Campaign

Alternatives

I was reading Paul Schrader, the legendary screen-writer of  “Taxi driver”, in the Guardian last week..


Famously, he wrote the screenplay in a furious 3-week burst while living rough in his car in Hollywood. I think I’ve got that story right. He might have written it in a furious 3-hour burst while sitting in the back of a black cab in Boreham Wood.


Either way, he was furious, and he wrote one of the great films of modern time.


And in the Guardian essay, he was complaining about how everybody is surrounded by stories these days. How the average person sees all the variations on all the basic plotlines in all the genres by the time they’re 25.  


As he puts it “the media marketplace puts a premium on anything “new” or “fresh” and, at the same time, inundates its viewers with continual and competing narratives”.


Ring any bells ?


In the world of marketing, we bombard people with messages, many of which have “continual and competing narratives”. Asda are cheaper than Tesco. Tesco are cheaper than Asda. (Sometimes I’m tempted to lock them both in a room and say – “Now one of you must be lying”.)  


And it’s not just the directly competitive ones, because actually they’re all competing. If I remember the Yorkshire Tea ad because I really like John Shuttleworth (and both those statements are true), then I’ve got less room  for the next commercial message knocking on my door, which might be trying to tell me that L’Oreal think I’m worth a punt.


Shrader points to 6 “counter-narrative” developments – ie other ways of getting the attention of the poor old time-poor viewer. Reality TV and documentary style are self-evident. Then there are two he calls “anecdotal narrative” and “re-enactment drama” –  ie quasi-realism. Then come two which I think are really interesting.


Video games. In these, the viewer participates – because, if they don’t, it gets very boring and the game finishes quite quickly.


But this participation essentially means that the viewer re-creates the story afresh every time.  And once you’re into this form of interaction, passive viewership can seem very passé. If you look at the popularity of MMOGs (massively multi-player online games), I’ve seen figures claiming worldwide subscriptions of  50 million.


It’s hard to resist the idea that one day, we’ll all end up playing inside these universes. F*ck it, we could all end up LIVING in them.


And the final alternative is “mini-mini-dramas” – ie 3- to 5-minute stories created for mobiles and Youtube.


This has got to be worth exploring more. From the age of 12 onwards, both my kids more or less only watched music channels – which is a TV experience built around 2- to 3-minute programmes.


And if you think that the main attraction of Twitter vs Facebook is that it’s only 140 characters, the same criterion applies to Youtube vs conventional TV.


I’m old enough to remember when music videos first kicked in. Record companies had miniscule budgets, and nobody knew how it worked, and it was a free-for-all. So the best directors, the ones who liked experimenting and who weren’t just in it for the money, threw themselves into it, and it was a fantastic creative revolution.


You could do that with commercial messages and Youtube right now.


Instead of a client researching 3 ads, why not make 3 short films, put them on Youtube and see which one gets the most hits ?


It’s not fake like all that research done in halls – nobody’s paid to participate in something they wouldn’t normally care a toss about.


So the only losers would be research companies.


(There’s a loss.)


I heard Kevin Roberts talk once – and he was f*cking impressive, if slightly more in-your-face than a New Zealand All Black with a wasp in his jock strap.


And he said something I’ve never forgotten.


Which is that “the only question worth asking is – “Do I want to watch that again ?”


It may not be the only criterion, but to my mind, it’s quite possibly the most important one.


With my suggestion for Youtube,  the only question worth asking is  something along the lines of  “Are you looking at me ?”


Which takes us back to where we came in.

Fame

 How important is it to stand out in your marketing ?


It would seem to be an obvious answer – we’re exposed to 4,000 commercial messages a day, people remember maybe 1 of them – yes, Steve, standing out is quite important.


But if you were to pick the 10 brands you were most loyal to, chances are that in that list would be some of the following – Google, Amazon, eBay, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube. And I don’t remember any of those brands “doing a Gorilla”.


Incidentally, I use the phrase “doing a Gorilla” to mean “using paid-for media in a truly outstanding way” – as opposed to “having sex with a large monkey”.


They didn’t get where they are today by screwing large, hairy simians, whether Phil Collins was playing in the background or not.


