I’m the bad guy

 

Last week, I was in a local school, doing an author visit. Over the years, I’ve developed this into a kind of show. You don’t want listen to me droning on, I say to the class, and instead recruit a few volunteers to act out scenes from the book. There are props - a ruby-encrusted cane, a “bomb” in a biscuit tin - and a few costume bits and pieces such as tiger ears. And, of course, the villain get-up of eye-patch and stick-on moustache. 

I get the feeling I have more volunteers for the mad dictator and his bodyguard, and the evil drummed-out-of-the-RAF ex-officer Featherstonehaugh than for the young heroes of the story. And maybe it’s no wonder, as - hand-on-heart - I have a lot more fun writing the bad guys. I’m sure that’s true for a lot of writers - just look at James Bond to Batman to Harry Potter.

This article for Contagious, by Tom Beckman of Weber Shandwick, references another article from Wired. Both note the trend to villainy in popular culture - very clear in the world of films (Wicked, Joker: Folie a Deux, Deadpool and Wolverine ...) and showing up on the fashion catwalk too. The author then moves to music and I’m afraid my attention started to wander at the mention of Charli XCX and “brat style.” I began to wonder whether Tom had been given some kind of trend-cliche bingo card at that point. Still, there does seem to be something in the air as far as being on the wrong side of the tracks goes ...

Brands are also having a go at showing their bad side. It must be a relief after all that po-faced, goodie-goodie stuff to do something like Nike did for the Paris Olympics - no it’s NOT about “taking part”!!!

And why not? Villains have more fun, as the school visit demonstrated. If your brand isn’t in some deadly serious, responsible category, maybe it’s more entertaining and memorable to try for world domination with a bit of tongue-in-cheek that holier-than-thou saving the planet.

And talking of that, here’s Javier Bardem (somehow inspired by Iggy Pop?) for Uber Eats. Is your brand good at being bad?

 

Artificial Politics?

 

There’s a certain knack to getting "cultural relevance” (my jury’s out on that term at the moment ...) just right, but today I’ve got an ad that does it 100%.

I am sure I’m not the only one whose Instagram feed is swamped with AI-generated art. Some of it fascinating, clever, thought-provoking. Some, less so.

This ad from Fridays for Future (by Fred & Faris, Los Angeles) was released for Earth Day and timing doesn’t get much better than that. I reckon that even within a month, we’ll be sick to the back teeth of AI-generated artwork in advertising. But this is the first campaign I’ve seen where it’s been used to really good effect.

“Earth is no toy”  is a clever idea, well-executed. It’s topical, arresting and fits the “brand” (I expect Greta would smack me round the chops for using that expression) perfectly. OK, I didn’t get that the politikids were meant to be holding the earth like a ball until I read the background, but does that matter?

I would love to see a version shpwing what the G20 leaders really looked like as children. 

Good Pop Bad Pop Good Book

 

I’m back in the UK, in the old house, busying myself with sifting through junk. Well, not really junk, rather my past, which makes the task simultaneously more fascinating and more tricky.

I’m being accompanied by Jarvis Cocker. Not musically, but in a literary sense. I’m part way through Good Pop Bad Pop which is described as “An Inventory”. Another way that Jarvis puts it is “self excavation” - a sort of archeology of the self via artefacts rediscovered in the loft.

In Chapter 9 of the book, those rediscovered artefacts are FMCG brands, starting with a sliver of soap, worn down to the “distinctive brand asset” and not much more:

Jarvis kept this soapy remnant because the Imperial Leather design changed. Other examples he cites are Marmite, which used to have a metal lid and Rose’s Lime Juice, which had a glass bottle with tiny limes in relief. All of these packs and designs were tied up with memories.

And while I’m not a famous musician, so my Castrol and Rover tins will never end up in an art gallery or hard-backed book, I’ve got a few branded memories of my own.

Most people of my age are nostalgic for the crinkly orange cellophane of the old Lucozade bottle. And what about the Strepsils tin? The empty tin was repurposed by resourceful children for all sorts of things - I kept dried shredded sunflower leaves in one - maybe it’s best not to ask.

