This Week in Strategy: When life gives you melons, you might be dyslexic.
Hi Strat Pack,
Publishing Schedule Change: Because of the Thanksgiving Holiday next week, we will be publishing on Wednesday, not Friday. It will probably be an abbreviated version because it's a short week, and if you're American, you probably won't read it anyway. But also maybe not because I've already got some really good content for it. We'll see!
I went down a weird rabbit hole this week Inside the “Reckless” World of In-Flight Movie Censoring and also Who Is Censoring Your In-Flight Movies? These articles get into a very interesting area surrounding artistic expression, the concerns of airlines who are worried about what a child might see over your shoulder, and how the tension between the two can often result in absolutely butchered movies on planes. Also, fun fact: Chinese airlines don’t allow any depiction or mention of ghosts. Why? I have no idea. But I believe it!
Really important news: Squidward Is Getting His Own Netflix Spin-Off And, TBH, It’s About Time Let's be real, a lot of us grew up not liking Squidward on SpongeBob Squarepants because he was a grouchy cynic. Spoiler alert: we all grew up and ended up relating to Squidward on a deeply spiritual level. This is the cartoon for our times.
If you don't follow Mari Andrew (@bymariandrew) on Instagram you absolutely should. This post was a little glimmer of light in the darkness. Mental health is so important! Get some joy by clicking through.
Alright, stop messing around asking everyone on Twitter if you hate Squidward because you in fact are a total Squidward. (I was always more of a Patrick-type myself.) Let's jump right in.
The one thing to read this week
1) Strategy Is A Direction, Not A Shopping List … [Rob Campbell - The Musings of an Opinionated Sod]
I am getting fed up of hearing strategy talked about in terms of a process. Of course, there is one, but it seems people seem to value the process more than what it is supposed to deliver.
Which is clarity and direction.
Something that will change the behaviour of the brand/business from the very next day. Something that will help create a clear position in culture, not just in the category. Something that will contribute value, loyalty and appeal to the audience that will move them forward. Something that is focused on the long-term, not just the next quarter.
That’s it. That’s all strategy is.
And yet, I am meeting so many people who are getting lost in the process or worse, getting lost in the word ‘strategy’ … saying nothing can be done without it being deeply involved at every step – and I mean ‘every’ step – of the process. Now don’t get me wrong, thinking and expertise is important – but to imply that only someone with the word ‘strategy’ in their title can do it, is wrong. Actually, it’s insulting … especially when you consider that so much of the magic happens when you invite people who see the World differently to the party.
But it’s happening. I’m seeing it everywhere.
And what it’s doing is creating so many strands to the strategy discipline, they’re getting in the way of each other. That might be good for the agency fee, but not great for the work.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying these strands of strategy don’t have value – of course they do – but in many areas, it’s not actually strategy … it’s not delivering on any of the 4 areas listed above … it’s simply helping push along the process of the output to get to a [allegedly] more effective result.
In other words, it’s short-term tuning rather than long term creating. Adding obstacles rather than taking them away. Or said more cynically, it’s more tactics than strategy.
Doesn’t have to be. Not everyone is doing that. Not everyone thinks like that.
But my god, it seems there is a lot of it about … and when you look at the amount of work that is being produced because of it, you have to admit that while there’s a lot of optimization, there’s not a lot of distinctive, magnetic energy.
2) Who'd start an ad agency today? Dave Dye has the answer [Campaign US]
This is a fantastic article - 100% worth a click through to read the whole thing.
Over the past decade or so, first-class ad agencies turned themselves into third-rate tech companies. Throwing away the one thing they did better than anyone – talking to the public.
The common belief used to be that the public aren’t interested in our ads, so we had to be concise, relevant and interesting to have a chance of engaging them. Now, many believe that the public want more engagement with brands and their marketing, regardless of how dull or irrelevant the message may be.
Cornish pasty brands now roll out videos about their purpose in society, beer bods produce 20-minute virtual brewery tours to make the pale ale process totally transparent, and apps are launched allowing you to envisage yourself holding a bottle of their ointment.
People don’t give a shit.
2019 is like 1959. I would imagine. I wasn’t there, I’m not that old. Back in the 1950s, advertising was all process, pseudo-science and bullshit.
Agencies had their secret sauces and unique formulas that could force the public to drop everything and buy your product. Weirdly, their bespoke processes didn’t produce bespoke ads. They led to lifestyle ads, featuring models smiling while holding/driving/drinking/using the product. Attached was a set of words and phrases that had never come out of the mouths of any human being. Ever. Sound familiar?
Marketing today is filled with the attractive grandchildren of those models, smiling or laughing their head off because they are holding up the products next to other smilers and laughers. And words? "Find your happy" and "Flavour me backwards", surely created by Bowie back in Berlin, using his cut-up technique? Or maybe it’s bots? Young, bearded ones with a taste for pale ale. (From a microbrewery, obvs.)
When does our 1960s start? At some point, a new generation of punks will call bullshit on the output of our business, they’ll make its creators feel like Emerson, Lake & Palmer when The Damned, Pistols and Clash turned up.