(I nearly said “whether Phil Collins was playing with himself in the background or not”, but I’m pretty sure that’s an inaccurate picture. I reckon Phil had a band with him on that track.)


Those brands were all pioneers and they gave their customers a sense that they were on the same side as them.


But, to paraphrase Rousseau, most people in advertising work on brands of quiet desperation. Brands whose pioneering days are behind them, but who crave some sort of fame in our cluttered world.


So they try to stand out.


I was chatting to Russell Davies the other day. And he told me something very interesting about working with Nike.


When they get together in those god-awful things called sales conferences, and show each other what they’ve been doing all year, they get brownie points for originality. I.e. if you’re the marketing director of Nike Sweden and you stand up and your work is the same as everybody else’s, you don’t get brownie points. But if you stand up and your work is different from everybody else’s round the table, you do get brownie points.


That one rule by itself would be enough to make sure that they produced outstanding marketing. Because it’s about cherishing and celebrating salience – and it’s also a lot harder than you think.


You'll find this out if you talk to  Patrick Collister, who runs some fantastic creative training courses.

Patrick is a very clever guy, who has disguised himself as an accountant from Weybridge, while housing in his head some of the most radical and pertinent thinking to be found in our industry right now.


He was saying – take a room-full of CDs, and give them the old “50 uses of a brick” test.


(And incidentally, if you ever have to do this test, I’ve got a tip to make it dead easy. Just don’t think of the brick as a brick . If you do that, you stop after one or two answers. But if you think about anything else and think how the brick might fit in to that, you’ll go on for ever.)


And once they’ve worked on it for half an hour, you say to them – ok who’s come up with something that nobody else in the room has come up with ?


You’ll find that virtually nobody has.


Because we’ve all seen the same films, read the same books, etc. We've all been subjected to the same stimuli.


So it’s tricky.


But  the rewards are huge if you’re willing to take the risks.

Alternatively, you can wait for a new medium like the internet to come along and be one of the first brands to really exploit it.


Those are the choices really. If you're after fame.


There may be others, I don’t know.


Maybe you can go into the Big Brother house and call yourself “F*ckface”.


Although,  of the 3 options, that would be my least favourite.

Talking or not talking

First things first.


I was going to give a talk at Wolff Olins on Thursday 11 June, about what happened at HHCL and other topics. But because of the Tube strike, that’s had to be postponed.


So, if you were thinking of going – please don’t.


I know the holding board at WPP were thinking of hiring a fleet of those scooters you propel along the pavement with one foot, in order to get there.


Because they had “skin in the game” of  HHCL and I think there’s still a few queries out about my cab account.


Similarly, the bigwigs at TBWA Global were planning to turn up on space-hoppers, in order to figure out  a) why I hadn’t been able to turn TBWA into HHCL and b) whether lunch with Jonathan Durden falls into the category of entertainment or business.


Anyway.  I can use this blog to look at some of what happened to HHCL all those years ago.


It’s interesting. The whole time HHCL was going, people would ask – you guys take these risks – when has it failed ?


It’s almost like they wanted to hear that our approach had failed, so that then they wouldn’t have to bother to take a risk themselves.


Maybe this is down to British laziness. Because Brits are perfectionists, and perfectionists know that it’s going to be f*cking hard work doing the job properly, so – why bother ?


And maybe it’s because we know that, at some level, people are nicer if they fail.


Try talking to anyone at the top of their game.


Firstly, you  won’t get through, because they’re surrounded by an army of PAs. (One client I worked with in the dotcom bubble years had 3 PAs on shift duty – including one in the middle of the night.)


Secondly, they’ll probably be too arrogant to have a laugh with. Simon Dicketts reminded me recently of a talk I once gave about HHCL and which I had titled “10 years of breaking the rules”.


I don’t particularly like the word “w*nky” - but Simon would have been perfectly within his rights to have muttered it under his breath then.


But someone’s got to go out on a limb – and actually HHCL did do that pretty regularly.


We enjoyed it.


Despite people waiting for us to fall off.


(I’m reading quite a good book about this topic at the minute. Called “The Black Swan”, it’s all about the disproportionate power of unpredictable actions.)


