advertisingwithoutpity

The Power of Shame

The good people of Tennessee have come up with a new way to punish drunk drivers, Hester Prynne style. According to CNN, first time DUI offenders will have to pick up trash for 24 hours while wearing orange jumpsuits emblazoned with the words "I am a Drunk Driver."

To help prevent us all from being exposed to bad ads, I've decided that the marketing community should adopt a similar law.

For instance, why not make those responsible for "Crumbelievable" wear a shirt that says "I'm a Crumbelievable Art Director".

Or perhaps we could make the entire FCB Chicago office wear shirts tattooed with the Coors Light logo and the words "All Aboard the Love Train".

Without question there are too many awards in this biz, but what about the other side of the coin? Shouldn't we be recognizing those who are truly suckworthy? 

Ogilvy was wrong

I'm in a grumpy mood today, so try to bear with me as I enjoy this rant.

One of the most uber-famous lines in all of advertising is Ogilvy's oft-quoted comment on the intelligence of consumers: "The consumer isn't a moron; she is your wife."

Now my wife certainly isn't a moron. In fact, she's smarter than I am, so for me this quote holds true.

But no doubt Ogilvy's comment was meant for a broader audience. Do not dumb down your work, he argues. Abstain from working toward the lowest common denominator. Aim high.  Americans deserve and appreicate wit and intelligence of the highest order.

Ideally, I'd love for this to be true, but for a moment I beg to differ. Here's why.

1) Americans aren't that smart. We are isolated, selfish, ignorant and stupid. Only 5% of us have passports. 51% of us voted for George Bush. 12% of us have had our bank accounts liquidated through Nigerian email scams.

2) I've been to a lot of focus groups. A lot. When you ask people which ads they like, they will inevitably tell you that their favorites are the dumbest fucking ads in the world. "Oh I just love that Daisy sour cream commercial! A dollup! A dollup!" or "That commercial when the dog bites that guy in the crotch is the funniest thing I've ever seen in my life! The first time I saw it I nearly wet myself!"

3) I've watched a lot of TV with my family. They have nothing to do with advertising. They are just plain, normal God-fearing folk. Unbeknownst to them, however, I've been spying on them as they watch ads to see what they're digging. And wouldn't you fuckin' know it—it's the worst shit on TV! If I had a nickel for every time my mother called up and said something like, "I just saw the best commercial on TV. Are you gellin'? I'm gellin' like Magellan! Ha!"

Based on these simple, yet highly scientific observations, I can only conclude that David Ogilvy, in fact, was a moron.

Dumb is the new black. You heard it here first.

Ernie Schenck's Manifesto

Ernie Schenck recently wrote a cool piece for CA, outlining a new code of conduct for advertisers. The Schenck Manifesto is inspired by The Dogme Manifesto, which was created in 1995 by two Danish filmmakers hoping to inspire movies that relied on storytelling rather than technology.

I think he's on to something here:

1. No headline will begin with “Something is wrong when...”, “Exactly at what point does...” or “Has it ever occurred to you that...”

2. Access to all awards show books shall be limited to one hour per month. Maybe.

3. No commercial or Internet film will be shot in winter. In Jamaica. On a beach. With a little bar with a grass roof. Where they serve those blue drinks with mango slices.

4. No celebrity voiceovers shall be permitted unless at least three people in the country actually recognize who the hell it is.

5. No further use of chimpanzees on the Superbowl shall be allowed.

6. The same goes for chickens.

7. And gratuitous breasts.

8. Art directors will not be permitted to use Photoshop until an actual concept has been determined.

9. All creatives who get off on debasing, senseless or sexist humor and feel compelled to impose it on civilized society shall have all previous memories of Saturday night frat house binges erased from their memory banks.

10. No shots of mothers holding babies.

11. No meaningless taglines that don’t add a damn thing to the campaign other than give the client something to put on coffee mugs and T-shirts at the annual sales meeting.

12. Anyone caught sleazing a slash on an awards show entry form because, after all, “If I hadn’t suggested switching paragraph 4 with paragraph 2, this would have sucked,” will be dropped down the elevator shaft. Naked.

13. Creatives shall be barred from imposing the same idea that won them the Palm d’Or, gold One Show pencil and D&AD Best In Show on every project they come in contact with until the end of eternity.

14. Whining will not be permitted under any circumstances. This includes budget whining. Account executive whining. Client whining. Client’s wife whining. Lack of creative freedom whining. What-do-you-mean-I-can’t-use-Nadav-Kander whining.

15. No goatees.

16. Audible groans when being asked to do radio is off limits. Radio only sucks because you’ve made yourself believe it does.