They’ll create visceral, entertaining work that gets noticed, they’ll talk to the public like they talk to their friends – honestly and respectfully. (And, they’ll want to get famous for making brands famous.) After a decade of cuts, there are signs that clients may be changing; many are now placing value over savings. Maybe as an industry we also need to place value above cost.
Particularly in creative, it’s hard to charge by the yard. How long do you take to have an insight, observation or idea? Exactly. In advertising today, emotion and experience are scarce. (Tech and youth? Not so much.)
[And then he talks about starting his own agency, Love & Fear. But the point is: the industry model is broken and we're all complicit. Be the change you wish to seek. Be better advertisers. Make your clients better marketers. Break the cycle of short-termism bad creative bullshit.
3) Ads are pointless if the consumer doesn’t recognise the brand behind them [MarketingWeek]
This new ad from Renault featuring a lesbian couple is a beautiful story and cultural statement, but the brand’s presence is nowhere near distinctive enough, argues Mark Ritson.
The issue isn’t diversity, it’s distinctiveness. Marketers are mid-way through a growing disciplinary revelation in which involved, subtle, system two approaches to brand building are being replaced by more immediate, obvious, system one methods instead.
Where once we thought it was essential to differentiate “or die” we have become more ambivalent about the degree to which brand A truly needs to be perceived differently from brands B, C and D to succeed. Instead of being different from the others, marketers focus more on making their brand look like itself as much as possible.
That sounds, to inexperienced ears, like an obvious thing. But if it were obvious we would not see crappy linkage scores in which some consumers vaguely remember an ad but very few remember the brand it was actually for. The current best estimate says a day after exposure more than 80% of ads that were served to a customer fail this test. That low bar is not the consumer’s fault, it’s marketers who should be blamed.
Maybe 5% of the time, iconic ads became works of popular culture that built a brand for the ages. But for the other 95% of the time the audience tunes out. Or gets bored. Or stops noticing two seconds into the ad. And do what most audiences do when they experience advertising. Something else.
And that would be my worry for the wonderfully progressive, worryingly indistinct Renault ad. It’s certainly a fantastic story beautifully told. It’s incredibly brave to target a mainstream market with an authentic lesbian love story. But is it Renault enough?
I appreciate there is a Renault occasionally sitting on the edge of the establishing shot in the ad. But if I were Renault I’d have wanted more than the car. I’d have presented the agency with my list of the four or five distinctive assets and I’d have broken the heart and will to live of the creative team and made them incorporate them more. Much more.
It’s great that the ad has been so well received on social media. But most of the images floating around the internet are of two women kissing. Not of a car. Certainly not a Clio. If I had written this whole article and replaced the word Renault with Citroën how many readers would have noticed? Cared?
The ad is beautiful, progressive, impactful, it’s just not Renault enough. It wins on diversity but loses on distinctiveness. The good news for Renault and Publicis Poke is that the marketing community is way more concerned about the former than the latter. They will win awards and receive gallons of marketing praise for this ad irrespective of whether it works or not.
4) Quick Hits: A few articles that are concise, important, interesting, impactful, and I'm not going to write long descriptions for them.
Writing a creative brief Preview [Julian Cole - Planning Dirty] Write better briefs! 5 minutes on how to write the GET/TO/BY brief using the example of Spotify and RX Bar. A great refresher for grizzled vets and a must watch for people new to the industry.
How many ads today would meet the criteria for effective copy set down by Lord & Thomas and Logan in 1927? [Ian David - Twitter] "The first step in writing advertising copy is to have something to say"
South Dakota says, 'Meth. We're On It,' and Twitter asks, 'Are you guys OK?' [Argus Leader] On the importance of hiring a diversity of thought. South Dakota's new anti-meth campaign is catching a lot of attention nationwide, and people are now asking "Hey, what's up with South Dakota?" The campaign cost the state $449,000. Here's a selection of the best Tweets.
The Real Nature of Thomas Edison’s Genius [New Yorker] The inventor did not look for problems in need of solutions; he looked for solutions in need of modification. Get hooked by the first sentence: There were ideas long before there were light bulbs. But, of all the ideas that have ever turned into inventions, only the light bulb became a symbol of ideas. Think about how this applies to so much of the work we create in advertising specifically.
Programmatic – don’t believe the hype [Byron Sharp's Blog] Programmatic is particularly useful for those buying from the pool (cesspool?) of cheap digital spots away from few main properties of Google and Facebook. It seems obvious, essential even, for the trading of these trillions of spots to be done by computers, human involvement is simply too expensive. Unfortunately, this just isn’t sexy enough for the sales consultants. So we have overblown promises based on marketing theory and fashion not facts. Programmatic will apparently allow deeper relationships with customers. It will deliver hyper targeting – zero wastage. Moreover ads will reach viewers just at the moment they are most susceptible to persuasion. ROI will be fantastic. On goes the sales spiel. Stay skeptical.
