This Week in Strategy: Shout out to the people asking what the opposite of in is.
(groan level 10 on this week's joke)
Hi Strat Pack:
So I got back from vacation on Wednesday (it was great, by the way, but I certainly missed you guys!) and my suitcase, while unzipped, is still sitting mostly full on the living room floor. This is common for me. But thanks to research (and a moderately condescending assistant professor of psychology from my alma mater), we now know why: “I think of not unpacking as a way to avoid a kind of mourning that the fun is over. So in that sense, perhaps unpacking is a way to hold on to the trip or a kind of denial that vacation is over, though in an unhelpful way.” Well maybe that or maybe I've been lugging this thing across 7,000 miles of ocean and 1,100 miles of Japan and I don't like wheeled bags but this time I brought one and the wheel broke like, right at the beginning of the trip, and I just don't want to deal with it! You don't know me! Ugh!
But seriously, the trip was great, and if you're thinking of going to Japan you absolutely should. Email me for recommendations.
I'd like to start with an important update. It's especially important if you are my boss or my boss's boss or my boss's boss's boss: Microsoft experimented with a 4-day workweek, and productivity jumped by 40% The company said it also reduced the time spent in meetings by implementing a 30-minute limit and encouraging remote communication. *nudge nudge* It's not just the employees who benefited from Microsoft's four-day-workweek experiment — Microsoft found that it helped preserve electricity and office resources as well. The number of pages printed decreased by 58.7%, while electricity consumption was down by 23.1% compared with the prior year, the company said. I'M JUST SAYIN...!
Anyway, I ran across this tweet which, well it sums up Twitter pretty succinctly. Make sure to click through all three photos.
Alright, stop messing around trying to figure out what brand my suitcase was (unless you want to tweet at the customer service team, in that case DM me for details...) Let's jump right in.
The one thing to read this week
1) Write Your Briefs Like Dr. Seuss, Not MBA Seuss. [Mark DiMassimo - LinkedIn]
Congratulations!
Today is your day.
You’re off to great places.
You’re off and away.
Out there, things happen,
And frequently do,
To people as brainy,
And footsy as you.
When things start to happen,
Don’t worry, don’t stew.
Just go right along,
You’ll start happening too.
Just step over things
That stick to your shoe
That weigh down your wings
And mess up your do.
Your briefs should be brief,
Small words straight on through,
No jargon or grief,
Just Why? What? and Who?
Oh, you’ll be of great use
Every word that you say
If you write like Dr. Seuss,
And not Seuss, M.B.A.
2) Has Advertising Lost Its Personality? [Martin Weigel - Canalside View]
This article is long, and I had to leave a lot out. Please read the whole thing. It's thoughtful, well-written, and excellently researched.
Has advertising really lost its personality? Or had advertising always been mostly vapid, ignorable landfill? It turns out that advertising has indeed become flatter.
An analysis of ads from 2004-2018 reveals a decline in the use of characters, sense of context, distinctive accents, ambiguity, wordplay, double meaning, and metaphor. Advertising today demonstrates less self-awareness, is less self-referential, employs less implicit communication between people, deploys less cultural references, and fewer stories with a beginning, a middle and an end.
Conversely, it reveals a greater use of voiceovers, monologue, more focus on things than people, more people as props not characters.
The shift is significant. This is advertising designed for the left-hemisphere.
It’s advertising designed for that part of the brain that prizes utility, power and control, whose principle tool is language, that is concerned with cause and effect, that likes clarity and certainty, that is literal and prefers the literal over the implicit. It’s advertising designed for that part of the brain that is flat and simplified, lacking in depth and nuance.
This is advertising that neglects the right hemisphere of the brain. This is the part of the brain which understands the world through connections and relationships between things (rather than cause and effect), that’s rooted in bodily or visceral experience, that’s empathetic, understands the feelings of others, and understands what’s implied. It’s the part of the brain that understands metaphor, humour, and irony.
In other words, we are creating more and more advertising which neglects that part of the brain we must engage if we want to create the associations and connections that lie at the heart of long-term brand building.
It means that we are giving up on advertising that seeks to influence behaviour not simply through the conscious processing of verbal or factual messages, but as Paul Feldwick characterises it, “by influencing emotions and mediating 'relationships' between the consumer and the brand”.
And it means that we are giving up on advertising that treats implicit communication and execution as vital, not merely window-dressing for a message.
The current corporate ideology that people as subjects and receivers, not active participants and collaborators in meaning-making. And perhaps most damagingly of all, it’s an ideology that treats the role played by creativity, execution and emotional elements as being simply to support this communication, either by fostering liking of the advertising, which transfers to the brand, or by increasing attention, which aids memory of the key message.
