speaking in clicks

[May 18, 2012]

To illustrate this post, I’ve included a partial list of well-worn phrases.

Many of the phrases on the list aren’t in common use anymore. That some are heard at all is surprising, considering the major shifts in our culture over the last 50 years. You might expect someone who says “That got my goat, so I took the bull by the horns and did something about it,” to be living in an agrarian society in which everyday contact with farm animals was common.

And yet, you continue to hear these and similar phrases even now when, according to the USDA:

Fewer than 2 percent of Americans farm for a living today,
and only 17 percent of Americans now live in rural areas

In fact, as far as having any visceral, tactile, or emotional connection with farm animals, the closest many Americans come is the Aflac duck. As a result, the impact of such imagery is muted at best. In a similar way, most clichés are also embedded with cultural assumptions no longer relevant.

What exactly is the “cart” in the expression “putting the cart before the horse”? Is it a shopping cart on an e-merchandizing site? And are we talking about a race horse, a sea horse, a saw horse, a War Horse or “a horse of a different color”? Ironically, though clichés are intended to speed comprehension, they inevitably call up associations that distract your audience from your main message.

The persistence of memory.
Yet phrases out of phase with current culture continue to appear in advertising, marketing and PR—and I find that incomprehensible. If your goal is to motivate consumers by making an emotional connection, the imagery you call up must have direct, immediate impact.

At the same time, straining to keep your communications “up to date” merely substitutes one repertoire of mechanically applied phrases with another. Consider the transformation of

“…whether you’re busy at work, or relaxing at home with family and friends…”

to

“…whether you’re working for the Man, or chilling in the hood with your peeps…”

The effect is more alienating than modernizing. Besides, this diction update does nothing to update the communication’s underlying structure. In 2012, if your main way of connecting with consumers is the knowing nudge of slice-of-life anecdotes, it’s time to re-evaluate your strategy. 

Our mobile, click-a-second digital culture demands value for attention. Use any copy tone, stock art style, Web font, or pixel-width you want. Distribute your message through Vimeo, You Tube, Tumblr or Instagram. It’s all for nothing unless your content adds tangible value to a consumer’s everyday life.

In light of that, you can’t afford to send out communications littered with verbal clichés. To deliver value you first have to capture attention. See the words you choose as the enticing wrapping paper that makes your offering seem worthy of attention. The more run of the mill (oops) your language, the less likely your audience will associate your brand with relevant value.

Vying for attention in a sea of “happy face.”
Of course, the same can be said for your visual choices. Today, photogenic models are used over and over again to hawk everything from burritos to Barettas. You’ll see them high-fiving at the beach, piling out of SUVs or jumping for joy at the thought of a true 4G network. These visual clichés and the false sense of personal satisfaction they try to engender are the opposite of value and—let me be the first to inform you—they fool no one.

Look at it this way: Even if there are phrases on my list that still sound current in your regional sphere of influence, the mere fact that they are irredeemably familiar automatically lessens their impact. In a cultural climate where everyone, we’re told, has “ADHD,” these familiar phrases have become white noise. The more you use them, the less likely you are to grab and hold audience attention.

Going fresh.
Now, I’m not saying it’s easy to invent fresh visual and verbal idioms, It takes skill, experience, persistence and talent. With today’s absurdly compressed project time lines, it’s no wonder our output is so predictable. If your idea of marketing success is getting communications “out the door,” this may be exactly what you deserve—especially if it’s all you’ll pay for.

But if you want to achieve lasting results, and discover what real, no-statistics-juggled success looks like, you’ve got to “go fresh” and craft a vocabulary of idioms all your own. Whatever value these phrases and associated imagery have as cultural artifacts—in consumer communications, they’re simply “old hat.”

[May 8, 2012] 

If you’re like me and your only contact with “luxury” is a once-in-a-blue-moon upgrade at Holiday Inn—it may take you a few minutes to catch on to the thinking behind a luxury product site. You might, understandably, believe such sites are aimed at people with substantial wealth, but you’d be only half right. The more time I spend at luxury brand sites, the more I realize their primary audience is people with an inexhaustible yearning for an unreachable fantasy world.

It’s a world where wealth is taken for granted and its only function is as a portal to a rarefied, value-neutral adventurism. To be clear, my assessment is not a criticism, simply an observation. While the fantasy life of one-seventh of the world’s population more likely revolves around getting enough to eat, we can hardly deny devotees of Prada and Cartier the freedom to enjoy a little quiet time with their own preoccupations.

And what preoccupations they are, at least as viewed through the lens of advertising and marketing. Fantasy being an elusive creature, one of the most interesting aspects of these sites, from a technical point of view, is the way some luxury brands use content in its broadest sense to engage its audience.

