Where it all began Part 2

Continuing my words of wisdom (aged 14) about advertising. Part 1 can be found here.

'The adverts are devised so to appeal to different kinds of people. Adverts for crisps, sweets etc. may have cartoons on them to appeal to children. Or they may show children in the adverts.

Some adverts for food, washing powder etc. may show a perfect-looking happy family, or a famous personalitie's (sic) family to appeal to mothers.

Adverts for cigars, drinks and after-shave may show men as being very masculine and irresistable (sic) to women. These appeal to most men, particularly those who may be very shy and long for a more exciting life.

Adverts for bubble-bath, hairspray etc. may be very romantic showing a beautiful woman maybe with a good-looking man, suggesting that if you use these things, this will happen to you. These are designed to attract girls and younger women, and sometimes older women who wish they were younger.'

So that's targetting covered! In the next extract I get on to morals and ethics...watch this space.

No pooh-poohing this idea!

I do love the Springwise newsletters. If you don't know them, they are a digest of the week's most innovative product ideas from around the world, a cornucopia of curiosities. Unfortunately these days, rather too many are pointless apps, but there are always a few gems shining through. This week's selection includes 'Smart PJs' - scannable pyjamas for children where the designs reveal bedtime stories when scanned. Then there's a PopUp Agency, six enterprising young creatives who pop up all over the place for 48 hour projects. And finally, the one we have all been waiting for - the 'T.Jacket' which is "a tablet or smartphone-controlled jacket that uses embedded air pockets to simulate hugs and calm children without human contact". Just what a busy working mum or dad needs to stop those important Powerpoint presentations being interrupted by desperate calls from the kindergarten.

I am sure it was via Springwise that I first heard of my favourite new product so far this year: who gives a crap aka the toilet paper that builds toilets. The brand was launched via crowd-funding last July and the concept, design and jaunty pack design combine a typical Aussie combination of humour, no crap and big-heartedness. With killer slogans like "Flush poverty down the loo" and a pledge that 50% of the profits will go to Water Aid to build toilets and improve sanitation, this is an idea that deserves to take over the world.

Definitely one for the blog-roll.

Targetting by the kilo

For all the Doves of the world, who are on a mission to make women (and men?) feel good about themselves, whatever their shape or size, there are always those who buck the trend.

This week, the CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch, Mike Jeffries, has had quotes he made a few years ago regurgitated throughout the internet along with criticism of the company's sizing policy by retail analysts. Mr "Mutton-dressed-as-lamb" Jeffries states that "candidly, we go after the cool kids...a lot of people don't belong (in our clothes) and they can't belong..." Particularly galling for women is that the sizes for woman stop at L, while men's sizes include XL and XXL, presumably to accommodate all those muscly jocks.

Certainly around here, what Mr Jeffries thinks may already be irrelevant as Hollister seems to be the outfitter of choice for "cool teens." (sic)

But in another story this week, even those muscly rugby players will be penalised for their bulk. Samoa Air have decided to charge people on a sliding scale for flights, based on luggage plus body weight. Probably a sensible idea in theory, given the size of their planes, but not the most intelligent move for anyone with an ounce of emotional intelligence. It's not helped by the preponderance of chunky hunky guys on the website, none of whom look less than 80kg!

The really interesting thing will be to see how long it will take Ryan Air to catch onto this one and whether they'll have the guts to risk sabotage via an army of enraged Vicky Pollards.

5 reasons why checklists should be delisted

Checklists and rating cards seem to have crept into just about every aspect of modern life - no sooner have you bought something over the internet, or had a conversation with a service chappie or chappess on the phone, when you're sent some kind of rating card. Restaurants and hotels, even in the most far-flung of places, beg you to rate them on TripAdvisor or to "like" their Facebook page with such an intensity that you get the impression that this is more important than you having enjoyed the experience, or getting a good tip. But these ratings are more pointless than pointless as they can be bulk-bought these days.

There are also checklists to download from the internet for everything from picking a Eurovision Song Contest winner to buying a home to having a baby.

On the work front, checklists abound too. They are usually introduced under some pretext of "having everyone singing from the same song sheet" like some weirdo culty choir. And, although their perpetrators are usually keen to point out that this is just an aid to decision-making, the sad truth is that many people use checklists and scorecards to make the decision for them. And often, getting a good scorecard seems to be an end to itself.