Jarvis Cocker’s analysis of why he would have kept a useless scrap of soap is about the aspect of his personality that resists change. He concludes (in one of my favourite passages of the book so far):

I am “over” my problem with change. I embrace change. (Maybe “embrace” is too strong a word: more like “I awkwardly shake hands with change.”) I can move on.

I’ll awkwardly shake hands to that. 

Bloomin’ Lemons

 

In my last post, I referred to a talk by Orlando Wood, which sent me down an Orlando-shaped rabbit hole in search of more of his wise and wonderful thinking. He has published two books, Lemon and Look Out, which sound well worth reading. And as a preview, there’s a 20 minute film, produced in June 2020, those heady days when we thought the pestilence was as good as all over ...

I don’t think a marketing-related film has ever made me feel homesick before, but I’m afraid this one did, with halcyon scenes of the Thames in all its midsummer glory. Where the Lemons Bloom starts with an anecdote about Goethe, and how working as an administrator for the Court of Weimar stifled his creativity, so much so that he took off and fled to Italy in the middle of the night.

This reflects Orlando’s premise: that advertising has become less effective over the last fifteen years or so, due to a shift to the left-brain mode. Flatter, more abstraction, less holistic, less employment of metaphor and humour. No doubt a consequence of the obsession with being “data-driven”.

And it’s not just marketing communications. Culturally, the effect is only too apparent - intense focus on particular words, often taken out of context. Obsessions with categorisation and labelling people. A widespread sense of humour failure and lack of appreciation of nuance. 

Is human intelligence becoming more artificial, I wonder?

We and me

One thing I need to get round to is a revamp of my website, which is hopelessly out-of-date from a technical and user-experience point of view. And the photos probably don't - ahem - reflect how I look these days. I had a look at it recently to see if the content was also in need of a total rejig - and surprised myself.

It still makes sense.

I'm reading Jung again in the form of The Red Book, a generous and apt gift from my college chums, and I'm rediscovering a lot of what must have influenced my worldview as I started my career and has stayed with me ever since.

The idea of the personal and the collective - Jung applied this to the unconscious but it has a universal application:

For every brand, each individual has a different personal experience of that brand. We must try to understand the collective elements of the brand that we have as shared experience in order to develop communications.

And:

There are elements of brands that are personal to each of us in the way that we perceive brands, and there are elements that form the brand's collective unconscious that unite the users of that brand.

I was pleased to see this theme taken up in an IPA essay entitled The Wide and Narrow of It by Omar El-Gammal from Wunderman Thompson. The author stresses that brands are not built through carefully constructed communication plans that we as marketers somehow control but through the we (shared cultural experience) and the me (personal experience). Thinking about the cultural and the individual is a good way of looking at brand growth.

The collective, cultural, call it what you will would always be my starting point to understand the essence of a brand. I believe that humanity has more in common than that dividing us and it's here that I'd start to find how my brand can be relevant to a broad section of the human world yet still maintain its own individuality and uniqueness.

This. And This. And This ...

The streets outside may well be empty, but the dear old information superhighway is getting mighty congested.

Dormant WhatsApp groups are springing into life with the vigour of April tulips.

Long-lost relatives are emailing and Skyping and FaceTiming and StrangeTiming and StaySafeing.

The middle-aged have taken a crash-course in the media of the young, from Zoom to TikTok to Houseparty.

Streaming services have turned into less of a stream and more of a torrential, gushing river in danger of breaking its banks.

Museums, galleries, cinemas and educational establishments have flung open their virtual doors. I have even joined a virtual pub.

Along with all the memes on overdrive and "useful stuff to do if you're bored" (bored????) there's a unstoppable current of mis-information about COVID-19 and previous pandemics, from conspiracy theories to misleading medical advice to manipulated statistics to fake stories.

"Anywheres" are being forced to becomes "Somewheres" with all the inadvertent hilarity that Home Office brings.

