What I learned from my mother in law

My mother-in-law is Singaporean Chinese. She comes over to London to stay with us, and make a fuss of her grandchildren like all grandmas do.

A few years ago we were having the house renovated and she was watching the workmen putting in the drains.

She went out to take them a cup of tea.  She said, “Excuse me, I think you should put a cover on the manhole while you’re working.”

The workman said, “Sorry love?" She said, “Otherwise you could get rubble in the drainage pipes and it could be a problem later on.”

The workmen looked at each other. They figured it was just an old Chinese lady getting confused.

They said, “Don’t you worry love, we know what we’re doing.” And they ignored her and carried on.

Six months later the drains started to back up and overflow. They thought some of the bends in the pipes might have been too sharp. So they dug them up and replaced them.

The system still didn’t work. They thought the angle of the drop might not have been steep enough for the flow. So they dug down and raised part of it.

It still wasn’t flowing properly. All the experts stood around and looked at it. They sucked air through their teeth and scratched their chins.

They were out of ideas. The only thing to do was put a CCTV camera down there. Send it along the pipe and see if it could locate the problem.

This cost a lot of money, but eventually they located the source of the blockage. Rubble.

The very same rubble that my mother-in-law had advised the workers about when they were putting the pipes in. If they’d listened to her, and covered up the manhole, they wouldn’t have had the problem. And they’d have saved themselves a lot of time and money.

A little while later we were having a new shower fitted. My mother-in-law took a cup of tea up to the workman putting it in.

She said to him, “Excuse me, is that a fibreglass shower tray?” He said, “Yeah, probably.”

She said, “Fibre glass is no good, you need a fired-clay shower tray.” He said, “Pardon?”

She said, “Fibre glass won’t take the weight.” He looked at the little old Chinese lady and said, “Don’t you worry love, I’ll put a wooden frame under it.”

He thought that would keep her quiet. But my mother-in-law said, “The floors are also wood, and wood expands and contracts with heat. So, with summer and winter and hot and cold water, the basin will move and it will leak.

If you are going to use a fibreglass shower tray you’ll need a concrete base. Otherwise please put in a fired-clay shower tray which will take the weight and not move.” The guy went back and checked with his boss.

They checked with their suppliers. And sure enough it should have been a fired-clay shower tray.

So they put it in and it hasn’t leaked once. What the workmen didn’t know about my mother-in-law was that in Singapore she ran one of the largest plumbing companies, also a cast iron foundry, and a stainless steel works.

My father-in-law had built up these companies. But because he didn’t speak or write English, he needed her help to run them.

And, because she was better educated, she had to translate everything he wanted done. He would want her to order large submersible pumps from Germany.

So she would need to know the pressure rating, the rpm, and the rate of fluid movement, etc. He would want to order massive steel pipes from Australia.

So she would have to know the diameter, the connections, the lining, the rate of flex, etc. Then she would negotiate contracts and tender for jobs.

She would also need to direct the workers on site, and at the factories, and check the quality of their work. All the English workmen saw was a little old Chinese lady bringing them a cup of tea.

What they didn’t see was a blue-collar trained, hands-on specialist-plumbing contractor. She had handled jobs larger than any of them had, for longer than any of them had been working.

In short, she had probably forgotten more than they would ever know. But, because she didn’t match their preconceptions, they didn’t listen.

So they couldn’t learn.

In our job, in advertising, we can’t afford to be like that. We deal in separating perception from reality. So we really need to be willing to learn.

We need to be on ‘receive’ not on ‘broadcast’. Life doesn’t always fit our preconceptions.

And that’s a problem if we’re lazy. If we come at everything with a preformed opinion, looking for the easy option.

In that case anything new and unusual is a problem. Life is only an opportunity if we embrace newness and discovery. If we enjoy finding out things that surprise us.

So that, when we do our job, we can surprise other people

It's a joke

Chris Bardsley once wrote a commercial for Walkers Poppadums, little crisps with an Indian flavour. We had a young, good-looking Indian Elvis (Las Vegas period) singing in a corner shop.