Off the nose.
The approach taken at Jaguarusa.com offers an example. In case you hadn’t heard, Jaguar has moved on from the musty traditions of the past. Yet without so much as a blink in the direction of the horribly misguided Oldsmobile campaign, dating from the late 1980s, Jaguar still manages to say, “This is not Your Lordship’s Jaguar.”

Jaguar’s success resides in its ability to distinguish between text and subtext in a branded narrative. Instead of slapping you in the nose with a tagline leaving nothing to imagination, Jaguar repositions itself through a series of interviews with an esoteric array of global trendsetters. The risk here, as always, is with striking a false note by selecting spokespeople your audience is “so over.” Taken at face value, however, Jaguar’s gamble pays off.

For here are hip-hop video director Dr. Teeth and two other off-beat celebrity endorsers, linking the Jaguar brand to their core values through “Backseat Stories.” As members of the neo-multicultural elite, their association with what used to be a quintessentially British product says more than any slogan by making an intimate emotional connection with the viewer. While the site does include features common to comparable vehicle sites, the fantasy continues with the rich array of design options.

Ultimately, the site transforms a “timeless” artifact into a product a select few can enjoy—in a world now infused with recent trends. Emerging from the site at various points, the question “How alive are you?” has resonance it could never attain if plastered across a standard-issue home page marquee.

“Get to the point—make it short and sweet,” a harried creative operative hears 27 hours a day. And yet, at Jaguar.com, the virtues of a slow, quiet roll out of the big message, end-accented with a mildly provocative headline, belies this smug vendor’s-wisdom..

On the money.
The goings on at Prada.com are of a very different order, though the underlying intent, an indirect appeal to its audience’s fantasy-hugging inner nature, is much the same. In this case, a branded site becomes a virtual playground with dozens of video entertainments that have little to do with actually hawking wares. 

What the site sells, instead, is a sensibility—and the association of that sensibility with self-satisfaction. With its vivid realization of a shifting, kaleidoscopic sense-scape, Prada brings the illusions of “perfection” and “distinction” to life, in a warm validation of narcissism.

“You’re narcissistic and that’s OK,” the site seems to say, “because everything you love about yourself is true. People envy you, and they should.” A five-minute click-through of just three of the home page tabs, say, Projects, Fragrances or the Prada Book gallery of mood pieces is enough to pitch Prada as the purveyor of extraordinary experiences. Of course, if your next stop after viewing this site is a trip to Target to get your kids ready for summer camp, the Prada magic is liable to fade fast. But this is targeting at its most knowing—knowing full well its audience has a license to linger.

Here again, in a niche where nothing but the best will do, we see branding at its purest, utterly divested of price points, gotcha come-ons and “strong calls to action.” As the inner monologues of the Eyewear tab illustrate, your ability to position your brand deep inside your customer’s self-image is a far more lasting inducement to buy—and buy into—your message.

[April 22, 2012] 

As I see it, an exploration of luxury brands is an instructive way to clarify what “branding” actually means. Not because the products themselves are so meaningful, fabulous—or even useful. What they are is wow-inducing. And right there is the bedrock of sustainable branding.

Luxury brands tend to understand the value of high concept advertising precisely because, as purveyors of abominably expensive products, they simply can’t go the route followed by coupon-pushing, limited-time, hurry-while-supplies-last marketers. Buy an Alfa-Romeo “on sale” and the delicious experience of flaunting your wealth is shot to Hell.

Besides, a large sector of the luxury brand audience, the chronically insecure, are addicted to the easy validation they achieve with a simple purchase. The small minority with a genuine appreciation for craftsmanship, style and design—to say nothing of engineering—have most likely migrated away from the flashiest / Kardashianest glitter.

Ultimately, the real target of the commonly-known luxury brands are people with an unquenchable thirst for acceptance and a guileless affection for “pretty things.” This is not a crowd prone to congregating around the bargain table.

The illusion of exclusivity.
Ironically, the most successful “exclusive” brands have a large constituency of me-too club members. Luxury shoppers are simply paying more for the same snug feeling of belonging that you can get by shopping name brands at Target.

Needless to say, that “members-only” experience can’t be had by simply slapping the words “Members Only” on your logo. In a case of life stubbornly refusing to imitate art, the cachet the Members Only brand has achieved has nothing to do with its name. Its success lies in its ability to dimensionalize itself through celebrity product placement / word of mouth / etc.

Add to that their “limited edition” gambit and you can see how much more there is to branding than color swatches, font choices and draconian rules regarding how to form “the logo lockup.” Click the “Famous Members” tab at MembersOnlyOriginal and see this direct transfer of cachet into cache-drawer in action.

