Topical Press done right, I believe
October 16, 2011 Leave a comment
I loved this. Opened the paper on Saturday morning. Saw this, smiled, and believed a little bit more. Top notch.
A couple of minutes, two dozen moleskine and twenty year’s experience.
June 11, 2011 Leave a comment
A few weeks back a friend was describing a visit to a repairer. He’d been despatched by his wife to have the zip on one of her (implausible number of) handbags repaired. The zip kept jamming at the same point, adjacent to where the two sides of the zip couple. He was hoping the zip could be replaced. (She was quietly hoping that it couldn’t.)
He handed the bag to a man in a leather apron who inspected it closely, surveyed it from a few angles, peered closely at the recalcitrant zip, examined the underside of the strap then stated, without any fear of contradiction, “she usually carries it on her right shoulder”.
He wandered away, returning with a peanut slab-sized block of metal and a small hammer. He tapped the zip half a dozen times, gently, like a woman on a first-date hatching a crème brulee. Then he ran the now free-flowing zip up and down a few times, smiled with a warranted sense of professional pride, and said “I’ve seen this a few times. Women carry their bag on the same shoulder, all the heavy stuff slides to one end, the whole bag stretches and the teeth of the zip get out of alignment”.
“That’s brilliant”, said my friend, “how much do I owe you?”
“Don’t worry about it” replied the craftsman, “it only took a couple of minutes”.
But it didn’t. It took about twenty years. Experience, practice, a trained eye and a skilled hand, all built up over twenty years. Which is what he should have charged for.
This was nicely paralleled in a meeting I was in a couple of years ago. A client was presenting a brief to an agency. He asked if there were any questions. A copywriter, who had spent the majority of the meeting doodling in his moleskine, said “wouldn’t it make sense just to …. [do something very simple that I can’t really explain here]“. Everyone in the room agreed that it would indeed make sense just to …. [do something very simple that I can’t really explain here], and that, not only did it make sense, it was a fantastically good idea. The client was most delighted of all, particularly with himself, when he announced “that’s a great idea, and what’s even better is I won’t have to pay for it because it only took a couple of minutes to come up with”.
Absolutely. A couple of minutes, two dozen moleskine and twenty year’s experience.
Old people. Apparently they know stuff. And don’t mind telling you.
September 19, 2010 1 Comment
I had an interesting discussion with a friend last week. She’d been attending an agency WIP, accompanied by a new team member who hadn’t previously dealt with an advertising agency.
He only had one question afterwards – is everyone in advertising that young? Her answer was, pretty much, yes.
I’ve read plenty as to why this might be. It’s possibly because advertising’s an industry driven by the new and the fresh, and these two perspectives are believed more likely to come from young people. It’s possibly because advertising’s a stressful industry with long hours and only the young have the stamina. Or it may be because advertising’s an industry that still enjoys a veneer of glamour and young people find the possibility of glamour unnaturally attractive.
All of which may be true, but I’ve been wondering about the implications for the industry of employing so many young people.
And I think, courtesy of Boing Boing, I may have found what the implication might be. BB reports on a recent study conducted by Scientific American highlighting the tendency of older people to be both more honest in assessing a problem and more helpful in making suggestions to solve it.
The study showed people a picture of a clearly obese teenager and described a number of obviously related problems – sleeping difficulties, lack of energy. Participants were asked what advice they would offer.
Only a third of young people raised the teenager’s obesity as the source of the problems. Young people also offered far less advice, and did so clumsily. Older people were much more honest about the obesity (80% mentioned it) and offered twice as much advice, in a much more empathetic way.
Which if you replace ‘obese teenager’ with ‘poorly articulated brief’, and ‘sleeping difficulties’ and ‘lack of energy’ with ‘average advertising’ and ‘poor sales’, rather nicely sums up a challenge faced regularly by most agencies.
And exactly as in the research, my guess is that young people aren’t likely to mention the real cause of the problem, nor be that helpful in suggesting ways to solve it, while older people are much more likely to confront the real issue, and much more likely to be able to helpfully address it.
(I am, for the avoidance of doubt, an old person.)