And meanwhile, many of the "Somewheres" are out of the front line, or wondering whether there will be a Somewhere - a small business, a livelihood, a home - when all this is over.

Talking of "when all this is over", there is also a deluge of seminars, studies and articles speculating on what, exactly, will be the "new normal". No-one knows, of course.

I'm not convinced that the world will become obsessed with hygiene. Maybe in combination with more interest in immunity and how to be better prepared next time.

I'm also not sure about the "online as default" prediction that's flying around. There isn't really a substitute for reality and face-to-face meeting. People are social animals and social media will only take you so far. There's already a yearning to get back together, with "meeting friends"  as the Number 1 thing people will do after the crisis.

And will we be better people? Again, for every high-minded soul that's meditating in the morning, dashing off a novel or symphony in the afternoon and delivering essential groceries in the evening, there are plenty sitting around, guzzling down comfort food and too much booze, while bombarding the world with "hilarious" memes. Not to mention the spinners of conspiracy theories and bogus medical advice, the con-artists and the opportunists (thanks, whoever you were with your kind offer of a "free financial consultation" so that I don't lose all of my pension).

Times change, but human nature doesn't.

The hating gene

A bit of a mini-trend that's been going on for a year or two is the idea of getting your DNA analysed. This plays into human narcissism, of course - certainly a step better than all those personality tests or getting your colours done or blood group analysis. And it's been used creatively, usually in the form of those 'social experiments' where a tough, shaven-headed and tattooed bloke with nationalist leanings is horrified to find some of his ancestors coming from the Indian sub-continent (for example.)

But now this trend has been used in what may be one of my favourite TV spots of the year so far, for one of my favourite brands - Marmite. In a wonderful piece of not-quite-science, The Marmite Gene Project has taken cheek swabs from over 250 individuals to try and find if there are genetic markers for loving or hating the gunky savoury stuff.

To the sounds of Elgar's Nimrod, we have a collection of characters -  the expectant new parents, the stroppy teenager, the nervous young man, the affronted wife and many more - reacting to the results and those of their nearest and dearest. Beautifully acted, some lovely observation and a bit of a mickey-take of all those po-faced 'social experiment' ads.

It makes me proud to be British. Thank you, Marmite and Adam & Eve/DDB.

Now, the clever trick here is this: the agency didn't latch onto a random piece of pop culture and force-fit it into the brand, or try and 'claim it.'

What they have done is to start with the brand truth and show and tell this in a fresh new way using current pop culture.

I love it!

Mad Man

Given that ad agencies are crammed full of writers, it's a surprise that there aren't more novels set in the world of advertising. Although a few copywriters make the transition into full-blown author-hood - Salman Rushdie and Fay Weldon spring immediately to mind -  they tend to avoid the agency and their former workplace as subject matter, perhaps wanting to distance themselves from it.

Films and TV series seem a more fruitful fictional home for ad people, especially since Mad Men has graced our screens in all its Martini-era glory. And every now and then, a film will pop up featuring an ad man whose conscience gets the better of him, such as Crazy People or What Women Want.

Looking at the handful of novels there are, the most obvious route seems to be to play it for laughs, as in the books by Matt Beaumont. There is dark humour and satire, too in Frederic Beigbeder's 99 Francs, of which I have an English translation that suffers a little, apparently, from the transplantation out of its native tongue. I even admit to having made a start to an ad agency saga myself, with a friend, in the early 90s. It was third-rate chick lit and thankfully, we soon got bored with the project.