In a far more pedestrian arena, I’m reminded of Ikea, whose blue polypropylene bags are a concrete example of brand-dimensionalization. Like it or not, the fact that I lug my laundry in one or two such bags each week, means the Ikea brand is now part of my everyday life.

In its own way, the Ikea bag is a badge of community membership as surely as the Rolex logo. Just don’t expect to get a premium table at Daniel with one of those babies slung over your shoulder. Because the key to luxury branding is letting your audience know exactly what kind of members-only club they now have access to. With that in mind, let’s have a look at one of America’s most wanted product lines.

A mirror for the beautiful, smart and the over-extended.
Rolex.com does a fine job of matching the Rolex brand tone. The not too glittery design palette conveys grace with an undercurrent of excitement. They who wear a Rolex, the site tells us, are as ready for action as they are for contemplating their own “beautiful people“ status in the mirror.

Meanwhile, the potential of digital space to deliver encyclopedic depth on demand allows the site to celebrate the many ways Rolex has dimensionalized its brand offline. The wide array of sports / culture sponsorships and philanthropy photo-ops is quite staggering. In the face of this, anyone who believes that digital marketing has completely eclipsed all other media needs to reconsider.

At the same time, this very breadth is compromised on the site by a series of mini-blurbs so predictable they must surely have been written by a piece of copywriting software; most likely, a program designed to help writers “be innovative and interesting, vary [their] vocabulary and make [their] writing look professional“—even if the most professional attribute writers need is the ability to write their own copy.

Checking the “dedication-to-the-highest-quality” box.
An obligatory section on “quality craftsmanship” that touts the brand’s origins in “the European tradition” rounds out the branded message Rolex wishes to convey. Luckily, the typically stilted prose about the brand’s history is successfully offsite by gorgeous product shots designed to create lust in the heart of every materialist. Irreverent snickers aside, the site does a fine job of matching the product line’s brand tone.

As I continue to traverse the silk road of luxury product marketing, I’ll have more to say about the “uses of enchantment” at work, as luxury brands continue to fan the flames of desire on so many levels.

[April 4, 2012]

A major barrier to clear digital communication is the welter of cultural associations people make with the online world. Among other things, people see digital space as an entertainment medium, or a living encyclopedia or a means to create community through sharing data. 

Trouble is, none of these three scenarios leaves the door open for advertising. Sure, if you’re watching the latest episode of a broadcast network TV show online, you can more or less tolerate the appearance of a 15-second spot. After all, it’s what you’re programmed to associate with network programs.

Watch that same episode after several minutes of googling, tweeting or ‘booking, and something funny happens: you find the same 15-second spot intolerable, because you’re not in the right mindset. That’s because advertising (or PR or “user engagement” or social media marketing) is inherently alien to the culture that’s grown up around digital space. In contrast to how we see TV or film, we tend to view digital space as an extension of the real world—wherever we happen to be at the moment.

If we’re at home, digital space feels like an addition to the living room. If we’re at work, it feels like an a-dimensional conference room. And when we travel, the mobile Web rolls with us. In this context, you can no more expect users to accept a jiggly banner online than you could expect them to accept a jiggly banner that pops out of their kitchen counters.

Unlike TV, which is objective, finite and inherently commercial, digital space is subjective, unbounded andpersonal.

Ironically, many of the tactics we’ve used so far to push our wares online have contributed to the problem. Tell consumers to open “My Account” or occupy “MySpace” or invite “My Friends” and you can hardly be surprised if they eventually respond to your ads with a resounding chorus of “Get off my lawn!”

Selling a relationship and…
What’s missing is a marketing model that can operate effectively within the deeply personal experience your customers have online. Because digital space isn’t a selling space. It’s a relationship space. And, sad to say, there’s no quick fix or regimen of design tweaks that can solve this problem. If you’re going to influence behavior, you need to do more than mimic the look and functionality of a social networking site. You need a marketing model based on establishing and maintaining a relationship with your customer.

Now, a natural fallout from this approach is that it needs to be nurtured in a branded space capable of creating excitement and sustaining interest over time. And, let’s be clear, the sustainability of your approach is critical to its success. It’s the classic trade-off between a real relationship and a chance encounter that happens to be mutually beneficial.

Why bother? Why not create a Facebook page for your brand? Here’s why not: Though the notion of “going where they are” is seductive, the average branded Facebook page succeeds only in promoting Facebook itself.

To see what I mean, compare the Facebook pages for Kia and Momma Mia! Cover up the timeline / marquee area and ask yourself if the proliferation of white boxes on pale blue backgrounds, punctuated by a random photos and user-generated content, actually constitutes a branded experience. 

