I've been thinking a lot about check-box marketing lately. Basically, it's marketers who use their influence to get things done - a lot of things done- without investing in a process that would involve doing good quality work and supporting the brand in a meaningful way. They cross a lot of items off their to-do list and wind up actually not doing much for anything.
When I think about where I want to work next, I find myself abhorrent to the though of working with check-box marketers (check-box anything, really). Because while I admire the "get it done" attitude, I find that at the end of the day it bankrupted everyone involved (including the brand). You didn't do anything truly worth doing. You didn't learn anything truly worth learning. People are not left with anything to display to future employers (or even to themselves) that they were particularly proud of. Some of the things they may have done in a situation might have been excellent given the circumstances - poor brief, no time, no money, etc.. But they would not be judged favorably outside of the environment in which they were created.
So I am going to use the next job to double down on quality and really do only excellent work.
BNET has a roundup of the most despicable advertisements of this entire year and here they are:
10. Red House Furniture:"Where White People and Black People buy furniture." Actually pretty funny in a mostly unintended sort of way. How they thought it would sell furniture is beyond me.
9. Boost Mobile: Mrs. "Claus Screws Frosty the Snowman." Also pretty funny. With most of the nation's politicians, athletes, and Hollywood celebs cheating on their spouses, I fail to see why a claymation version of Mrs. Claus bopping Frosty is all that offensive. At least she does admit that it is wrong.
8. Volvo: "Vampires drive them. They also drive motorcycles, but don't think about that." Another movie tie-in ad that the business people thought would be a good idea because it seems smart, but that never actually made sense, you know, in REALITY. I actually pity the creatives that had to do this because, well, I pity myself when I have to do it.
7. Jamison Beer. "Ho White and the 7 Dwarves" Pictured here. I actually think it's kinda funny and I appreciate the juvenile humor. The BNET writer didn't like it. But then, I doubt he's in the target demo of immature 15-year-old-at-heart guy guys who never liked the story Snow White in the first place.
6. Miracle Whip. "Don't Be So Mayo. Be hip and trendy like these paid actors doing weird things in a cheeky way." It's hard to put your finger on what's wrong with this ad that's trying so desperately hard to make their sandwich spread fit right in with their wrongheaded perception of "young people" cultural norms. I don't know what it is, just rubs me the wrong way.
5. Palm Pre: "Tamara Hope Pretends To Reflect on Juggling as a metaphor for multi-tasking."Sometimes so many things irk you about an ad that it's hard to parse out exactly what they all are. Was it the overly sentimental tone that she uses? Is it the fact that I waited all that time to find out that
she's employing a hackneyed metaphor? Is it that her eyes are telling me that she has a really good story for me, but her eyes lied? It could be all of these things and the music that just piled on the over-try.
4) General Motors: "We're reinventing ourselves because obviously the old "ourselves" was bloated, inefficient, and lazy. Oh, and unprofitable."So I actually thought this ad was pretty well done. It was obviously inexpensive to make, so that fits with a bankrupt company advertising in the first place. The V/O was nice, the writing was fine, the music worked, and the clips they chose were active and upbeat.
3) Ralph Lauren: "Filippa Hamilton as deathcamp survivor with rad clothes."A print ad that actually got posted to the site "photoshipdisasters.blogspot.com." She reminds me of someone though. She reminds me of the blond assistant to the evil mastermind in The Incredibles. She also reminds me of licorice rope and eels.
2) World Wildlife Fund: "Let's employ the World Trade Center attacks to get people off their asses to save the animals."Sounds like a bad idea to me. But I wouldn't know since DM9DDB Brasil removed the YouTube video. Bummer. Instead, I give you this nice video of that famous graduation speech set to lounge music.
1) Virgin Mobile: "Case of the disembodied mouth." The woman puts her cell phone down and her mouth gets detached from her face and continues the conversation with her mom. I actually liked this ad. Kinda. It's trippy. But I wonder where the girl went.
I've been trying to sort this out in my mind for eight years, and now I think I've finally got it. Why do Republicans win elections?
Republicans are more clearly focused on the attack and Democrats are more focused on their reaction to it. Democrats haven't built up their own identity independent of the Republican attack machine. They've allowed the Republicans to run the table and set the agenda.
Republicans are more clear about who their audience is and what those people think and care about. Democrats are trying to appeal to the humanity of all people, but people aren't listening with their humanity in mind. At least most are not. They're listening with their little mind.
On a related note, Americans have gotten more intellectually lazy and incurious in the past decade. Republicans have found it "a natural" to take advantage of that. Liberals...Democrats want people to be their best...to be like them...to think about things and consider the big picture. Republicans say, "I am like you and here's what that means."