PS. Imagine my delight when having written this post I came across the story of Tony Dell. At the age of 90, Tony is still working, five days a week, at Delaney Knox Lund Warren. And maintaining his blog.
The ‘confident walker’ and the ‘preemptive solver’
August 29, 2010 1 Comment
I often traverse Queen St (which, for the benefit of my vast international audience, is the main street of Auckland’s CBD). This traversal is made easier, and surprisingly more entertaining, by the fact that as a very busy street, traffic in all directions at major intersections is stopped roughly every 90 seconds to let pedestrians cross.
There are two things I find entertaining in this.
The first is that it gives me the opportunity to mention that this kind of crossing is known as a ‘pedestrian scramble’ or, more lyrically, as a ‘Barnes Dance’. When history judges this blog, never let it be said that it did not expand minds.
The second is that these intersections are where you find the ‘confident walker’. This is the person who strides out boldly before the ‘walk now’ signal goes green. This individual is keen for all to understand that he (and he is always a he) is an unnaturally capable pedestrian. He has memorised the phasing of the lights, so committed is he to his pedestrian craft. Or, as I prefer to imagine it, rather than memorising the phasing he simply possesses some preternatural affinity for traffic lights, an affinity so advanced and inexplicable that in certain town planning circles he’s referred to, in appropriately reverential tones, as ‘the crossing whisperer’.
This ‘confident walker’ believes he is sending a message that says ‘I am a very busy person with places I need to be. In the course of being busy I cross roads regularly, this road in particular. So much so that this road is my domain, and as you can see, I am its master. I am a leader and I wait for no (green) man. You may follow me with confidence for I am the Lord of the Barnes Dance’.
The message he’s actually sending is that ‘I am a loser of quite desperate sadness. My life is so bereft of genuine meaning that I derive my greatest sense of personal accomplishment from believing I am a member of an elite class of pedestrian’.
I’m genuinely amazed I’ve never seen a ‘confident walker’ get hit by a car.
It also occurs to me that there is an obvious advertising agency equivalent – the ‘preemptive solver’.
They’re the people who insist on answering every question before it’s been asked. Before a need’s been identified, they’re in opportunity mode. Before a problem’s been defined, they have a solution proposed. They’re never happier than when finishing a sentence on your behalf.
They are keen for everyone in the room to appreciate that they possess both uncommon sagacity and extensive experience. They wish the meeting to understand that no one is closer to the client’s business than they are. They would also like the meeting to know that it can relax, secure in the knowledge that they have clearly spent a great deal of time in the agency environment, and no matter the eventuality, they have it seen it, done it, and contact reported it.
They believe they’re sending a message that says ‘I think of nothing other than your business. As will be obvious from the promptness of my answer I am a step ahead of you. This is because your needs occupy my every thought. Your wish, before you’ve even wished it, is my command. It should therefore be clear to everyone in this meeting that I am indispensable.’
The message they’re actually sending is ‘I’m not actually listening to what you’re saying. It’s therefore very likely that what I deliver you will be wrong. This is because I am significantly more interested in demonstrating what I know than I am in understanding what you need.’.
I’m genuinely amazed I’ve never seen a ‘preemptive solver’ get hit by a client.
All Blacks, denim and the world’s naffest parents.
July 26, 2010 Leave a comment
Three lovely things have all arrived on my desk(top) in one day. And none of them are ads, or water jugs.
Firstly, adidas helped Richie McCaw give a Northland primary school a great surprise (and quite a fright).
Secondly, Levis joins forces with a small, struggling, Pennsylvania town, helping it rebuild after years of decline.
And lastly, Toyota showcases the Swagger Wagon, featuring two parents offering hip-hop stylings that seem to be loosely based on, well, me.
I’m back
July 11, 2010 1 Comment
So I’m back. After three weeks in the wilderness (not literally, though for many of you I suspect St Heliers is as close to the wilderness as you can realistically imagine), I’ve returned to the blogosphere.
I was struck down by a malady I’ve seen written about by any number of bloggers, particularly those whose subject is their profession.
At some point you find yourself becoming overwhelmingly negative, because there are times, unfortunately, when that becomes your view of the industry. And so every time you sit down to write something you just end up sounding like a dreadful cynic, spouting the kind of venom usually unleashed only when the All Blacks are mentioned within earshot of Stephen Jones.