With the logos covered, how can you tell a Kia-owner’s post about driving to a performance of Momma Mia from a Momma Mia-lover’s post describing her conversation about that same performance, while driving home in her Kia?

…spelling out your value.
As I see it, the solution to these problems starts with the realization that reaching people online means connecting person-to-person. You have to put yourself in the highly unusual position of actually caring about the people you want to reach. 

Stop for a moment and think about how transformative that is. Would you send anyone you actually cared about a sanitized laundry list of “tips”? Would you ask them to “help us serve you better by completing a brief survey?” Would you start each phone call with “Welcome to my communication device”?

No, marketing in relationship space is a completely different phenomenon. Instead of making elaborate claims, you must spell out your message through the value your Web presence delivers year round. The challenge here is to get beyond tissue-paper-thin pseudo journalism and offer your audience content they can’t find on YouTube, PopUrls, Mashable—or USA Today.

“Hey, we’re not a publishing company,” I hear an exasperated voice out on the horizon say, “we sell tires.” Fine. Set up an e-commerce site; no one will judge you. But if your brand promise promises something more than this month’s discounts, know that your investment in digital marketing will be wasted unless its geared from the start to build a one-on-one relationship with real people in as close to real time as your budget and imagination allow.

[April 2, 2011] 

On an average day at a digital agency you can barely count to 10 before someone announces, “The schedule’s really tight for this project…” If you’re new to the business, you might think this was an occasional complaint, the result of unforeseeable circumstances. In time, however, you can’t fail to notice the command performance this phrase, or one of its variants, makes at every kickoff meeting.

Whether accompanied by ritual eye-rolling, forehead slapping or knowing clicks of the tongue, talk of tight time lines is so much a part of agency culture, I have to wonder why this phenomenon is so little examined. Considering upper management—both client-side and agency-side—is still dominated by Generation Six Sigma, you might expect that process-control teams would have set things right long ago.

Since improbably short project schedules are in fact the rule, I suspect they can only be an outgrowth of the many addictive behaviors common to agency culture, including:

• Badge of Honor Bonding

When the camaraderie of working “under fire” becomes an addictive end in itself

• Adrenaline Stoking

The “flight or fight” panicky high that kicks in when a project seems lost. And what puts a project in greater jeopardy than impossible deadlines?

• Kiss Me I’m a Hero Syndrome
  When bored and dangerously insecure executives plan and precipitate
an artificial crisis so they can “save the day” and earn phony visionary   status (Trust me, you haven’t lived until you’ve seen this in action).

Turning our strength against us. 
Adding to the ferocity of these addictive behaviors is the persistent American delusion that people deliver their best work under extreme pressure. Perhaps a hangover from the glory days of World War II, when our ancestors cranked up industrial production to unheard of levels, this belief colors every aspect of our corporate life.

“Get tough and get results,” growls this dehumanizing refrain, part of the rumbling thunder that sets the stage for a perfect storm of bad scheduling decisions.

Once addiction to these and similar delusional states takes hold in an agency, conditions for disaster build inexorably. Perhaps the most common storm seeder, procrastination, gains force from its fraternal twin, perfectionism.

“We can’t kickoff yet. The client, the client’s CEO and the partner agency haven’t weighed in. Besides, we still need the September numbers, the revised brand guidelines, the updated metrics…and I’m just not crazy about the sweater that focus group moderator is wearing.”

And when, blinded by anxiety, the project leader kicks off with a time-deficit of three weeks, you can already see the clouds gathering on the horizon—and feel the buzz of high-wire danger coursing through your veins. Thrilling, ain’t it?

Er…I mean, “What a shame, isn’t it always the way?”

The spectre of addiction.
So we stay up until 4:30 am, making edits to the edits of the edits in a desperate attempt to adopt another perfectionist tweak and another and another until, at last, at the precise moment a glimmer of light appears at the end of the tunnel….

The Shadow Stakeholder appears.

The Shadow Stakeholder is a classic shape-shifter, appearing now as a smug, overseas partner, now as the disgruntled COO of the client’s parent company, now as a hard-as-nails Account Director with “standards,” now as a wide-eyed Creative guru whose every concept revolves around b-roll…lots and lots of b-roll.

From then on, hold on to your hat, or your head, if it’s still nailed down. The schedule? The budget? The Shadow Stakeholder will hear none of it. With a dismissive wave of the hand, you land smack in the middle of Round 19, clutching tattered scraps of the Big Idea that was everybody’s baby only hours before.

And in that moment, the perfect storm hits with vein-quaking intensity, shattering life plans and grinding creative talent into a fine powder of sickening compromise.

“Yo, we can do this,” goes the stoic rallying cry, “if we pull together and work smarter.”