He was dressed head-to-toe in white, rhinestones, a turban, and a sitar slung guitar-style round his neck. He sung, “Keep your gums off my Poppadums” to the tune of “All Shook Up”.

The commercial was really funny, and went down really well. Then The Daily Mail interviewed the young guy who starred in it.  They asked him if he wasn’t ashamed to be taking part in a racist commercial: something that would make his people a laughing stock.

I loved his reply. He said, “It’s a particularly white concept that you think you are the only people confident enough in who you are to be able to laugh at yourselves. You think every other race secretly wants to be white. So you don’t mention their ethnicity, you treat it as a disability to be politely ignored.

"Well I am a Sikh, and we consider ourselves second to no one. We don’t want to be white. We are very proud of who we are. We have absolutely no insecurity about our race whatsoever. That is why we can laugh at ourselves.”

I think there is a whole PC industry built around getting offended on behalf of someone else. And I think it’s very patronising. This is particularly true of women.

In advertising particularly, we patronise them by assuming they can’t laugh at themselves. We assume that all women begrudge men’s historical superiority.

So, in order to correct thousands of years of sexism, we must constantly show strong, capable women triumphing over arrogant and useless men.  This is considered okay because men can laugh at themselves, being confident in who they are.

Women of course can’t laugh at themselves because they aren’t confident. But even if that’s true of some women, isn’t it patronising to assume all women are identical?

Recently I was on the D&AD cinema & TV jury with Creative Directors from all over the world. One Australian commercial for beer was particularly controversial.

It featured a man being dragged out of the pub in front of his mates, by his wife. Suddenly a character called ‘The Woman Whisperer’ appears.

He calms the wife down and talks quietly to her. He persuades her to go and have a chat with her friend and let her husband go back to finish his beer.

The American female creative director was furious about this commercial. She said it was “Disgusting, sexist, dinosaur thinking. It demeans women and perpetuates an outmoded sexual stereotype.”

The other female on the jury was English: Kate Stanners Creative Director of Saatchi & Saatchi.  Kate said, “But it’s a joke.”

I think the difference was that one woman was English and the other was American. I’ve heard it said that English women don’t feel they have to behave like men in order to be equal, as American women do.

They can enjoy their femininity and still be equal. Another way of putting it is they can take a joke.

The best advice I ever heard on this subject came from Dawn French. She was asked about comedy overstepping the mark and becoming bad taste.

She said, “The rule is: if it’s funny it’s not bad taste and if it’s bad taste it’s not funny.” You can’t beat that.

When we hear a joke, before we slot into “Does it fit the PC criteria?” question, let’s see if it makes us laugh. And before we feel guilty for laughing, let’s see if we really should.

Humour isn’t necessarily harmful. Laughing at something doesn’t always mean disliking what you’re laughing at. It might mean including it.

Laughing at something, or someone, is generally known as ‘banter’ nowadays. And it’s one way, especially amongst men, of making someone feel included.

To a lot of women it seems a waste of time. Joking and playing around, instead of getting on with something useful. But to men it isn’t.

Whether or not you like Maggie Thatcher, she was a powerful woman. She understood that, for men, humour is very important.

So she didn’t lecture everyone on the importance of equality in sexual representation in government. She simply said, “If you want something said ask a man. If you want something done ask a woman.”

And she got on with running the country. A brilliant putdown, and men respect that much more than nagging.

Jo Brand understands that you don’t beat men by trying to make them feel guilty. You beat men by being funnier than they are.

She once said, “The way to a man’s heart is through his top pocket with a breadknife.”

That’s why she most men’s favourite female comedian. She’s funny. She gets it. She understands it’s a joke.
 

Sun people v ice people

Louis Farrakhan is an American black militant. He said something I found very interesting. He said the world was divided into two kinds of people. Sun people and Ice people. Now by that he meant black (for sun) and white (for ice).