Does A Country Need A Logo? (And Is This One Worth $220,000?) [Forbes] In one sense, the debate on the new logo isn’t different from any corporate rebranding and restyling project: so many people, so many minds. But the new logo brings up a more important question: whether countries need logos in the first place and what a good country logo looks like. The article talks about country level strategy, and branding. Thought provoking enough to turn off your ad blocker for sure.
The End of Positioning: Introducing Iconic Moves [Interbrand] Your Friday morning hate read. I can't believe that Interbrand (Interbrand!) came out with this dreck. "The age of brand positioning — a static, category-based, abstract construct to be checked and reviewed every so often — is drawing to an end." It's a bunch of total bullshit, designed to sell consulting services to those idiots Dave Dye mentioned who have a tenure of only 18 months. Ugh. Read this with a strong bottle of whiskey handy.
5) Department of Great Work
Adobe's Alexa skill reads 'inspirational' quotes to jaded creatives [Engadget] To help you move past these frustrating blocks, Adobe is releasing an Alexa skill called the Inspiration Engine to get your artistic juices flowing. The Adobe Inspiration Engine is available for free from the Amazon Alexa Skill store in the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. You can try it out by saying "Hey Alexa, enable the Adobe Inspiration Engine."
Spotify Opened a Record Shop to Showcase 'Living' Album Covers [AdAge] "Canvas Records,” was a pop-up store that opened at Austin City Limits. It's an audiovisual listening bar where visitors could enjoy the tunes while experiencing Canvases (eight second looping album covers) as living, breathing artworks, each one resting inside a custom frame that mimicked classic vinyl record sleeves. With New York agency Fig and The Mill
Ryan Reynolds Promotes Netflix Movie, Samsung TV & Aviation Gin All In One Ad [DesignTaxi] "I bought a mid-roll ad in an ad" is the best line you could possibly put in an ad. Produced by communications company Adam & Eve DDB New York, the commercial shows the actor standing in front of Samsung’s QLED TV and touting it as the best display for 6 Underground, an upcoming Michael Bay-directed Netflix film starring Reynolds. The video on the television then buffers and skips to an advert for Aviation Gin, the gin label owned by Reynolds.
Tina Fey adds star appeal to Allstate’s ‘Mayhem’ [More About Advertising] Mayhem is back—but this time he’s met his match. Allstate's havoc-wreaking character, introduced nearly a decade ago, gets tamed in a new campaign from the insurer helmed by Tina Fey. Love the 30 Rock references. Developed by Allstate's "internal agency in partnership with 72andSunny". Which means it was developed by 72andSunny at half their regular fee, I'm sure.
Ads We Like: A fond farewell as Virgin Trains' 90s spoof music video marks 'final whistle' [The Drum] Leave it to Richard Branson to make a music video about his train company shutting down. I'm not British. Three-quarters of the references probably went above my head. But it's a fun video and I think a really positive way to mark the end of a company. And I did get the Dirty Dancing reference. From agency Cubaka.
A Twitter account is posting pitches for Super Bowl ads that it says are generated by AI [Twitter] It's probably not AI. But it's well written. Hope this helps land the copywriter behind it a job!
Department of Give Me a Break
Under Armour Suing Denver-Based Clothing Company for Suit For Trademark Infringement [Brand New] It's a scoreboard H. Give me a break.
Fox has filed a trademark application for 'OK boomer" [CNN] They're allegedly developing a TV show that "could be a reality, comedy and/or game show." Give me a break.
6) Platform Updates
Serious question: I still see Likes on Instagram. Do you?
TikTok tests social commerce [TechCrunch] The short-form video app said it has started to allow some users (less than 20) to add links to e-commerce sites (or any other destination) to their profile biography as well as offer creators the ability to easily send their viewers to shopping websites.
Instagram Unveils Holiday Gift Guide For Various Lifestyles Based On 2019 Trends [DesignTaxi] You can now purchase using checkout without leaving the app. The collections featured are curated for various personalities ranging from partygoers to cultured souls and new parents.
Snapchat follows YouTube's lead with extended unskippable ads [The Drum] Snapchat will now let brands buy unskippable ads that go beyond their current six-second time limit. The new format apes YouTube's TrueView proposition and is dubbed 'extended play commercials' These longer video ads maintain an initial six-second non-skip portion, then after the first unskippable six seconds an ad can continue running (up to three minutes in total) while users will be able to skip at any time.
Twitter Adds New 'Conversation Insights' to Media Studio [SocialMediaToday] Twitter has added a new 'Conversation Insights' element to its Media Studio tool, which provides more specific data on your tweet mentions, who's mentioning you, and filters to provide additional information on the types of accounts engaging with your profile.
‘It’s super wonky’: Ahead of Black Friday, ad buyers and brands are having issues with Facebook’s Ads Manager [Digiday] Sorry performance media people. Some buyers are encountering numerous error messages while setting up campaigns, delayed approval times for ads (especially for dynamic creative), as well as reporting inconsistencies. That’s led to lower returns on ad spend, around 1.5X or below, for some of the buyers’ clients, according to agency sources.
As always, the full archive is available here. Was this email forwarded to you? Want to start getting this on a weekly basis? All I need is your email, everything else is optional.Thanks for sticking around as always. See you next week!