Now, with your colleagues in this altered state, you’d have to be a fool to suggest that working smarter is the very thing that would have made this frenzied moment unnecessary. And yes, it’s always unnecessary—starting from the moment we realize the toll our neuroses take on ourselves, our profits and the public perception of our industry.

[March 25, 2012] 

What do people retain from visiting a Web site?

It sounds like a reasonable question and I don’t doubt there are several schools of thought about the answer. It’s also a question more often addressed with swaggering, numbers-don’t-lie certainty than with the humility it deserves. For any answer that’s too definitive is tantamount to saying “I can read my customer’s mind.”

I hate to say it, but that’s one hallmark of delusional thinking. Yet during any tour of duty at an established ad agency, certainty about human behavior, culture or mental capacity is expressed by players big and small. And that’s not surprising, considering certainty’s comforting glow. Trouble is, as you discover daily at your favorite news hub, there’s very little certainty about anything human.

And memory is no exception.

Complicating matters is the difficulty of defining what we mean by “retain.” Are we talking about retention of a branded theme, a set of benefit bullets—or a “limited time offer?”

Most likely, the type of memory required is neurologically and culturally different in each case. And that makes retainability kind of tough to measure. So perhaps the truest measure of what people retain from your digital content is the action or inaction it motivates.

And that’s just a bit ironic. These days, we’re told that bounce rates for the average Web page are depressingly high; odds are your visitors don’t stay long enough to hear about the desired action, much less take it. Ownable Value Proposition? Dismissed. Reason to Believe? Skipped. Strong Call to Action? Ignored.

“How is that possible?” wonders a typical, by-the-book marketing manager. “We tested this stuff in focus group.”

Leaving aside that people in focus groups get paid to listen to your message, never forget that digital space is a medium designed for user control. So even your most razzling dazzle can be answered with *CLICK* —a response for which no objection handler can be found.

The limits of limitation.
In a previous post, I talked about limiting site content to only the most targeted possible material, the content that actually adds value. But “debouncification” can’t be achieved with content cuts alone. Targeted content still needs to roll out in a way that builds interest—it has to have a pulse, a personality and a capacity to surprise.

To be clear, I’m not suggesting your content should be cheeky, sassy or shocking. But it must be interesting to your audience, something you can accomplish whether you’re dispensing fashion tips or tackling a deeply serious social issue. The trick is to pick a path through your material that:

• incites interest with an intriguing premise
• rewards interest with fresh insight
• ladders up to a big picture overview
• stages that overview so it’s easy to see and retain

So, even as you reduce content density, you still have to discover what retainable content looks like for your target. Trouble is, “target” implies a discrete subset of the population—and most marketers can’t suppress the urge to sell to everyone. Like it or not, however, content that appeals to everyone is the least retainable. Necessarily bland, non-specific and devoid of personality, “content for all” has a powerful mandate to be inoffensive. Yet, as your bounce rates attest, content for all is content for no one.

Coals to Newcastle / Data to digital natives.
Besides, isn’t it time you walked away from the 1990’s mindset—the belief that people can’t find relevant information on their own? Between Google, Wikipedia and the thousands of general-purpose sites on every topic from heart valves (Web MD) to fuel injectors (Cars.com), there’s no need for every Web site to clone or curate what users can find for themselves.

Today, if talk is cheap, information is cheaper and, anyway, there’s much more to communication than information dumping. Remember, by dialing you up, users have selected your site to access expertise they can’t find on their own. Give people nothing but “Blah, blah, blah” and you might as well replace your site with a redirect link to their own Facebook pages—because that’s where they’ll be in a matter of seconds.

Have trouble developing unique, expertise-driven content? Far better for your reputation to pull down your site and relaunch after some soul searching. Your consultants won’t like it, and neither will the rest of the box-checkers in your organization. But after a few months of reinvesting your Web marketing budget into creating a meaningful value stream for your audience, you’ll finally have a shot at giving your customers a reason to listen and the motivation to act.

[March 14, 2012] 

In the day-to-day life of an agency copywriter, a request for full-scale revision is a common occurrence. You’re either editing a round of your own work, rewriting existing copy, or starting “from scratch,” i.e., creating a new version of a different block of existing copy.

Since so much of our process revolves around revising an existing revision, I sometimes wonder if all advertising and promotional copy could be traced back to a primeval Guild of Wordsmiths.

OK, that’s unlikely.

But I don’t now how else to account for our current situation, in which marketers obsess over codified blocks of copy—instead of crafting a coherent message to consumers. In fact, many marketers insist that all copy should derive from phrases contained in a single master document. A shape-shifting trickster, this document takes many guises. You may know it as:

• Messaging Architecture Map
• Key Learnings Ladder
• Branded Communications Guideline
• Suzy Homemaker Consumer Copy Oven
(Bakes Real Headlines!)