Systemic impatience has been compounded by the struggle to find growth in low- or no-growth markets, as well as a narrow focus on short-term efficiency blinding businesses to the long-term damage their actions risk. Needless to say, this impatience and demand for results today has been passed on to creative agencies. Creative departments are being compelled to tune to a shorter wave-length, and the pressure on creative time is relentless.
When we insist that marketing’s priority is not the longer-term health of a brand and business but the short-term, we are in the business not of value creation but value destruction.
It’s value destroying because most people aren’t “in the market” for anything most of the time.
It’s value-destroying because with the exception of direct response advertising, most advertising simply does not pay back in the short term.
It’s value destroying because half of advertising’s effects will crystallise more than a year later.
It’s value-destroying because the creation of what Binet and Field call “associations”, Sharp calls “memory structures” and Williamson calls “empires of the mind” takes time. And it’s these memories that sustain salience and preference.
It’s value-destroying because these memories work by supporting prices not just by driving volumes or share - and as Binet and Field have demonstrated, pricing effects are slower to crystallise than volume effects.
While 73% of business leaders cite business resilience as a business priority - only 55% of business leaders believe that a strong brand impacts business resilience. And while 71% of business leaders cite future cashflow as a business priority - only 49% of business leaders believe that a strong brand impacts future cashflow. Meanwhile 33% of marketers are not confident in their brand building know-how.
Until we address these issues of knowledge, competence, and confidence we are unlikely to make much in the way of progress.
We must recognise that short-termism is a choice, not an obligation.
And it’s clear what we need to do if we wish to escape the endless, barren, ineffective vistas of advertising flatland. We must collectively reorientate ourselves to focus on the long-term as well as the short-term.
We must help our clients better understand and appreciate the business case for brand-building. We must equip our clients in turn to make a better case for brand-building within their organisations. We must fundamentally reimagine how brand-building communication works - and accommodate ourselves to the fact that addressing different brain hemispheres demands different kinds of creative approach.
We must create the right conditions for this kind of creativity to be developed. And we must rediscover the magic and power of execution and let go of our insistence on idea and message as the be-all and end-all of advertising success.
Disproportionate and sustained advantage awaits.
3) ‘Viva la Strategia!’ Reflecting on 20 Years of Planning [Little Black Book]
VMLY&R Italy head of strategy Luigi Accordino ponders the changing nature of the planner as well as what he thinks should be the “lighthouse of strategic thought”
LBB> Over the years, have you noticed any shifts in what a strategist’s place in an agency is?
Luigi> I don’t think that the strategist’s place in an agency has ever shifted from one place to another. I would rather say that the combination of (at least) three certain macro-phenomena are allowing strategy to claim its fundamental, central role in the contemporary agency:
The sociological evolution of media and touchpoints. Today no message becomes relevant unless you’re able to deliver it “strategically” according to the specific relevant channel for the target. And strategists are leading creatives in the understanding of each channel.
The rise of the strategic culture among creative people. 20 years ago, creatives on average were Jurassic in their approach to a brief. To think first in strategic terms was not their automatic approach. Today, creatives are far more strategic and competent with strategy.
The economic global crisis that started in 2008 and is still going on. The other side of this very negative worldwide event is that each and every brand, from the biggest to the smallest, is super focused on the effectiveness of their communication projects. In the past there was much more room to go wrong with communication for companies. Today they need to maximise every effort to avoid an immediate negative impact on their business models, which could put them in serious danger
LBB> What have been the biggest changes in that role since you began, and how have strategists had to adapt their skill sets to keep up?
Luigi> Brand strategists are always brand strategists. The psychological relationship between a brand and a person will always be driven by the same logic and dynamics. We are first of all sociologists and psychologists, and this is not ever going to change.
Then of course we have to study and understand the new media so as not to suggest a 30 seconds commercial on prime-time national TV instead of a video on Facebook, but this is just a part of the never-ending update that every strategist has to make about consumers’ habits, trends, lifestyles and deep motivation.
At the same time in the strategic universe many specialisations have been born over the last 15 years. Digital strategy, channel strategy, social strategy, customer experience strategy, etc. My personal belief is that none of these specialisations can be effective without starting from the brand strategy.
The emotional/psychological nature of the relationship between a person and a brand is and should remain the lighthouse of any other further strategic thought.
LBB> What strategic disciplines have endured and will always be relevant?
Luigi> Generally speaking, I strongly believe that strategic thinking in itself is imperative before any kind of marketing activity. Brand and marketing strategy are becoming more and more articulated, deeper, more and more precise, thanks to the introduction of new specialisations and technological tools.