Advertising Econ 101: As the economy gets smaller, companies reign in spending and advertising revenue contracts. Less money in the ad pool, means that content-generating media companies have to become more and more competitive with one another for the available dollars.
They pitch constantly. They turn RFP's (requests for proposals) around in a day. They do custom mocks for custom programs. They do lunch, and dinner, and ice-cream socials. They do advertising creative for free. And more and more, they are willing to make their content more, "advertiser friendly."
ADVERTISER FRIENDLY?
What does advertiser friendly mean? It means that the content the media company puts out allows for positive advertiser mentions within the body of reports. It means expose's about the client's products and/or services. It means long love letters disguised as "product reviews," crafted by editors via copy/paste from client press releases. Most of all, it means definitely NOT being critical of your advertisers in the body of your articles or within your videos.
It means being a good business partner.
WHAT ABOUT CONSUMER FRIENDLY?
For consumers, that means your watchdogs are asleep. Or perhaps more accurately, you're watchdogs have eaten something that turned them into friendly, slobbering, kiss-happy golden retriever pups.
After all, media organizations are supposed to be protecting us from dangerous products, irresponsible business practices, shoddy workmanship, scams, schemes, lies, and 100% money-back guarantees with 1000 stipulations. But they're not. Especially during a recession.
EXHIBIT A:
By way of example, Hartford Courant reporter George Gombossy was sacked this month for, as he claims, essentially reporting negative things about companies that also advertise with the paper. Since he's a "consumer columnist," reporting about companies is basically his job description. Since, "Everything's Fine at Sleepy's Matress Discounters," doesn't make much of a story, you can imagine that his articles would need to be somewhat critical of companies just to be doing his job (especially when he might hear things from people about Sleepy's, like they have bugs in the beds). It seems he was repeatedly called upon by management to discuss the "tenor" of his articles when they ruffled feathers of companies that spent money there. Then they fired him.
CAPITALISM STRIKES AGAIN
Unlike Mr. Gombossy, I don't see this as a travesty per se. I see it as capitalism at work. Love it or hate it, that's our system. Unfortunately, media companies aren't very forthright about the fact that this is the system, so they pretend to be "Consumer Watchdogs" when they're really just corporate lapdogs. I wouldn't mind if they blurred or totally disregarded the line between edit and advertising if they would just stop pretending that there was one.
Maybe as consumers we should stop going along with it.
The results of a CMO opinion poll came out and, surprise, they reflected poorly on their advertising agencies. In turn, the blog Agency Spy, being written by ad men and women, laid down some not-so-loving advice for their CMO's brethren to consider, if not memorize and put under their pillow at night.
The first one tickled me, "Here's an idea,
why don't you stay in your job for longer than a year and a half - the
average length of tenure for a CMO? Breaks in brand leadership
generally kill off the current marketing strategy before it has a
chance to soar and spread ancillary wings. Let's say you come in.
Restaff your squad. Hunt for a new agency. Hire the new agency. Go
through the creative process. Get the campaign going and then, guess
what? You're donezo. Patience is a virtue. Get some."
Clearly, it helps when your blog is anonymous.
Here are the other nine:
2. Don't rely on your stinkin' pitch consultants.
3. Don't assume your staff is serving you well...
4. Don't fight your own campaign..
5. Don't forget which agency is which..."
6. Don't blow your wad...
7. Don't act like you are the lord and master of all knowledge...
8. Don't dream think we are miracle workers...
9. Don't be a wuss...
10. Don't forget that sometimes you're too close..."
Catch the whole entertaining diatribe at at Agency Spy. Link above.
Ah the creative critique. For one of vulnerable ego and the burning, insatiable need for affirmation (i.e. basically everyone in advertising) it can be either a thrilling confirmation of your talent or a 98 decibel announcement that you are in the wrong business. Perhaps that's why it's so hard to find people who actually will be straight with you about what they think.
Nobody wants to be the one who crushed you.
It would be easy to eat up all the sugar coating and go on your merry way. But you do need to know the truth. I mean, deep down, you do know the truth. Deep down there's a tiny art director in all of us that can be brutally honest. That yearns for something more from you. And that tiny art director is very often on to something and you need to listen to the tiny art director. But ultimately, if your tiny art director starts eating all the sugar coating that people sprinkle on their comments, then, well, you will truly begin to suck.
There's an illustrator out there who's tiny Art Director is actually his own daughter. He takes direction from her, the brief, he draws it, and then she critiques. Often her critiques are not at all kind.