Whatever its name, the document fosters an aura of peaceful submission to a tidy creative process. “Look,” coos a typical brand manager, eyes half-shut, “I know where every line of copy comes from.” Now, in the context of such bliss, it seems a shame to burst the bubble of self-satisfaction, especially when preserving it is the surest path to AOR status.

Trouble is, this is one of many instances in life when rocking the boat is the only way to get the dinghy ashore.

Messaging through the looking glass.
Looked at rationally, the source of these messaging templates should be enough to discredit the practice. For we’re being asked to accept a messaging strategy tested in a focus group, on a statistically insignificant number of people. What’s more, these people are selected using screening methods that wouldn’t pass muster in a third world manufacturing plant. Anyone who doubts this has never been on the other side of the glass.

Objectivity? Science? Look through the glass and point to one person who isn’t there solely for the 75 bucks—or secretly hoping the focus group session is a covert audition for American Idol.

But even if I agreed that focus group testing is a meaningful predictor of future results, the most damaging impact of this process is the mechanical way the suspect findings are interpreted. Once the 20-pound Power Point deck is delivered, the process degenerates into a frantic game of Tetris, as we tap away furiously to make mismatched, irregular chunks of raw data fit into a semblance of sense.

Questions of quality control aside, my issue with this process goes deeper. Sure, on the surface, such a process might seem to have merit—since it posits a direct correlation between what some consumers say and what all consumers want to hear. But, as I see it, anyone who subscribes to the “Tetris model” has forgotten how language works.

Beyond “word processing.”
Contrary to popular belief, words are not mere conveyors of discrete meaning. Heard in context, they also carry cultural baggage. Take, for example, the isolated statistic that the median marriage age is now 27.5 for men and 25.6 for women. Based on that data, would you even think of reciting your marriage eligibility profile to a 27-year-old man or 25-year-old woman you just met?

Or would you, come to think of it, try to seduce them first?

By the same token, you must introduce yourself to consumers with more than an empty recitation of end-user benefits and reasons-to-believe—no matter what their source. Why? Because mechanical messaging fails to acknowledge the three phases of consumer communication:

1. Get your customer’s attention
2. Reward your customer’s attention
3. Motivate your customer to action

Regrettably, many people only acknowledge Phase 3. That goes a long way to explaining why, if a focus group attendee says a product is fast and easy to use, you can set your clocks by how fast the headlines “It’s So Easy!” and “It’s So Fast!” will appear on a wave of promotional materials. Worse, I can site multiple instances in my own experience where someone has proposed “The Fastest, Easiest______ Just Got Faster and Easier with the Fast and Easy Program from _____” as the basis for a hard-sell campaign.

I wish I could say I was kidding.

Yet today the belief persists that consumers are no smarter than the dog in the classic Gary Larsen cartoon—able to comprehend only the buzziest of marketing buzzwords, manufactured like chewy treats and sprinkled liberally into their dishes at meal time. I’m afraid the only message that creative process sends is one of cynical resignation to ineffective communication.

[February 22, 2012]

In the midst of many changes currently rocking the advertising industry, one constant is the Creative Presentation. We recognize it as the ritualized walk-through that precedes work on any new campaign. In the course of an average career, agency denizens of every stripe will participate in several dozen creative presentations. It’s a time-honored practice dating back at least as far as the era depicted by Mad Men.

In the present era, a real-world creative presentation features a larger helping of market research—from “back-up” to “set-up” to “up-front.” Our clients now demand a Reason to Believe the Reason to Believe before they’ll open their ears. That’s one of many bad habits we’ve taught them over the decades, starting from the moment we voluntarily threw off the consultant’s cloak and stepped meekly into the vendor’s yoke.

Yet despite these accommodations to changing times, a glaring flaw persists in the way clients typically receive the ideas we present. Nearly 50 years after the heyday of American advertising, most marketing managers still can’t distinguish between two discrete entities:

1. A creative concept 
   (Driving a Mazda as the route
   to exuberant personal freedom)

2. Its physical realization 
    (Zoom! Zoom! Zoom!)

As I see it, the distinction is clear: A creative concept is a thought process that can be expressed in any number of physical realizations. At a true concept presentation, this thought process takes center stage. It’s not the time to debate color palettes, pixel widths, placeholder copy, taglines, stock art style or programming gimmicks.

If this sounds obvious, I only mention it because this principal is violated to some degree at nearly every creative concept presentation. And that’s a problem, because no single factor wastes more time in the creative development phase than a faulty creative presentation. 

