer.

This is what i learned in school and what I practiced at the start of my career when my bread and butter was radio spots, print ads and the like. 

These days I spend all my time working in the digital world. And I try to apply these concepts to the work I do on a daily basis. But how does any of this thinking really translate to the new media that's out there? Or does it?

For the five or six of you that actually read this blog when I post something new, this is what I want to explore. Because I think what is going to finally happen in the near future is that we will see much more of these concepts brought into the digital workplace. And for sure, this is already starting to happen. But I have a sense that it will blow up even larger in the next few years while taking some different turns.

Stay tuned.