But no matter whether it’s a chess game, negotiating another chocolate snack with your four-year-old daughter, boxing against a bigger opponent or relaunching a yoghurt nobody wants to buy anymore, a strategic mindset will always be the key to manage it.
4) The best article you'll read today about End User License Agreements. [Ad Aged]
For all the contemporary disdain most people have for the ad industry, there was a time, I believe, that the more enlightened precincts in the industry tried to treat people with respect.
They told the truth. They didn't steal from people. They didn't bait and switch. They didn't scream or bully.
Advertisers and agencies tried. McCann's slogan, for instance, was "truth well told." And Bob Levenson of DDB wrote these words in a house ad headlined, "Do This Or Die":
"Telling the truth about a product demands a product that's worth telling about. Sadly, so many products aren't ... advertising only helps a bad product fail faster ... unless we change, the tidal wave of consumer indifference will wallop into the mountain of advertising and manufacturing drivel. That way we die."
Then there was Ed McCabe--who went after the truth like Diogenes of yore. His agency, Scali, McCabe, Sloves, produced the Volvo ad above.
No asterisks.
Think about that. No asterisks means you're hiding nothing. It means no 'yeah, buts.' It means at its simplest, you're telling the truth in as unambiguous way as you can.
TikTok's End User License Agreement for US users is 25,958 words long. A normal book has 250 words per page. So TikTok's License is almost 104 pages long. The Magna Carta is 4647 words long--about 1/5 the length of TikTok's EULA. The US Constitution, including the Bill of Rights and all 27 Amendments is 8327 words long--about 1/3 the length of TikTok's EULA.
What does it say about the products we advertise, the products we buy when in order to sell them we have to append more legal copy than body copy, more legal copy than the two greatest legal documents of Western civilization.
It's not just social media sites. Every ad from every telco. Every car ad that has a price. Virtually every ad is so full of bullshit it has to have a mile of legal copy along with it to inch inches closer to something that resembles something that is almost wholly ugly and false.
As Raphael Sabatini said about Scaramouche so many decades ago, "He was born with a gift of laughter and the sense that the world is mad." I don't know much about laughter anymore in advertising, but it's clear that our world is mad. To me all this legal copy, all these asterisks make one thing very clear.
In the modern world, we no longer buy products. We are the product.
Cah-ching.
5) Quick Hits: A few articles that are concise, important, interesting, impactful, and I'm not going to write long descriptions for them.
How advertising works by adam&eve DDB's Les Binet [Tom Roach - Twitter] Print this out. Put this slide in every client presentation.
What 2.7M YouTube ads reveal about gender bias in marketing [Think With Google] An important read from Geena Davis. Gender parity remains elusive in every form of media (except for children's TV), including film, TV news, gaming, music, publishing, film criticism, consumer goods mascots, and advertising. Representation in advertising is especially influential in shaping societal values given the sheer volume of ads we are exposed to each day, numbering between 4,000 and 10,000. Each ad offers a distinct hypothetical world where a different value is placed on different groups of people, so these images have a profound effect on experiences in the real world.
8 highlights from Sir John Hegarty's talk at #CourierLive last week [Rob Estreitinho - Twitter] #1 What great advertising teaches you is the truth is the best strategy you can follow.
For Halloween, We Asked Marketers What Spooks Them About the Industry [AdWeek] Many fear how quickly the ad business is changing
It's a wild guess, but realistically about 99.9999999999% of data is entirely worthless. [Tom Goodwin - Twitter] Good thread on the use of data. What can I say, there was a lot of good stuff on Strategy twitter this week.
What’s Behind The Collapse Of Creative Effectiveness [Forbes] This is your Friday Morning Hate Read. Starts out strong: decline in effectiveness among award-winning campaigns is largely attributed to the recent trend of favoring the short-term. But then the author goes off the rails. He slams creative awards for focusing on short-term ideas. He slams Burger King (who won the Titanium Grand Prix). He's basically blaming agencies for chasing awards instead of coming up with 'durable' campaigns. He basically says creatives don't want to make real campaigns like Nike's "Just Do it" or Dove's "Campaign for Real Beauty" because they don't win awards. He leaves out that the Campaign for Real Beauty won 19 Lions as recently as 2014, and that their CMO at the time was *ahem* Fernando Machado. He's an agency search consultant which means he helps clients decide new business wins. And yet he no longer understands the power dynamic between client and agency.
6) Department of Great Work
Google Pixel 4 - Softbank [YouTube] I saw this on Japanese TV and I love it. It's so out there. And yet it fucking nails the RTB of "better low-light camera" I have no idea who did this amazing piece of work but it's probably Dentsu because they control like 80% of the Japanese ad market.