You see the problem in action the moment you receive Round 1 feedback. Your clients, far from acknowledging the intent of your presentation, have “approved The Blue Concept.” They want you to find efficiencies by repurposing existing assets and simply making them Blue. Forget the communication strategy you hammered out over artisanal pizza only the day before. You’ve sold your clients Blue and all they want is Blue.

Saving time. Losing the day.
The source of this confusion stems in part from a misguided, penny-wise model of time management. As hard as they try, many marketing managers can’t fathom the idea of producing “work we can’t use.” Following this line of logic, a concept presentation in the sense I mean it is a waste. If it’s in the presentation, it’s got to appear in the final result.

Trouble is, there’s no better way to stymie creative development. Instead of buy-in on the thought-process underlying the concept, the agency receives marching orders not directly related to the issue at hand—the development of a fresh, engagement strategy. That’s when it dawns on you: Your client has approved nothing beyond the most superficial aspects of the creative concept. Ask about messaging and you’re liable to hear:

               CLIENT
       (over phone, filtered)
Isn’t it all in the print brochure? 
Hold on…Right. I just checked with 
Diane and she says it’s all there. 
We’ll send it over so you have the latest 
version with Diane’s tweaks. No sense 
reinventing the wheel…

What’s a “creative” to do?
Having stated a problem, it’s incumbent on me to suggest a solution—even if habits ingrained more deeply in every generation seem impossible to reverse. Nevertheless, there may still be ways to help clients grasp the real purpose of a creative presentation.

Since the term “creative” is now so hopelessly corrupted that it applies equally to a concept, a design layout, a tagline and a person, we should rename the ritual. To reset your clients’ expectations, consider calling it a Concept Exploration. Then set ground rules for meaningful feedback and map out each step of the creative development to follow. It’s the only way to stem the tide of tweakage.

Second, but no less important, realize that creative presentation doesn’t end with that fateful first meeting. To keep the project on track, you must continue to present your idea at each stage of the process. Otherwise, even the soundest creative concept will die the death of a thousand minor edits.

Finally, do whatever you can to bring enthusiasm to the table. To succeed, you must take your clients somewhere they’ve never been before—to the very brink of creative thinking. Only then can you hope to do the kind of work that used to be the standard. That is, before we redefined agency work as a species of docile servitude to clocks, dollar signs and the folly of wishful thinking. 

[February 10, 2012]

Logically, you expect anyone in the field of marketing to realize a few simple truths: That they’re in the business of selling—and that selling itself is the act of changing behavior. No matter how you complete the sale, you’re motivating an action, playing on a desire and offering a route to its fulfillment. 

Post Cold War, that’s what makes the world go round. But you can’t fail to realize it’s also what makes all human interaction possible, as in the following fictional conversation (based on a true story):

“Where d’ya wanna go for pizza?” asked Katy.
“Dunno,” said Russell.
“There’s pies up the street with mad-thin crust, like you like it,” said Katy.
“Cool,” said Russell.

Persuasion via value proposition. It’s an everyday occurrence. But what about the motives of the persuader? For all we know, Katy might have no interest in pizza, but every interest in hanging out with Russell. Or vice versa. In fact, the entire conversation might be a sham, an artifice, a desperate attempt by two people to find an excuse to build a relationship. And don’t get me started on their possible ulterior motives.

Fact is, transactional relationships are everywhere. If the idea shocks you, you’re better off not leaving the house. Such relationships are so routine, they’re expected. The presidential candidates who tell you they’re motivated by a vision of America are guilty of spin. As strange as it may seem, those seeking personal power do so to seek personal power.

By the same token, people who make a living by selling a product are selling a product to make a living. And, in case the point has escaped you, that’s the very model of a transactional relationship. So I find it incomprehensible that any marketer would reject a sales strategy simply because it it’s based on an artifice, a premise, an excuse to build a relationship.

“But it’s not real!”
Without wishing to invoke Sherlock Holmes, I congratulate anyone who deduces that advertising is based on a purposeful use of the artifice of persuasion. As in the discussion of many such topics, the real vs fake dichotomy breaks down at the level of detail. Because the only moral issue surrounding an ad campaign is whether it tells the truth about your product.

It doesn’t matter if the truth is delivered by a celebrity spokesperson, a “real audience member,” a mommy-blogger, or sock puppets. What matters is whether you’ve found an engagement strategy that grabs your customers’ attention and motivates them to buy an honest product for an honest price.

OK, maybe you feel sock puppets don’t match your brand image, your brand voice, your brand identity, your brand wheel or your favorite brand of bran flakes. That’s up to you. But for Heaven’s sake, don’t turn down the chance to create an iconic, memorable moment for your brand just because of its fuzzy relationship to “reality.” 