I was therefore pleased to come across The Zoo, by ad man Jamie Mollart. He has taken the bold step of writing serious fiction about a completely obnoxious advertising director on a self-destructive downward spiral. I should say as a warning that, despite its title, there's nothing remotely fluffy here. It's a gripping, gritty, nightmarish tale with no holds barred. And it pays off - best if I leave you with my review from amazon and recommend that you read The Zoo yourself:

Almost everyone I know who has worked in advertising or marketing has had attacks of conscience, from the small twinges of "isn't this all a bit trivial" to the full blown attacks of "why I am wasting my life and talents as the mouthpiece for dubious companies." For James Marlowe in "The Zoo", the full blown attack surfaces as part of a heavy cocktail of drink, drugs and family problems as the once-successful ad man's life smashes and fragments into psychosis. "The Zoo" intersperses chapters chronicling this descent into madness with chapters where James is in a psychiatric hospital, his thoughts dominated by "The Zoo" of the title - an enigmatic collection of toy figures. Are these malevolent, or do they represent meaning and possibly redemption?

This story is original and compelling, and like the substances James abuses, totally addictive. The descriptions of the psychotic episodes are nightmarish and visceral - there are touches of William Burroughs here, as well as Irvine Welsh and Bret Easton Ellis. It's an ambitious work, with plenty of social commentary as well as a fascinating glimpse into the subject of blood minerals, via the fictitious African country, Nghosa.

The ad agency lifestyle portrayed is recognisable to anyone who has worked in the business, but I felt it reflected the way things were in the last decades of the last century, rather than how things are today. Advertising agencies in the 21st century are struggling to survive, and have had their wings of excess cut by the bean-counters.

However, I'm pleased that the author created the obnoxious anti-hero James Marlowe. It makes a change to read a story about someone who has next to no redeeming features, but in whom you can recognise (unfortunately) some of your own worst characteristics. "The Zoo" has something in common in this respect with Frederic Beigbeder's "9.99" - it's a mirror to the dark side of ourselves.

Not easy subject matter, but very easily read, "The Zoo" gets a thumbs-up from me.

Pseudo Choice

I'm reading a dystopian/speculative/sci-fi whatever-it's-called-these-days novel at the moment: Future Perfect by Katrina Mountfort. 150 years into the future, the human race live in CitiDomes rather reminiscent of Center Parcs, subscribe to a set of MindValues that wouldn't be out of place on a boardroom wall and have given up worshipping anything remotely spiritual. Instead, the idols are those that have BodyPerfect status and are the media darlings of the non-stop diet of reality shows. Needless to say, the BodyPerfect guys and girls look as if they have swooshed out of advertising stock photos.

It's fiction but it doesn't feel so far from the truth that we're seeing now. Chris Anderson's book The Long Tail is now 8 years old and while it's true that we do have endless choice, not only does Google make it difficult for us to find the end of the tail (or even the beginning of the end of the tail) - did you mean X? Show results for etc. etc. etc - but when it comes to it, most people are more comfortable not having to bother. Who goes beyond the first page of search engine results on a regular basis?

I wrote about conformity in my last post and I sometimes wonder in branding and advertising if we are seeing a mass-homogenisation, a group tending towards the mean. Although globalisation does have its benefits, it does mean that everyone is using those same corporate values, chasing the same perfect customer experience, latching onto the same cultural insights while believing they're creating something unique. It's not just the stock shots that we're all dipping into, but the strategic part, too.

I read a brilliant article in the New Yorker a couple of weeks ago, which mentioned Theodor Adorno and the Frankfurt School regarding "Pop Culture as an instrument of economic and political control, enforcing conformity behind a permissive screen."

Are we offering genuine choice with our brands and communication? Or, to quote Adorno, "Freedom to choose what is always the same?"

I should Co-Co!

Anyone who works in marketing cannot have avoided the barrage of c-words that have characterised the marketer's vocabulary so far this century. Or more strictly said, Co-Words.

Thanks to the marvel that is the internet, we are all connected these days, cheerfully collaborating, co-creating and co-operating in our communities.

But is it all really so co-sy? If you just stick to the areas of the internet that you feel at home in, with like-minded communities, you probably feel co-mfortable most of the time. But under the co-ver, it's there. There are followers and leaders, there are hierarchies. And more often than not, if someone decides to do something that involves active participation beyond liking and agreeing, it will fall apart unless some of the participants actually meet face-to-face.

