There’s too much celery in advertising

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?

Five things brands can learn from Superheroes

I came across some old files the other day (actual files, sheathed in manila). One contained a presentation called ‘Five things brands can learn from Superheroes’. I seem to remember delivering it a Marketing Conference for a brewery client, at about the time Tobey Maguire was a spiderling.

I thought it was still mildly interesting so summarised it:

Superheroes are known for one thing.

This seems to be pretty much universal. You don’t get equivocal superheroes. You tend not to find characters like ‘Batman, who’s also a little bit turtlesque’, or ‘Volcano Man, who’s also quite tornadoey’. Superheroes are known for one thing alone. Why? Because it gives innocent people one reason to remember them, and guilty people one reason to fear them.

Which is handy for brands, too. If you’re known for one thing, you’ll be that much more memorable for customers. And if you’re really good at that one thing, you’ll be that much more feared by competitors.

A good Superhero is a consistent Superhero.

There’s a scene in pretty much every movie in the genre in which the Superhero does something out of character. He spurns the assistance of his one human ally. He reacts with unnecessary violence to an innocent foe. He ignores the call for help when he is most needed.

This is the point at which his superness is questioned. It’s not the severity of the act that matters. It’s the inconsistency. Often it’s nothing more than a change in modus operandi, but the response is usually pretty extreme. The backlash begins. The townspeople revolt. The superhero is ostracised.

It’s because we fear that our heroes will let us down.  And inconsistent behaviour is the first sign that this might be about to happen.

Which also applies to brands. The reaction to inconsistency in brand behaviour is also extreme, because unconsciously we put a lot of faith in brands.  They’re shorthand, simplifying choice.  We know we can buy familiar brands without thinking about it because we know what we’re going to get. We rely on that. So when a brand does something out of character we’re being let down and our reaction is often disproportionately extreme.

A good Superhero understands theatre.

Superheroes are masters of theatre. Capes, masks and the ability to shoot stuff out of your wrists seem to be popular flourishes. You seldom find an understated superhero, for the simple reason that as a superhero your appearances are somewhat limited.  You’re in the business of being extraordinary, and you need to take every opportunity to cement that impression. So you have to go out on a theatrical limb, make yourself extraordinary, accepting the risk that in so doing you might be polarising.

And so with brands.  Your appearances in someone’s life are limited.   So the onus is on you to make yourself extraordinary (assuming this is your ambition). Which means being memorable. Which in turn means embracing the value of theatre, understanding that being memorable in how you present yourself makes it easier to be remembered for what you do.

Every Superhero needs a back story.

We love the story of how a superhero comes to be. It informs everything. History makes sense of the present.  Why those particular super abilities? What is she triumphing over? What will her weakness be? While we like to watch what a superhero can do, we also like to understand why she chooses to do it.

Brands are exactly the same. Every product originated somewhere, every idea was a response to a problem, every graphic symbolises something.  And every brand should strive to have an interesting story to tell.  Because while we’re interested in what a brand can do, we’re also interested in how a brand was created that could do it.

Every Superhero has a weakness.

It’s part of a superhero’s character to have a weakness.  (It’s also handy to have a nemesis to exploit that vulnerability.) This weakness exists solely to make the superhero more human, more normal.  But it’s also often the bit that’s most endearing about them, simply because it’s universal. It plays to the fact that while we admire people for their strengths, we like them for their weaknesses.

Which is something very few brands seem prepared to embrace.  Proud brand managers crave perfection in their charges.  But I think weakness, or even fallibility, is a great thing in a brand. Shared weakness is something we bond over, which is why brands often bounce back so well from a seemingly calamitous public failing – Virgin Blue, Cadbury, possibly even Toyota. Brands become much easier to relate to, and embrace, when they don’t pretend to be perfect. Because weakness, at least as much as love, is the universal language.