I don’t agree with that part. But if we take the racism out of it, and just look at the way climate and racial memory affect personality traits I think it’s very interesting.

Just look within one race, take white Europeans. Now look where they’ve lived for generations and generations. Contrast the Nordic types (ice people) with the Mediterranean types (sun people). See how the climate affects their characters.

In southern Europe the climate is warm and welcoming. There is plentiful food just growing outdoors. You could sleep outdoors all year round if you wanted.

So there’s nothing to do except enjoy the finer things in life, the added value items. The things that, in themselves, aren’t necessary for survival, but make life nicer. Painting, sculpture, music, fashion, the decorative arts, good food, lovemaking, all the right brain sensory activities.

Now take the Northern Europeans. The climate doesn’t want you there. It’s cold and miserable. You need to be protected from the very environment you’re living in. If you don’t spend all summer preparing for the winter, you won’t get through it.

So there’s no time for the finer things in life. Everything has to be functional. Gathering food, shelter, and fuel for the long cold months ahead. Concentrating on protection from the hostile climate.

That’s why northern European cars work in conditions that would kill a southern European car. Ferrari and Lamborghini are beautiful, sensuous, delicate pieces of automotive art. Volkswagen, Mercedes, Volvo aren’t.

Those cars don’t look beautiful, they’re not exhilarating. Because when they’re covered in snow and you turn the key, they have to start. The Italian cars don’t.

German food fills a function, Italian food is delicious. German architecture is strong and powerful. Italian architecture is delicate and beautiful. Scandinavian design is clean and minimal. Italian design is playful and over-elaborate.

You can always find exceptions to any rule of course. But, by and large, northern Europeans are better at war,
Southern Europeans are better at art. Northern Europeans are better at function. Southern Europeans are better at form.

Sun people can enjoy life today, they know the future’s safe, the climate isn’t trying to kill them, let’s have fun.
Ice people have to concentrate on logic, and making sure all the bases are covered, because they know mistakes will be punished.

Ice people are left brain. Sun people are right brain. Which is why most art directors are more like sun-people.
And most copywriters are more like ice-people.

And why Northern Europeans are better at product. And Southern Europeans are better at brand.

We don't know what we don't know

We used to have a small fish tank in the kitchen for our children. Sometimes I’d come down in the morning and find a fish flopping around, dying on the kitchen floor. Because we didn’t have a lid on the tank, they thought they’d jump out and escape.

It didn’t occur to the fish that there was no water outside the tank. In fact it didn’t even occur to the fish that there was water inside the tank.

The concept of ‘water’ just didn’t occur at all, until lack of it came as a nasty surprise. Because, inside the tank, the whole world was water. They didn’t know what water was, because you couldn’t show them a drop of water as a separate thing,  So, for them, water didn’t even exist.

They’d grown up in it, they’d always lived in it, they’d never known a world any other way. So they simply never even questioned it. This is “what you don’t know you don’t know”.

It breaks down like this: there’s stuff you know that you know. (eg: how to read.) And there’s stuff you know that you don’t know. (eg: whether there’s life in outer space.)

But there’s an infinite amount of stuff you don’t know that you don’t know. Until you find out that you don’t know it. The way the fish found out.

As the Chinese sage Lao Tzu said, “The wise man knows he doesn’t know. The fool doesn’t know he doesn’t know.”

That happens to all of us. We grow up with some things so deeply ingrained we don’t even know they’re there.

That’s how it was for me, going to New York. I’d never been outside London until I went to New York. So London was my fish tank.

I had nothing else to compare it with. When I got to New York a surprising thing happened. Something was so unfamiliar I couldn’t work it out at first.

Very gradually it dawned on me. People were listening to what I was saying, evaluating it on its merits, and responding.

The fact was, I realised no one had ever listened to what I was saying before. I had grown up with people listening to each other’s accents.

Then judging the worth of what they had to say on their accents rather than what they were saying. The accent created a stereotype even before they’d finished speaking.