Witness the tiny Art Director in action on this dinosaur project (one of many dinosaur projects, the tiny Art Director requisitions many a dino):
The Brief: A dinosaur chasing us
The Critique: Where's us? Draw us on the picture! I'm going to fix him the way I like him. This is how I don't like him. Please, please erase him! Erase him now! Job Status: Rejected Additional Comments: Get those claws out of here! Artist Statement: The Tiny Art Director hates this more than anything I've ever done for her, with the possible exception of the crocodiles from the other day.
Most of the tiny Art Director's projects seem to go this way. He very often does not get them right. And that's true with all of our tiny Art Directors. If we really are being true to that voice, we would tear up our first idea, or even second idea, and start over. Maybe that means canceling the client meeting. So be it. Be true to your voice or it will stop speaking to you.
By the way, the tiny Art Director's dad put a book together of the projects that he did for his tiny Art Director. You should check it out.
Being a Creative Director in Interactive, people might assume that I might be techno-savvy, leading edge, early adopter, and evangelizer of all things whiz bang. You'd be wrong. You see, when it comes to what I know about the Interactive space, the information has been hard won. It's been a bit of a slog getting to the point where I know what I know. I'm not a technologist by any stretch.
I'm not phobic either, but let's put it this way...I don't own an iPhone or any hand held device. I didn't really start using the Web until the year 2000. I didn't really know anything significant about the Interactive space until 2003. I didn't even own a cell phone until 2001.
When I started in the Interactive space (joined Yahoo! in 2002), I thought I knew the basics already from doing some banners at my former shop. I didn't know squat. My poor Art Director at Yahoo!, who had come from Carat, taught me everything she knew. Even with Susan Oppelt (nee Sullivan) explaining, re-explaining and occassionally overexplaining everything to me (bless her heart), it took me a year before I really understood.
After five years at Yahoo!, one trip back to the Agency world, and the past two years at another large Internet content provider, I would consider myself about 60% on Interactive. The truth is that there is just soooo much to learn. And there's a degree to which you really need to have an engineering brain to understand. Further complicating matters is that techology is advancing, changing, combining, and re-combining so bloody fast that you can't possibly know everything. This time lag between innovation and creative person's understanding is really a difficult issue for the Web. There's just so much you can do already that it's impossible to get your head around what exists. Plus, as individuals, there are so many things we haven't tried yet.
When it comes to advertising on the Web, I think there are very few creatives who really know what they are doing. And even fewer creatives who fully understand what can be done.
Ricardo Montalban has died at the age of 88 of complications related to being really old.
Ricardo, Ricardo, RRRRRRRRRRicardo. We will miss you so.
His deep, velvety voice. His love of language. His charm and kindness.
I cast Ricardo in a TV voice-over for Coco's Family Restaurants back in 2001. He showed up in the LA sound studio with a walker. His back had given out. I sat with him in the lounge of that studio and he explained to me his technique on warming up his voice. "You do not shout, like some actors, to open up the voice. You gently rev it up like it's an engine shifting gears." Then he demonstrated for me. Later I realized that he wasn't so much passing on the info as he was actually warming up his voice for our spot in a public way and using the instruction as an excuse.
He also told us stories from his acting career and we, my AD and I, lapped them up like thirsty puppies.
I followed him into the recording room. Little by little by little. His back was really fragile.
After he finished the read, which he of course nailed, he complemented me on the script. "Beautiful words," he purred. I thanked him for doing the spot, as it was basically an homage to his old hit TV show "Fantasy Island," but with food ingredients as the guests on the island that are mysteriously transformed into wonderful, though extraordinarily salty, specials of the week at Coco's.
In any case, Ricardo was a perfect gentleman. I imagine that he was a true gentleman and class act no matter where he worked or where he was. And that's how he's portrayed in this New York Times Obit:
Montalban's longtime friend and publicist David Brokaw said the actor
was ''exactly how you'd imagine him to be'' off camera. ''What you saw
on the screen and on television and on talk shows, this very courtly,
modest, dignified individual, that's exactly who he was,'' Brokaw said.
I have to give my buddy Karl Backus (now the Partner at San Diego Shop Blue Horse and Trumpet) the credit for the original idea. And I would like to thank him for introducing me, by way of his idea, to this great man who has now died. I imagine him going to the big fantasy island in the sky, where all of his dreams can come true.
I still use Ricardo's voice technique to warm up my voice before big presentations. It works.
These two ladies speak metaphorically about just how good their yogurt tastes. It kind of reminds me of concepting sessions where you wind up with ideas that over-dramatize your client's product to the degree of ridiculousness. But this would be if you took it even further than that into self-satire. Scratch that, R-Rated Self Satire.
As Americans we are bathing in bullshit every single day. It's unavoidable. So, if we can't avoid it, we might as well come to understand it. This is a group exercise, so if you'd like to point something out to us, by all means, do.
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