So the wise, I’m told, shut up and let the moment pass. Which I did, until this AdAge article appeared, and I realised that no matter how negative I may occasionally get about the industry, the industry will always be one step ahead of me, ready to amaze, bewilder and horrify, in ever more remarkable ways.
Because apparently agencies are now supposed to pay to be part of pitches. Bernbach wept.
There’s too much celery in advertising
June 8, 2010 1 Comment
I bought an egg roll for lunch the other day. It was the very definition of appetising – a few well-chosen lettuce leaves, several slices of plump tomato, a bounty of finely chopped egg, all on a French baguette that was crustier than a Levin Grey Power meeting.
I took a bite and for about a second it was everything it promised to be. And then I tasted celery.
I really hate celery. I hate celery almost as much as I hate denim shorts. Because in my experience, celery is only ever used in two ways. They’re both awful, and they both, somewhat surprisingly and completely absurdly, have advertising parallels.
Celery’s most common use is as a replacement for something great. It’s what you have when you’re not allowed chips, bread, or (if you live in Herne Bay) arancini. No one really chooses to use celery for dips or with a little pre-dinner gin. They just choose not to have something massively tasty but almost certainly quite bad for you.
Celery’s what you serve when you don’t want to risk something going wrong. It can’t be overcooked. It can’t be too spicy or too cheesy. You can’t really cock it up. It won’t offend anyone, won’t push anyone toward a coronary and won’t shower anyone’s Cavalli in crumbs. But no one will really enjoy it and you won’t be remembered for serving it. No one ever left a party saying ‘I don’t know about you, but I thought the celery was exquisite’. Because celery’s only purpose is as a generically innocuous, inoffensive alternative to something interesting.
Which (and I think you can see where I’m going here) is exactly what happens with so much advertising. Instead of saying something that might be really interesting, on account of being original and provocative, we too often end up saying whatever’s left after the interesting stuff has been chipped away. Consequently most ads seem to be written to a celery proposition. It’s the territory you are left with after you’ve set aside the big promise or the bold statement. It’s not interesting or compelling, not provocatively spicy or indulgently cheesy, but it is broadly acceptable.
Celery is also used as filler. As with my egg roll it was added, I’m sure with the best of intentions, in the interests of making things a little more interesting, providing a little colour and texture. Only the celery didn’t do that. What it did was distract me from the central point of the roll – the egg.
It’s a lack of confidence that has a sandwich maker adding celery. Maybe he was worried that the egg couldn’t quite carry the day. Maybe he was worried that if someone wasn’t absolutely sold on the egg that maybe a little celery might make the experience seem a bit bigger or a bit more sophisticated. Whatever his motivation, all he succeeded in doing was distracting me from the thing I really wanted with something completely irrelevant and annoying.
Which (and this time I’m absolutely confident you can see where I’m going) offers another parallel with advertising. We seem to find ourselves being asked to throw a handful of celery into an execution in the hope it will be more interesting. And just like the sandwich maker, it’s a sign of a lack of confidence, of being not entirely sure that the offer’s actually up to it. So why don’t we just throw a little something else in there too. You never know, if they don’t like egg that much, maybe we’ll sell them on the celery? Maybe the celery will make us feel a little more rounded, like we’ve got more to offer? Surely it couldn’t hurt to put a bit of celery in? But, like the egg roll, it’s a distraction, one more thing getting in the way of telling a really simple story, really well.
So the egg roll that promised so much proved to be utterly disappointing, ruined by the addition of completely unnecessary celery. It ended up in the bin, because with egg rolls as with advertising, why would I choose to waste my time on something I wasn’t enjoying?
Twitter Parade
May 17, 2010 Leave a comment
This is almost utterly pointless, but great fun. It gives you the entirely illusory sense of being the leader of your own battalion, legion or, as I prefer to imagine it, posse.
From what I can work out it’s from KDDI, a Japanese telco, who put it together to promote smartphone usage. If you’re a Twitter enthusiast, do it.
Apparently there’s nowt more predictable than ego
May 13, 2010 Leave a comment
Alec Brownstein wanted a job in a New York agency. This is what he did.
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