I hadn’t even realised that. It was so ingrained into me, just like water to the fish.

Being in New York was the first time anyone had listened to what I said instead of just the accent I said it in.

This was like taking me out of the fish tank and showing it to me from the outside. When I came back to London I had what I’d never had before. A choice.

Because I now knew the water existed. This is how we are with our environment.

We don’t notice it. So we can’t appreciate it. So it isn’t exciting. That’s why we like to go abroad so much.

That’s why we come back refreshed and excited, and full of all the new things we’ve seen.

Bill Brandt was a great photographer, he took some of the most iconic, atmospheric pictures of London. He said, “The secret is to always to look at your country as if you’re a  foreigner, seeing it for the first time.”

This is a big part of approaching anything truly originally. Remember to stay a foreigner.

Remember to look at it as if we’re seeing it for the first time. Stay inquisitive, stay innocent, stay fresh, stay open.

If we try to learn too much all we learn is what won’t work, what hasn’t worked, what we shouldn’t even try.
We get bored, we get stale, we get dull.

And it’s like we never left the fishtank.

The Hoffman Index

Every day I start by reading a blog: Adcontrarian.com. It’s absolutely brilliant and always helps remind me what we’re doing and why.

The other day I read something that, even by those standards, is special. I’ve reprinted it verbatim here.

This is a stunningly powerful way to cut through the waffle, the verbiage, the polysyllabic tripe that passes for thinking in our business. This is really, really useful.

Bob Hoffman:
“A few years ago I developed a theory about how to balance imagery and information in advertising. I modestly called it The Hoffman Index.

The theory was based on the following assumptions:

    * All advertising contains both information and imagery.

    * Consumers use a different mix of information and imagery in making buying decisions for different kinds of products.

    * Getting the balance right for each kind of product can help us create more effective advertising.

The theory also proposed that we can draw a line - a continuum - on which we can place every kind of product based on whether it is bought primarily for image reasons or for logical reasons.

So, for example, if we draw that line, cigarets will be way over on the left because they are bought almost exclusively for reasons of image, and all the way on the right you will have toothache remedies which are bought solely on their efficacy.

It's no great insight that image and information play different roles in advertising for different kinds of products. The question I was trying to answer was, is there a way to quantify this and apply it to all products?

The idea of The Hoffman Index is that every product will fall somewhere between the two extremes, and knowing where it falls will help us create advertising with the proper balance between image and information.

My hypothesis is that there are three factors that determine this:

    1. Privacy: Is the product consumed in private or in public?

    2. Perceptibility: Are its differentiating characteristics easily perceived?

    3. Utility: Does the product do anything useful?

The higher a product scores on these three factors, the more information an ad should impart. The lower it scores, the more you want to favor imagery over information.

Let's start with the toothache remedy and see how the index works. Each of the factors above is rated on a 0 - 10 scale. So, 0 to ten points for privacy, 0 to 10 for perceptibility, and 0 to 10 for utility, for a maximum of 30 points and a minimum of 0. In the case of the toothache remedy:

    * It is used completely in private, but a spouse or partner might know about it, and so I give it a 9 out of 10 in privacy.

    * It is quite easy to discern if it is works or not, so it gets a 10 in perceptibility.

    * It has high utility. In fact, it is never used unless absolutely necessary. So it gets a 10 there, also.

Adding those three scores up, the toothache remedy gets a Hoffman Index of 29 and is placed way over on the right side of the continuum.

Now let's look at cigarets.

    * Cigarets are highly public. Everyone can see what brand you carry around. It gets a rating of 1 out of 10 in privacy.

    * The differentiating characteristics of cigarets seem quite low to me. I assume in blind tests smokers would have a difficult time discerning the difference between Camels and Marlboros. I am going to give it a 2 on perceptibility.

    * As for utility, unless you are trying to commit slow motion suicide, cigarets have none. I give it a 0 on that criteria.