Why should they be delisted? Well, where to start? Checklists are a lazy way of working that avoids intelligent thought. They generate extra pointless work - who hasn't been in a meeting where the "items on the checklist" are discussed at length? They - or their perpetrators - invariably make the mistake of thinking that what can be measured is what is important. They're held up as being a shortcut, but a shortcut to what? To making a good decision? Or to have ticked a number of boxes with arbitrary  headings?

And maybe the most important reason to delist checklists is that the mere process of pre-defining categories (usually based on past experience) is a classic case of rearview mirror thinking which excludes the possible.

If the questions remain in a fixed circle of ideas, then so do the answers.

Where it all began Part 1

Rediscovered in my history exercise book from when I was 14: an essay entitled Advertising.

'Advertising is one of the main mass media in the 20th C. Advertising can be used for many things, the main one being to promote a certain product so that people will buy it. There are advertisments for entertainments. Election propaganda is a form of advertising.

Product advertising may take place on the radio, in newspapers or magazines or on the television. The BBC do not show adverts for products but ITV shows about five or so adverts each quarter hour or twenty minutes.

Adverts are not necessarily lies but many of them are misleading and distort the truth. They often lead people to buy things that they don't really want or need but adverts have led them to buy these things.

Product promotion adverts can appeal to many human emotions, such as greed, pride, vanity and "keeping up with the Joneses." Because television adverts are so short, and adverts in papers etc. may only take up a small area, the most important thing is impact so that the person looking is struck straight away.'

...to be continued!

Emporium of saudade

When I first visited Portugal, in the 1980s, a friend of mine had an old phrasebook with her that had belonged to her father as a young man. It contained such useful phrases as "Where can I have my moustache waxed?" Younger readers, please note that this was something a man would have asked in order to achieve the Salvador Dali or pantomime villain look, rather than something a woman would ask in order to get rid of unwanted facial hair.

A Vida Portuguesa, which has two bricks-and-mortar branches so far, could probably cater for that request. A quick look at their website revealed that they do indeed stock wax, although it may be more suited to shining floors than twirling moustaches. As well as wax, the store specialises in all manner of original Portuguese brands, many of these handcrafted and all offered in gorgeously nostalgic original packaging.

There are shaving brushes and soaps, sardines and sweets - and the website uses the Portuguese word saudade (which is untranslatable but approximates to a deep emotional state of nostalgic longing) to describe the power of these brands.

It's a smilar feeling to that evoked by looking through what Manufactum has to offer, and tickles the same the nerves that get all warm and fuzzy when I see an English shop or market stall here stocking Colman's Mustard, HP Sauce, Marmite and Lyle's Golden Syrup.

Whether you're Portuguese, German or British, these sorts of stores are a welcome antidote to all those Global Brands with their drearily consistent bland pack designs.

A Vida Portuguesa probably won't rescue the Portuguese economy single-handedly, but if the store can instill pride back into Portuguese produce, it's a step in the right direction.

Don't tear down my silos

We're encouraged, these days, to discourage silo thinking.

In communications, we need to think integrated and stop all those digital johnnies and all those TV johnnies and all those guerilla jills getting ensconced in their silos and not talking to each other, then producing something horribly inconsistent and fragmented and non-synergistic and just...wrong.

And in brand management, we argue that "the brand" is more than the responsibility of the marketing department. A living, breathing, growing and healthy brand can only be the result of collaboration and openness internally between departments, and with our external stakeholders. No secrets, no hogging data, no ignoring or resisting what the guys in the other silo are up to.

And, most of this makes sense. For brands.

But I am not a brand. At least, I wasn't the last time I looked. I was somewhat non-plussed the other day when YouTube suggested I change my user name, I think, to bring it more in line with my Google name, or my Facebook name (or are they the same these days?). There was some burble about how all this would make me easier to find, or more famous or more profitable or something. They were even up for suggesting suitable names for me.

I didn't pursue it further because I like my silo approach on the web. I am a multi-facetted creature and intend to stay that way. If some clever clogs makes the link between Extrawurst and the trailer for my children's book on YouTube then good for them. I've got nothing to hide.

I just don't necessarily want it all joined up.