You know what I'm thankful for? I'm thankful for cheese.
Because without cheese, burgers just wouldn't taste quite as good.
So, that's my marketing thought for the day. Even though you may be creating something tasty, just imagine how much better it could be if you added that little something extra.
This Thanksgiving, I'm thankful for all you guys sharing your cheese.
Today was ad conference day for the old Hee Haw in beautiful Austin, Texas, complete with buzz words, synergies, viral video, CGC, podcasting, blogs, branded entertainment...zzz...zz...zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
If there's one thing marketers know how to do is spew a bunch of bullshit, and seem like they know what the hell they're talking about. But one thing I now understand, is that none of them know what the fuck they're talking about. Everybody's arching darts towards a dartboard from 300 feet, and trying to make themselves feel good about it.
Alright, maybe it's not so dire. A few have some good ideas, and some good intentions, so you just throw your hat in with people with a little righteous conviction, and enjoy the ride.
Which brings me to good old Joseph Jaffe, author of Life After the 30 second spot and newly-anointed leader of Crayon, who I finally got to meet today. Lucky for me, he was gracious enough to allow some time for an interview. If there's one thing the man's got, it's a ton of righteous conviction.
Audio to come hopefully before Thanksgiving, and the print version to come over at The Madison Avenue Journal, at a time to be determined.
*Just to clarify, no, I'm not saying that those things I listed above are bullshit. Quite the opposite. So quit hassling me, punk.
We spend an inordinate amount of time doing things that piss off our customers.
Who loves radio ads? Or TV ads, or whatever, really? Sure, there are the great ones, but as a whole, most consumers would just assume get rid of them. At least, I would if I could.
We've made careers out of doing things that our own customers hate. Maybe they don't hate us, in particular, for them, but did you love McDonald's any extra because of some new tagline? Probably not.
With all this focus on interruption or disruption, maybe we were going for the wrong thing all along. We never really had to interrupt anybody. We just had to make it easier for them to do the things they love, and do so in noticeable ways.
We should be working hard on enabling, making things work better than they did before, for the mutual satisfaction of both our brands and our customers. Is the happy medium really in interrupting their favorite television show, or showing them an ad for no other reason than there may be a couple extra inches of space?
If branding really is about sales through endearment, maybe our tactics aren't the problem, it's our misplaced goals that lead us to these poor conclusions.
Crayon has launched, and I've refrained from really saying too much, partly because I wasn't sure what it would become, but also because I wasn't sure how I felt about it.
I couldn't figure it out, all the right things are being said. We should be flocking like sheep to their lead, right? Well, no. Not yet, at least.
I figured it out while listening to the official Second Life launch on Across the Sound this morning. It felt very self-congratulatory.
Let me explain. Jaffe, as a new media pundit, along with the rest of his team of colors, are meant to be loud, audacious, opinionated. I love the rants, the unabashed faithfulness to finding a better way. But, that's as Jaffe, the man, or C.C., or Shel or Neville, as people. But, this is different.
While they are probably all walking the walk every day, and much better than me, with this new company, I want to see the work. It's all about the work. And, only because they are brand new, there is none. At least not collectively.
While I respect that they're setting up shop in Second Life, and they'll be using new approaches, it still feels backwards. Get out there, make fucking rockin' work, and stand behind it Don't yell about what you're going to do, just fucking do it, and then yell about that. At the end of the day, that's the only thing that matters to anyone from the outside looking in. I don't care how you got there, just get there.
Crayon has the opportunity to change world, I truly believe that. No one has gotten it right yet, but someone will. I trust the cast they've put together to make good decisions to represent new marketing faithfully in the way it should be represented, so they probably have a better chance than most others. I guess I just wish the work spoke first.
And, that goes for all of us, really. It's not yet time to pat ourselves on the back. We all know that there are bigger and better things to come. But, the fact that we feel it doesn't yet make it real. We have no choice but to continually stand behind the work we do, so, throw the parade for that, not for just showing up to the party.
It's unfortunate that marketing has displaced reality. It's official. I am embarrassed to be a part of this dirty industry. Actually, I'm disgusted that there are so many corrupt pieces of shit in an industry that could be used to do so much good.
We hold in our hands magnificently powerful tools, and unfortunately, it can be used to prey on the weakest parts of human nature, our insecurities, body images, fear. Our laziness, hopefulness and trust. We have been exploited.
Our public discourse has been hijacked, partly with the use these tools, by crooked, scared, selfish politicians, more concerned with staying on top than standing for good. The fashion industry has fed our irrational desires for perfection. The notion of human equality is dealt blow after blow from campaigns built on fear of differences. Obesity rates are skyrocketing as our children are fed another comfort food or drink while marketers hide behind a pointed finger at parental responsibility. We slip further into debt as a silly need to be a part of the group is manipulated.
It's true that blame lies equally in personal and parental responsibility, but that obligation does not absolve us of the corporate lust for money, at the greater cost of human decency.
Until we pick today to stand up for the good we can do, the power we have to empower, then we have only ourselves to blame. We have a burden to not accept the excuses and finger pointing, and purge and shun those with only one aim, to selfishly gain.
What legacy will you leave? Will you make us better, and our children stronger?
Get mad, and do something about it.
We're in an industry where everyone is trying to scream the loudest, when all we ever needed to do was get close enough to whisper.
