Missed Connections
July 22, 2009 Leave a comment
This is lovely. Sophie Blackall provides illustrations to accompany posts she finds on Missed Connections websites. This makes me feel more optimistic than anything I’ve seen in weeks.
What’s age got to do with it?
July 22, 2009 1 Comment
An interesting bit of research today (courtesy of comScore) highlighting that people over the age of 55 are more likely to visit a social networking site than a business, travel or technology site.
Interesting mainly in that it has been greeted with the surprise that betrays the stereotype that social networking, like so much else in our society, is the preserve of the young. This stereotype of an older, out-of-touch consumer seems to be amazingly difficult to budge.
Why does the Marketing discipline cling to this palpably ageist view?
We’re obviously a youth-focussed society. Ageing equals dying and that’s never a good thing. Youth equals attractiveness (which in turn equals sex) and that’s always a good thing. Old equals disappointment and regret. Young equals opportunity and potential.
Unfortunately I think it’s nothing more than a reflection of the discomfort we as a society have with the idea of a vibrant older population. We just find it more comfortable to imagine that at a certain point people don’t buy new clothes, watch TV shows that don’t involve cooking or gardening, have sex or use the internet for anything other than genealogy research. I’m puzzled as to why this view prevails but it seems, sadly, to do so.
And so brands simply reflect the prevailing societal view.
I can think of so few examples of brands that embrace the idea of being grown-up. I’m sure they’re there, but none leap (with youthful vim & vigour) to mind.
I’ve always loved this TVC for Orange. It’s a wonderful celebration of growing older.
A.A. Bondy
July 20, 2009 Leave a comment
I can’t recommend this guy highly enough. If, like me, the sound of an acoustic guitar and a lone voice are your kind of thing, it doesn’t get better than this. Buy this album if you find it.
The long tail
July 20, 2009 1 Comment
I spotted this store the other day. It’s in a reasonably prominent retail location (at least if you catch public transport in Auckland). And it seems to deal entirely in canine-themed art. Sculpture, portraiture, even a doggy still life, all celebrating man’s best friend.
Now that, surely, is the very definition of niche artistic interest. And proof that the long tail exists (pun intended).
When URLs go bad
July 19, 2009 1 Comment
I saw this a couple of weeks ago. I laughed as a drain might.
I'm not sure they really thought this through
An unchanging world
July 19, 2009 1 Comment
The discussion of how unchanging advertising agencies have been over the last fifty years is a bit tiresome. It’s a lazy criticism that ignores the fact that the work coming out of many agencies has changed enormously over the last five years, let alone the last fifty. But you can understand where the criticism comes from when so many agencies look the same as they always have, sound likewise and cling, with transparent desperation, to their broadcast-centric solutions and their over-complicated, title-heavy structures.
I was in a locksmith the other day and was struck by the fact that it is the only other business I can think of that has, in both appearance and delivery, changed as little as the advertising industry. Walk into almost any suburban locksmith, shut the door behind you and you could quite readily believe that it’s 1976. Most of the stock hasn’t rotated since that date – the stands of shoelaces, the dusty tins of Parade Gloss polish and the gold-plated cigar cutters. The guy behind the counter is clearly pining for the days when a customer would venture in requesting three keys cut for his new Holden Belmont, a pair of Dr Scholl’s therapeutic insoles for his Mrs and a faux-pewter drinking vessel, engraved with the legend ‘Out of my mind, back in ten minutes’, to take pride of place on the wetbar he’s just had installed in his Den. In his heart the locksmith is cursing these new-fangled cars with their keyless entry and apartment buildings with their access codes and keycard readers. He just wants things to be like they were and for people to want more keys.
It feels a bit sad and you wonder how all these locksmiths manage to survive, exactly the same feeling I get when I go into most advertising agencies.
The importance of context
July 19, 2009 Leave a comment
I’m always conscious that this point of view betrays my old-manishness, but I really struggle with how people in our industry choose to dress. We’re a branding industry. We preach the immutable law of first impressions. As media people we know that ‘environment’ matters – that a message’s immediate surroundings provide its context – such that a message for a rejuvenating hair treatment in the middle of a website championing the curious, but well-documented, pleasure to be derived from a Prince Albert just doesn’t make sense.
But yet in a time in which the world, and specifically the clients that inhabit it, are gravitating towards security, thoroughness and robustness from their partners, so many in our industry continue to dress like 15 year olds gearing up for a trip to the mall or dads about to mow the lawns.
I admit to being a fogey, but doesn’t it undermine just a little our claims to being a serious, rigorous industry?
Fresh Media
July 19, 2009 1 Comment
We need to stop looking at Media as an inventory business. I keep getting into conversations that describe media as something that’s stocked on shelves. The logic seems to go that for any given task a selection is chosen from the shelf, a price negotiated and a schedule implemented.
We need to start seeing Media not as existing inventory that’s stocked, but as opportunities that are created. We shouldn’t regard Media as something that already exists and that, at a stretch, might be right for the task at hand.
Media should be something that we create fresh each time we connect a brand with a person. And the most compelling way to make that connection might not exist until we understand how that person can be connected with that brand.
We need Media to be a fresh rather than a packaged business.
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