A recent book by Richard Sennett, Professor of Sociology and Humanities, called Together, is all about co-operation between human beings. Current politics (and indeed media) encourage tribes rather than cities, which is why co-operation, rather than being on the up, is a vanishing skill.

Because communities and co-operation are two very different things. Communities are a group of like-minded people, while co-operation describes working/doing together to a common end, often with people who are very different to oneself.

Next time I'm blithely buzzing those co-words around, I should remember that compromise and coalition also belong in that part of the dictionary.

CQ

This is an important book. It’s one of those books that you may find on the business shelf, but it has implications for the individual, for business, for the economy and for society and humankind as a whole.

Bruce Nussbaum’s book is easy to read, but not simplistic. It covers and draws inspiration from a wide range of disciplines, from anthropology and psychology to education as well as design and business. The bulk of the book is devoted to what Nussbaum terms the “5 competencies of Creative Intelligence” which he defines as Knowledge Mining, Framing, Playing, Making and Pivoting. In discussing all of these, he brings a wealth of super examples as well as how-to tips. I like the inclusion of the “back end” competencies Making and Pivoting, as creativity doesn’t end with ideas!

I also found the section on the Economic Value of Creativity in which Nussbaum describes the new economic system of Indie Capitalism inspiring. I think I cheered aloud at least once! This system values chance and human unpredictability rather than reducing to what can be measured as in the efficiency of markets system.

I have a couple of very minor criticisms. Firstly, I found there were rather too many clichés of the “see them as challenges, not problems” type, as well as the repetition of the “we don’t think of ourselves as creative” line. Well, some of us do! The examples in the book have, inevitably, a US bias.

Overall, this is a book that is well worth reading, and I’ll be referring back to it. I particularly like the dispelling of the “lone genius” myth and the focus on the social conditions that lead to creativity. Nussbaum knits together a number of disparate trends, from gaming and crowd-funding, the renaissance of making and the return to local production in a readable and thought-provoking book.  

Art-Tea

We tend to think of business as a force for good as a 21st century concept, with global ambitions to raise women's self-esteem, or save rain forests, or clean the world's water, while selling a few packs of this or that.

But business has a history of doing well and doing good. Just think of those 19th century philanthropist industrialists who built whole towns and villages for their workers. And in the mid 20th century, the ambitions were slightly closer to home but centred very much on culture and education. One of my prized possessions is the Shell Nature Book, which must date from the 50s, full of beautiful artwork of the flora and fauna of this sceptred isle.

Another wonderful example is the Lyons Teashop Lithographs, currently on show in Eastbourne. This was one of many mid-20th century initiatives aimed at democratising art. Interestingly enough, the need arose from a practicality: after the war, J Lyons' Teashops were looking in a rather shabby state of repair and the lithographs were actually commissioned to cover over worn decor.

The work of 40 artists was represented from 1946 to 1955, including famous names such as Edward Bawden (see The Dolls at Home, above), Edward Ardizzone (whose book illustrations I remember fondly from my childhood) and David Gentleman (who I always think of as the stamp man.)

The lithographs, with their palette of faded brick, austerity grey and Air Force blue, are a wonderful and quirky evocation of a vanished but very British way of life.

The branding was subtle, by association, but there can be no doubt that perceptions of the J Lyons brand were enriched by this initiative, even if Millward Brown weren't around to prove it with a Link Test!
 

Weirdness at Work

I have been on Facebook since 2007 and, while I go through phases where either Facebook itself or one or two the users I'm connected to irritate the heck out of me, I do have to admit that this is a brand that's made a difference to my life - and can genuinely be described as a business phenomenon.

I was fascinated to read a blog in Marketing Magazine by Anil Pillai about his experiences in the Facebook HQ, and how the company philosophy is made apparent is the workplace. Things like Facebook being a permanent "work-in-progress", constantly in change, as witnessed by the lack of logos and corporate symbols cast in stone and by "walking meetings". Or hacking and fiddling as a way of life, not just tolerated but expected and encouraged.