For whatever reason, this thought clarified a few things for me, so I thought I'd share.
Roger Von Oech, the inventor of the Ball of Whacks, long time champion of innovation and inspiration, and all-around nice guy got me talking about his creativity tool by just jumping in and starting conversations. Honestly, I have no clue how we really got to talking, either he commented over here, or I commented over at his place, and I had already read about it over at David's place, and the rest is history.
Now, will anything I have to say move the needle? Probably not, at least not anytime soon. But, Roger is here, ready and waiting, writing and reading, and after a few more people hear about him and his product, those conversations will come easier and faster. And the best part is, Roger is such an easy guy to build a rapport with, it makes the BoW easy for people to want to talk about.
So follow Roger's rules of blogobuzz:
1. Make a product you are passionate about. If you're not passionate about it, you can't really expect anyone else to be.
2. Become a part of the community. And that doesn't mean starting a blog, then immediately jumping up on your high horse while you declare yourself master blogger. That means getting gritty, reading, commenting, and caring about the voices of others.
3. Be generous. Be nice. Then be super nice. Or, in Roger's case, just be yourself.
4. Don't pitch. If you're pitching, the other guy is getting pitched. Just make a good product and set it free.
5. Be interesting. Roger's got a great story to tell, and he tells it well.
Also, check out BMA for more...
Sometimes it's the little things that can make or break an experience. For instance, when I spell check "Google" using blogger, I damn well expect it not to get kicked back, you know, considering Google owns it and all.
I decided to test a few Web 2.0-y words in both Typepad and Blogger, and found that they pretty much both suck, with a slightly-less sucking edge to Typepad. How hard could it possibly be to fix this? It doesn't take much time for me to ignore it, but aggregate that across the rest of the blogosphere against the four minutes it would take them to fix it...You get the picture.
Yes - recognized as a word, No - Not recognized
Google - Typepad (Yes) Blogger (No) -- How ridiculous is that?!?
Technorati - Typepad (No) Blogger (No)
Yahoo - Typepad (Yes) Blogger (Yes)
Blog - Typepad (Yes) Blogger (No) -- If blog is not a real word in Blogger's book, they may have some problems...
Blogger - Typepad (No) Blogger (No) -- You've got to be kidding me.
Typepad - Typepad (Yes) Blogger (No)
YouTube - Typepad (No) Blogger (No)
Wikipedia - Typepad (No) Blogger (No)
Podcast - Typepad (No) Blogger (No)
Myspace - Typepad (No) Blogger (No)
Blogosphere - Typepad (No) Blogger (No)
RSS - Typepad (No) Blogger (No)
Firefox - Typepad (No) Blogger (No)
Widget - Typepad (Yes) Blogger (Sometimes) Blogger only recognizes this as a proper name for some reason.
Again, this isn't the end of the world, but the devil is always in the details. When you're dealing with an audience of tech-savvy bloggers in a flooded market, a little thing like your spell checker can go a long way towards telling your story for you. Let's hope the rest of the details say something different.
Before, we were able to treat people as masses. People were a sea. But now we see them as they are. At least the good ones do.
Individuals. Different, distinct, idiosyncratic. Peculiar and personal.
Emotional, seeking inspiration, love, and to be affected. To be unaffected.
Struggling to further define themselves, they chase connections that make them more whole. They are smarter, more curious. Investigating and probing, they are constant explorers, discovering their own truths.
They are self-defining, afflicted and powerful, self-assured and vulnerable. Questioning themselves, their friends and leaders, all the while confirming, amending and reconfirming their own opinions and ideas, wrongs and rights.
They are communities, and communities of communities, tribes and creeds. They filter their thoughts through the perceptions of these denominations, allowing these groups of groups to distort, but not confuse their own experience, as they are a confederation of these experiences, liberated and unconfined.
They are people, human and flawed. Biased and slanted, open and closed. They respectfully demand to be shown the courtesy to not be mass-culturalized, to not be seen as mass-minded.
They are the product of certain things, demographic, psychographic and otherwise, but the things that make them what they are the most, are not the things we know or can easily recognize. Know that and adjust for it.
Marketers have the tendency to take things that people love, exploit it, and rip out its soul.
Viral Video began as an expression, an outward signal of a relationship with a brand.
Then it became a vehicle for attention, not entirely stripping the product of its soul, but the producer grew mindful of a profit beyond self expression.
http://media.revver.com/broadcast/27335/video.mov/13970
But, now, a "viral video" has become less an assertion of the individual, but an opportunistic grab for attention or money. It has quickly, at the hands of feeble-minded marketers, devolved into just another intrusion, just another version of shady salesman trickery, an illusion of brand evangelism, rooted in the hunger for fame or money.
http://www.jumpcut.com/media/flash/jump.swf?id=3CD2F090597511DB98FA2EF149F8C96D
So, let's leave the viral video terminology for the shysters, the me-first marketers playing the numbers game.
But for those of us concerned with fostering true brand evangelism, how about we stop conflating these expressive gestures with those looking to exploit more cheap space. They are not the same. The buzz around viral video will only turn off our biggest fans, and poison our brand relationships. So, to me, Viral Video is dead, like any other pompous agency-suit buzzword. Long live the brand evangelist. Let's leave 'em alone, let them do what they do best, and be there with open arms when they need us.