Unpredictable, seemingly irrational stuff stands out. But it causes discomfort.


Look at some recent stand-out ads. How many people have you met  who’ve told you with weird excitement that Sony Balls “didn’t work” ? Or that Cadbury’s Gorilla “didn’t work” ? I don’t have the metrics to hand, but I’ve read stuff which suggested (very forcefully) that both these ads “failed”.


Of course I’ve said something like this myself – hypocrisy comes as second nature to someone who’s worked in advertising for a while  - but in my case, I was merely trying to point out the importance of following through with an integrated campaign.


However, you get the feeling that most people who tell you this, want to just go back to their offices and make boring, middle-of-the-road ads which will be forgotten even before they’ve aired.


It’s cr*p. We should all be worshipping at the sort of buzz which surrounded Sony Balls and Cadbury Gorilla. That kind of buzz is absolute gold-dust.


And following through is tough.  You can drive people to the electrical store, but if the salespeople then sell Samsung harder than Sony (for whatever reason), you’re pushing 250,000 balls uphill.


But the other question people ask about HHCL is – what happened ? What went wrong ?


Well, there are probably 18 different answers.


But as Nigel Bogle has famously said, every agency is only 3 phone calls away from disaster.


We got those 3 phone calls in the form of losing Tango, Egg, and the AA.


Now, I’m probably extraordinarily stupid, but I’m not sure exactly why that happened. (There is a theory in the industry that you win business on the basis of creative work, and lose it in the area of account service. Which appeals to me, because I don’t work in the area of account service.)


And I do wonder if any of those brands has had work as good as HHCL’s  stuff since then.

First Things

 First things first.


I was going to give a talk at Wolff Olins on Thursday 11 June, about what happened at HHCL and other topics. But because of the Tube strike, that’s had to be postponed.


So, if you were thinking of going – don’t.


I know the holding board at WPP were thinking of hiring a fleet of those scooters you propel along the pavement with one foot, in order to get there.


Because they had “skin in the game” of  HHCL and I think there’s still a few queries out about my cab account.


Similarly, the bigwigs at TBWA Global were planning to turn up, in order to figure out a) why I hadn’t been able to turn TBWA into HHCL and b) whether lunch with Jonathan Durden falls into the category of entertainment or business.


Anyway.  I can use this blog to look at some of what happened to HHCL all those years ago.


It’s interesting. The whole time HHCL was going, people would ask – you guys take these risks -  when has it failed ?


It’s almost like they wanted to hear that our approach had failed, so that then they wouldn’t have to bother to take a risk themselves.


Maybe this is down to British laziness. Because Brits are perfectionists, and perfectionists know that it’s going to be f*cking hard work doing the job properly, so – why bother ?


And maybe it’s because we know that, at some level, people are nicer if they fail.


Try talking to anyone at the top of their game.


Firstly, you  won’t get through, because they’re surrounded by an army of PAs. (One client I worked with in the dotcom bubble years had 3 PAs on shift duty – including one in the middle of the night.)


Secondly, they’ll probably be too arrogant to have a laugh with. Simon Dicketts reminded me recently of a talk I once gave about HHCL and which I had titled “10 years of breaking the rules”.


I don’t particularly like the word “w*nky” - but Simon would have been perfectly within his rights to have muttered it under his breath then.


But someone’s got to go out on a limb – and actually HHCL did do that pretty regularly.


We enjoyed it.


Despite people waiting for us to fall off.


(I’m reading quite a good book about this topic at the minute. Called “The Black Swan”, it’s all about the disproportionate power of unpredictable actions.)


Unpredictable, seemingly irrational stuff stands out. But it causes discomfort.


Look at some recent stand-out ads. How many people have you met  who’ve told you with weird excitement that Sony Balls “didn’t work” ? Or that Cadbury’s Gorilla “didn’t work” ? I don’t have the metrics to hand, but I’ve read stuff which suggested (very forcefully) that both these ads “failed”.


Of course I’ve said something like this myself – hypocrisy comes as second nature to someone who’s worked in advertising for a while  - but in my case, I was merely trying to point out the importance of following through with an integrated campaign.


However, you get the feeling that most people who tell you this, want to just go back to their offices and make boring, middle-of-the-road ads which will be forgotten even before they’ve aired.