17. When presenting, no words over three syllables shall be used thus allowing the actual work to prove how smart you are.

18. No vacation plans shall be changed at the 11th hour, thereby causing your spouse to question your life priorities in the name of taking one for the team, assuming the team has never taken one for you.

19. Except in dire emergencies which does not include “The client is going on vacation,” “I’m sorry I sat on the brief so long” and “I need to meet my roommate at the airport,” creatives shall keep the concept of the All Nighter a fond, but distant memory of your college days, understanding that there comes a point when editing a brand video at two in the morning begins to feel a lot like walking out a 39th floor window on LSD.

20. During office hours, no billiards, dart games, Nerf basketball or other distractions masquerading as creative stimulators will be permitted. If you want stimulation, get on a plane for Amsterdam.

21. Every creative will be required to go through an entire day once a week without saying the word “viral,” unless you’ve recently been on a float trip down Ebola River.

22. The term “mockumentary” shall be banned at all times.

23. No account executive shall be permitted to actually suggest in client meetings that “we might want to think about street art.”

24. No further reference to hijacking shall be allowed unless you’re comfortable with the idea of several large gentlemen with wool suits, earpieces and Ray Ban Sunglasses removing you from your cubicle while you’re playing Texas Hold’em online.

25. Copywriters shall glue their laptops shut for a period of one month during which they will reacquaint themselves with a pad of paper and a No. 2 pencil. No, not a pen. Not a Pentel. A pencil.

26. All creative department wastebaskets shall be replaced with much bigger ones.

27. No copywriter shall own a thesaurus. There is no fancy word in a thesaurus that is better than the simple one that just pops naturally into your head.

28. Creative teams shall produce one campaign per year for a nonprofit organization of their choice with no intention of entering said campaign in any awards show anywhere on this or any other planet.

29. The use of music shall be prohibited from all emotional TV spots until such time as the spot itself, sans music, is capable of making at least twelve people cry like a river.

30. For a period of one week, no creative shall use humor in a radio spot.

31. Especially a beer spot.

Good stuff, Ernie.

The Art of Simplicity

Marissa Mayer, 30, is Director of Consumer Web Products at Google and is featured on the cover of the November 2005 Fast Company. Marissa is responsible for two things: 1) being ridiculously hot, and 2) keeping the Google home page clutter-free. Right now, I'd say she's doing a fantastic job at both.

The article that profiles her, entitled "The Beauty of Simplicity," is an interesting look at the Google philosophy. Mayer describes it as such: "Google is like a Swiss Army knife, closed. It's simple, you can slip it in your pocket, but it's got the great doodad when you need it." I dig it.

As logical as it seems, most marketers tend to get this simplicity thing wrong. Sure, complexity can be a beautiful thing, but not at the expense of usability or strategic focus.

The article goes on to profile other companies that thrive on simplicity, including Royal Philips Electronics, which puts a strict 10-page limit to all internal Powerpoint presentations. This rule should be adopted by all ad agencies immediately. Initially, the pseudo-intellectual bullshit artists (planners) will be disgusted by this idea, but they'll be better off in the end when they realize that people will like them much more when they say much much less.

Who's with me?

Al Ries is a Crackhead

Al Ries is old. Prehistoric, really.

I believe he wrote a book about positioning in the 1930s with that Trout guy. Since then he's come up with nothing new. I know this because the dude writes the same goddamn article over and over and over and over again every other week in Ad Age. Rarely does he even bother to come up with new examples or anecdotes. It's amazing that nobody has called homeboy out. Until now. Chalk up another victory for AWP.

Anyway, Al's latest article in Ad Age is completely insane. Read it aloud and you can almost hear his neurons decaying.

I would attempt to explain but I think I'll just let Ries speak for himself:

"There are two forces at work in nature, according to Darwin. One is a gradual change from an ancestral to a current condition. (A process biologists call "anagenesis.") The other is divergence, a splitting of the ancestral tree to create new branches. (Biologists call this "cladogenesis.") Anagenesis produces strawberries the size of plums. It just won't turn a strawberry into a plum. It takes cladogenesis or divergence to do that."

Really, all this Darwin lingo is just a disguise. What Al wants you to believe is that he's come up with a new, helpful branding metaphor. Wrong! He hasn't! The verbosity is meant only to confuse and confound; the content is exactly the same.

But hey, at least the old loon is having some fun. Check out this picture of the monkey with the sweet computer. The caption reads: "Compaq's first 1982 portable computer has a lot in common with early primates."

Hilarious!

Thanks, Al.