Get Priority Boarding on Alaska Airlines This Week With a Starbucks Red Cup [Lifehacker] Travelers waiting to board any of its flights between Nov. 7 and Nov. 10 who happen to be holding Starbucks’ signature holiday cups will get priority boarding. The offer is an extension of Alaska’s marketing approach to partner with brands like Starbucks on promotions for increased exposure. While not *award winning* work, it's definitely an interesting move
Is This Weirdo Answering Questions About Your Brand Online? If So, Yext Has a Solution [AdWeek] Yext debuted its first ad campaign with the help of agency TBWA\Chiat\Day New York, targeting digital marketers in major U.S. cities like New York and Chicago. “The Man Without the Answers” as the campaign’s called, features exactly that. The ads follow internet user Todd Munion as he doles out well intentioned but consistently flawed expertise on everything from dry eyes (over “1.1 billion Americans” suffer from it, he says), to literature (Kafka’s first name was apparently “Francis Ford”), to golf (the key is apparently “following the club with your head”).
Adobe Demos Awesome Tool That Finally Includes The Photographer In Group Shots [DesignTaxi] Very cool. Demonstrated by Adobe Product Manager Mina Doroudi, Project All In uses a facial recognition tool to detect the missing person out of the group picture and adds them into the shot. All they have to do is take a photograph of the group members and then a separate picture of the missing person at the same scene. The technology will then identify the excluded character and blend them into the picture seamlessly. Now, no one gets left out.
VMLY&R Brisbane Addresses the Dark Side of Online Chats in Powerful Campaign [Little Black Book] VMLY&R Brisbane has created a powerful new campaign for the Queensland Family & Child Commission (QFFC), aimed at addressing the dark side of online conversations, how perpetrators exploit technology to commit their crimes. The longform is hard to watch but I think that's the point. Impressive for government work.
Finally, A Feel-Good Business Story: Lyft Is Offering Free Rides To Job Interviews [Forbes] Lyft’s Jobs Access Program plans to help an underserved and overlooked group of people. The company will provide transportation for people who are going to interviews, starting new jobs or attending job-training functions. The people whom they’re trying to help predominantly live in lower socioeconomic areas and lack the financial means to get themselves to and from job interviews and work—or it’s a big cost burden that’s not sustainable given their limited means. The program will pay particular attention to populations, such as veterans and people with disabilities.
7) Platform Updates
In case you've been living under a rock, Twitter banned political ads, which I think is pretty cool. Let's see what else happened
A Facebook content moderation vendor is quitting the business after two Verge investigations [The Verge] Moderators at the site described being diagnosed with post-traumatic stress syndrome after being subjected to a daily onslaught of graphic and disturbing images. Others said they had come to embrace fringe viewpoints after seeing videos about conspiracy theories on a regular basis. Multiple employees reporting fearing for their safety after being threatened by coworkers.
P&G and Disneyland among brands reaching most fake followers on Instagram [The Drum] In the past three months alone, $65m has been wasted reaching fake followers – with household names like P&G and Disneyland among the top spenders duped. Analysis of P&G's Febreeze's sponsored Instagram posts 54% of the accounts that had engaged were fake.
Pinterest Top Trends for November [Pinterest] This month is all about bedazzling the eye, warming up with soup, stepping out in corduroy and stepping back in to a fantastic foyer. Personally, I just learned what colored wing eyeliner is (+143% YoY)
The Google-Facebook ad duopoly is facing a bigger challenge from the trio of Snap, Pinterest and Amazon [CNBC] eMarketer predicted earlier this year that, while Facebook & Google would still control over half the market, 2019 would mark the first time their combined share of U.S. online ads would drop.
Google Weighs Changes to Political Ad Policy [Wall Street Journal] Google has been holding internal meetings about changing its policy on political ads, about a week after Twitter said it would ban them, though it’s not clear how.
The threats against TikTok are beginning to add up [The Verge] For the past 10 years, any regulation of social media companies in the United States has moved at a glacial pace. But when it comes to TikTok, the government is moving with unusual speed. It has been less than two weeks since two senators first asked the director of national intelligence to look into whether TikTok, the looping short-form video app owned by Chinese company ByteDance, poses a security risk to the United States.
Uber is entering the ads business [TechCrunch] Uber will selling space inside its Eats app to restaurants hoping to lure in more food delivery orders. Selling ads could help it improve margins on Eats, where it only takes 10.7% of gross bookings as adjusted net revenue because it pays out so much to restaurants and drivers.
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, and as always see you next week!