What is reality?
Am I the first person to ask this question? I don’t think so. The slippery nature of what’s real has bedeviled far greater minds than mine, including people forced to live out their lives in itchy, wool robes. In fact, the consensus of human history is that reality is treacherously difficult to define. Yet, strangely, your average marketing manager can supply you with a ready definition in seconds flat: Reality is statistics, poll data and “fun facts.”

Sadly, the belief that we can discern absolute truth through multiple-choice questions is quite unshakable in some quarters. Yet, the well-documented phenomenon of response bias—the tip of this faux-scientific iceberg—should be enough to undermine anyone’s faith in poll numbers. The upshot? A creative concept based on “the facts” can only represent reality to a limited degree. 

So as you consider your options for connecting with consumers, your decision to base your approach on “reality” will always be a matter of personal preference. It won’t necessarily increase engagement and it won’t necessarily enhance the value of your brand. In real terms, the only thing your approach will necessarily accomplish is an expression of literal-minded Marketing Anxiety.

[February 2, 2012] 

In the excitement and anxiety swirling through a new business pitch or the creation of a new campaign, attention is riveted on the top line, the Big Idea—and the hair-pulling process of selling it up the corporate food chain. Often, little thought is given to the details of how the campaign-to-be will roll out, and I suppose that’s inevitable. With today’s compressed time lines and skeletal staffing, Speed quickly becomes the only virtue. 

Besides, like characters in the traditional English children’s story, The Little Red Hen, many people with a stake in the process are much more interested in the final result than in the skilled and timely work required to make it happen. In the “I don’t sweat the small stuff” arrogance of the moment, they attempt to skip steps essential to the process.

For it’s right there, in the details, that most advertising campaigns fall flat, fail to communicate and set off a firestorm of “key learnings” anybody with patience and forethought could have predicted from the outset. That’s why the working out of the Big Idea must be pitched as an essential component of the concept. Because, contrary to popular belief, a creative concept is only as good as its ability to be worked out creatively—in a way that captures every nuance of the brand’s identity.

Filling the void.
A look under the hood of a failed campaign usually reveals a common problem. Often the conceptual framework has little impact on the internal workings of the realization. Instead of being the top-down re-imagining that a new creative campaign concept should be, the Big Idea is merely a series of empty canisters in which a brand can store its staple supply of boilerplate content. 

In the absence of an organic plan for mapping content to the campaign’s message strategy, many clients are happy to fill the void with a species of evergreen mush only a corporate legal team could love. And in the mistaken belief that Big Ideas are all that matter, a depressingly large number of agency operatives play along.

Body copy? I got a guy who does that for me.
Nevertheless, the belief that “anybody” can flesh out a Big Idea is false. In my experience, the cheeky headlines we chuckle over in presentation usually take far more talent and expertise to pay off than they do to come up with. That is, unless you think a cheeky headline followed by a bland restatement of the “reason to believe” is enough to motivate your audience. 

Done right, a fully realized ad campaign is an expression of the Big Idea at every turn. In the best case scenario, the Big Idea is itself a direct expression of brand attributes that are evident in the real world. Now, to hit that sweet spot, your product has to offer tangible, ownable value. It can’t skate by with the kind of parity benefits that make every laundry detergent virtually identical to every other laundry detergent. “Gets. Clothes. Clean.” Right, it’s a detergent.

In the aftermath, nothing adds up.
The impact of a mechanical ideation process is evident throughout the history of advertising. In 2012, we’re pleased to snicker at a Tide campaign from decades ago with the slogan “You can trust Tide to get clothes clean.”

Yet today, the Ford campaign “Drive One” makes the same leap into non-differentiation. In fact, squirm-inducing pre-feminist overtones aside, the Tide commercial at least presents a staged recreation of an actual interview. Ford, on the other hand, rolls out phony testimonials over swelling music and expects us to take them as gospel.

When the music dies down—and the cast presumably shuffles off to re-record “We Are the World“—all we’re left with is “Drive One. [Because. It’s. A. Car.]” 

Big Idea? I don’t think so—for here is a slogan that can only be paid off with scraps and remnants from the local cliché factory. Meanwhile, in digital space, Ford relegates its Big Idea to the status of an icon badge that visitors can use in the context of Ford Social, its social sharing space.

Coincidentally, the intro copy for this sector of Ford’s Web presence is a perfect example of what happens when creative development goes no further than the sketchiest top line thinking. “There’s something happening here at Ford. It’s new. And it’s called Ford Social,” reads the lead-in. I can’t think of a better argument in favor of sweating the small stuff right from the start.