Particularly appealing is the feeling of trust, of treating employees as adults (or maybe young student-type adults is the best description). No clocking in or out, as long as the work gets done. This feels similar to the Zappos culture, with its free lunches, nap room and co-created artwork on the walls. Tony Hsieh's Zappos ten core values include "deliver WOW through service" and "create fun and a little weirdness".

I do hope that the everyday internal reality does match what's seen on a snapshot visit from an outsider. And that if someone does want to do a Powerpoint presentation to an audience sitting in a traditional conference room, it's allowed!

Anywhere in the world

There's a lot of talk these days about the trend towards the local. Local produce - with many supermarket chains offering their own lines with certified provenance, or local (and for local read independent) coffee shops and restaurants - and all with the connection to social and mobile media, facilitating access in all senses of the word.

But it seems a shame that, for many people, these thoughts go out of the window and straight onto the local rubbish tip when it comes to holidays abroad. It's far easier to book something all-inclusive in an impeccably furnished but ultimately soulless hotel - which could be anywhere. Palaces of concrete like luxury cruise ships - and with about as much foundation, roots or local character.

The usual excuses justify this behaviour:

"It's great for the children with the Kid's Club"

"I don't want to risk a dodgy tummy or getting knifed in a backstreet on holiday"

"If you pay all-inclusive upfront, there aren't any hidden extras"

Well, no. There won't be any hidden extras. No nasty surprises, but no nice ones either.

Just endless stretches of sanitised, predictable, global-brand-for-discerning-guests.

When fact grows into myth

If I had been given €10 each time I'd heard that "Germany have never beaten Italy in a major tournament" in the last few days, I'd be a rich woman. At first, it was just being repeated parrot-fashion from one journalist to the next, but shortly before kick-off, a simple fact had metamorphised into a full-blown myth. 

Germany was under a curse, with all the attendant implication that they would never be free of it - which of course was substantiated in the 90-odd minutes that followed. And, while facts can be changed, a myth is sticky, and has implications that a higher power is somehow at play. It's out of the hands (or feet) of mere mortals.

Well-known brands also collect myths, which probably had their origins in fact somewhere. Every IKEA group discussion I have attended has always had someone remarking that "there is always a screw missing" - with a wry smile, as if this is the most original comment on earth. And everyone else nods and smiles wryly, too.

It's always helpful to know what the myths are that circulate about your brand - and some brands have been very clever in using these to their advantage in their communication - even if they appear negative at first sight. The "screw missing" myth makes IKEA fallible, human, endearing, even. 

And Marmite has used the "love it, hate it" myth as the basis for the campaign, even creating new myths around the brand, such as the slightly sinister-sounding secret society, the Marmarati.

One word of advice to the German press, though. If you really want to get behind your team, you might want to avoid an "England never win in a penalty shoot-out" situation. That's more that a myth - it's a giant millstone.

Catching the Zeitgeist

The WARC have recently commented on the rise of Cultural Insight in branded communication. Rather than staying within the more easily quantifiable confines of "consumer insight" and "brand truth", brands are looking to the broader cultural context in which a brand operates for their communication ideas.

And companies such as Douglas Holt's Cultural Strategy Group are there on hand to help in this pursuit.

This is all good stuff, particularly if it raises brands above the banality of the "which-scent-of floor-cleaner-best-suits-your-personality" Facebook app syndrome, of which I'm sure we've all had more than enough.

But the challenge to us all is how to find and nail down the thing - if it can be nailed down. Often you only know when you've caught the Zeitgeist years later. Like the Will O'the Wisp or ignis fatuus, our friend is somewhat elusive.

One of the first ads I worked on was the famous British Airways "Club World" launch ad, affectionately known as "Red Eye". With its Wall Street-esque characters and Machiavellian mini-plot, this was 60 seconds (I think...) of pure late 80s Big Business.

And, as far as I know, the "cultural insight" certainly didn't come from some huge mega-quantitative Übertrends to the New Millenium study, but from a few chats with business travellers and a sensitivity and empathy to what was going on culturally in their world.