As the above chart shows, I have created a scale of 30 points, with each of the three factors having a minimum score of 0 and a maximum score of 10 points.

Low scores mean more imagery, high scores mean more information. This is not meant to be a precise determinant of how much imagery and how much information, but a general guideline.

The hypothesis is that we can place any product along this contuinuum and have a pretty good idea of how to balance imagery and information.”

Which is more important: Emotion or Logic?

A few years ago I was watching a film about the violinist Ithzak Perlman visiting China. It was shortly after Mao had died and China was just beginning to open up to the world.

Music students had just recently been able to start studying Western classical music again. They wanted the opinion of the world’s greatest violinist on their progress. So they asked him to tell them what he considered the most difficult violin piece. So that they could learn it, and play it for him to give them feedback.

He recommended a piece by Paganini. The Chinese students learned it and practised it until they were perfect. When Perlman arrived the recital began with their best student playing the Paganini piece straight through.

When he finished he asked Perlman what he thought of it, and where he could improve. Perlman said, “It was excellent. Could you just try it again with a little more….emotion?”  The student looked puzzled, he said, “Please tell me which notes were wrong.” Perlman said, “None of the notes were wrong, but could you try it with a little more…..feeling.”

The student still didn’t understand, “Was it too fast or too slow, what was wrong?” Perlman said, “No, nothing was wrong, everything was perfect. The only area for improvement was maybe a little more….emotion.” The student couldn’t get it.

If Perlman could tell him what he was doing wrong he would fix it. Perlman told him he wasn’t doing anything wrong. But there was something he could do to make it better. None of the Chinese could understand it. Everyone was confused and disappointed.

To the Chinese this was a rational process, it should be discussed rationally. It was a very fast, very complicated piece of music. All the notes had been played in exactly the order laid down, at exactly the right speed, but Perlman’s advice couldn’t be explained rationally.

And, yes, this is the problem. Someone recently sent me a paper claiming that emotional advertising works better than rational advertising. But is anything ever all reason or all emotion? All left brain or all right brain? All product or all brand?

Don’t they actually mean that advertising that mixes the emotional and the rational works better than a purely rational approach?

If you take the purely rational part out of Paganini you have no music. You have a lot of very emotional noises on a violin, but without the arrangement of notes and the logical progression of fingers on a violin you have no underlying melody.

Surely the advertising that works best has an underlying logic, delivered in a way that resonates emotionally? The philosopher David Hume said, “Reason is the slave of the passions.” In other words, reason alone doesn’t make us want to do anything.

Emotion makes us want to do something. Reason tells us whether we can do it, if we should do it, and how to do it.

We react to advertising like everything else in life: Desire/Permission. The desire always precedes permission the way emotion always precedes reason. But reason can be experienced emotionally.

When someone makes an extremely persuasive rational case with passion, our reaction can be emotional. Even if we don’t fully understand the logic we might feel persuaded.

I once asked one of our planners, Emily James, how she bought a car. She said she would ask her father and brother’s advice, who were extremely rational about these things.

Now you might think a purely rational ad wouldn’t work on a woman. But it may work on her father and brother, who would influence her decision.

Ithzak Perlman didn’t want the student to throw out the rational and replace it with the emotional. He wanted the student to add the emotional to the rational.

We need a strategy and an execution. We need impact and involvement. We need emotion and reason. We need them in different amounts, expressed in different ways, in different circumstances.

I was talking to a very senior suit (or frock) the other day, Sonia Sheta. Sonia’s an interesting racial mix: Anglo-Indian and Egyptian. She was telling me that her relatives are fascinated when they come to London.

They say, “What a strange country this is. The rich people are thin and the poor people are fat.” Their logic is that rich people can afford to be fat, so why are they thin? And how can poor people afford to be fat?

Our logic is that rich people can afford to choose, and they choose to be thin. Poor people have no choice, they have to be fat.

Human beings are too complicated for simple one-size-fits-all solutions. We can’t just kneejerk into the solely emotional or the solely rational.