It’s cr*p. We should all be worshipping at the sort of buzz which surrounded Sony Balls and Cadbury Gorilla. That kind of buzz is absolute gold-dust.


And following through is tough.  You can drive people to the electrical store, but if the salespeople sell Samsung harder than Sony (for whatever reason), you’re pushing 250,000 balls uphill.


But the other question people ask about HHCL is – what happened ? What went wrong ?


Well, there are probably 18 different answers.


But as Nigel Bogle has famously said, every agency is only 3 phone calls away from disaster.


We got those 3 phone calls in the form of losing Tango, Egg, and the AA.


Now, I’m probably extraordinarily stupid, but I’m not sure exactly why that happened. (There is a theory in the industry that you win business on the basis of creative work, and lose it in the area of account service. Which appeals to me, because I don't work in the area of account service.)


And I do wonder if any of those brands has had work as good as HHCL’s stuff since then.

Who watches the watchmen ?

I spent most of last Friday in Marshall Street Editors, putting together a short reel of old HHCL work.


Because in the next 6 weeks I’ve been invited to give talks at Wolff Olins, the D&AD New Blood Show, and a conference in Singapore, where I’ll be sharing a platform with Adam Morgan.


(I met him years ago for lunch in LA, and advised him that the fish was very good. I don’t know if he took my advice.)


But looking at the old ads made me think.


Last week, I asked what would happen if we went back and looked at the ad campaigns we all launched with such pizzazz 10 years ago ... because, as I’ve said several times before, I believe that most advertising fails.


So – how did HHCL’s work stand up to that test ? 


Well. Pretty well, I reckon.


(Come on ! You didn’t expect me to say anything different, did  you ? I’m an ad-man … ) 


But I’ll tell you why.


Because, if you don’t want your work to fail, I reckon you need two things.


One – a f*ck-off lead execution. Traditionally this has been a TV ad, but it doesn’t have to be. It could be a TV programme or an event or an online multiplayer game or a book or a Youtube channel. 


But you’ve got to have guts for this stage of the execution. Because its role is to draw attention to the brand, to act like a barker.


(95% of  current TV ads fail in this.  They’re too cautious, too sell-y, too formulaic.  Although I do like the new Mastercard one.)


And once you’ve barked, you draw people into the more intimate world of marketing where you can surround people with digital love and appropriate attention.


So that’s the second thing you need. Integration. (An old-fashioned, ugly word for such a crucial concept.)


And obviously you can only do this  a) if you have an integrated offering. (Which, as far as I can see, nobody really does.)


And b) if the client lets you.


Now, it would be rash for a client to let you, in the context of my parenthesis above. Ie. nobody actually doing it.


But some people are trying. So-called traditional agencies like O+M and VCCP are probably the closest.


And at HHCL we took this almost painfully seriously.


A few years into HHCL’s life, we invited in a group of integrated specialists, and gave them 25% of the equity of the company – because we believed in offering a fully integrated service to our clients.


In my view, wherever we were allowed to do this, it worked gangbusters.  To take some examples:


With Tango, we had self-liquidating promotions like the Gotan doll and the megaphone, which featured in the TV ads and were marketed in all sorts of different media. We also shot stuff for the trade, including a series aimed specifically at Asian corner-shop owners. (Another way of describing integration is “closing the sale.”) With the AA, we promoted the concept of the 4th Emergency service through everything from TV ads to the company’s livery and the way they answered the phones. With Go, the airline was launched more or less within our offices – I remember one day when they were interviewing pilots there.


So. When we could do it – I think we didn’t do too badly.


I.e., when I sat in Marshall Street editors, munching summer berries and washing them down with soya lattes – I didn’t feel too bad. Because our lead work was committed to being stand-out, and because we wanted to work with clients on following through and completing the sale.


So. That’s what you’ve got to do, I reckon.


Easy, really.


And the other question people ask about HHCL is – what happened ? What went wrong ?


Well, that’s a tough one.


I might look at that in the next blog.


(Or you could come along and ask me at Wolff Olins on Thursday next week. I don’t really know the answer, but I’ll try and come up with something.)