This Week in Strategy: I'm developing a new fragrance for introverts. It's called "Leave me the fuh cologne"
Hi Strat Pack,
How's your 401k doing!? Yeah, mine too. Bear Markets love company and the good news is, we're not alone. In a piece of truly hard-hitting journalism, Buzzfeed News dropped this bombshell: Major Travel Influencers Say Their Lives And Jobs Have Taken A Pretty Significant Hit Due To The Coronavirus. Heart wrenching. Just take the case of Eric Stoen, who travels the world with his wife and three children for his Instagram @travelbabbo. He was supposed to be in Berlin, Florence, Catania, and Istanbul last week. But one by one, travel plans were either canceled by airlines or by people he had planned to meet at the destinations.
"If it had been only one hiccup, I would have gone ahead with the trip, but with literally every element imploding I canceled my flights and hotels," he said. "[I] was very disappointed." My heart goes out to you, Stoen. It really does. People are panic buying literally anything they can get their hands on, which is almost as serious as having a four-cities-on-two-continents-in-one-week permanent vacation temporarily disrupted. So I think the average person can definitely empathize with you. But hopefully we'll all get through this together.
And speaking of getting through this together, Beer and bagels please: New York rats evolve to mirror human habits. “In New York you can see them eat bagels and beer; in Paris they like croissants and butter. They adapt in amazing ways.” [Ed Note: we are all rats in our own way]. The biggest bombshell in this entire article is His team is to test 125-year-old brown-rat pelts from a private collection in New York and analyse them to see if major changes had taken place by the end of the 19th century or if they more recently. I do not want to meet the person (dare I say family?) that has been collecting rat shit for 125 years. But I do want to know why.
A quick editorial note: this week is a little lighter than usual because we've all been consumed by reading and writing about the coronavirus. I doubt the world will return to normal next week but the strategy editorial team has laid out a content calendar that will keep your strategy brain well nourished.
And in all seriousness, please consider social distancing as much as possible. If you're in an area where COVID-19 is rampant, I hope you stay safe and healthy. If it hasn't hit you smack in the face, please try to flatten the curve as much as possible.
Alright stop messing around trying to figure out whether Brooklyn rats evolved to grow hipster beards. Let's jump right in.
The one thing to read this week
1) 50 things to think about over your next cup of coffee. Remember number 23... [LinkedIn]
People who know me know that I love to talk about insights. I especially like Mark Pollard's approach to insights of starting with the obvious, and continually asking "why" and "what if". This list is not 50 insights. But it is 50 cliches that are the germ of an insight. Next time you're writing a brief and jammed up, see if one of these will help shake some creativity loose.
Life is full of rules and principles. Axioms and self-evident truths. Guidelines and maxims. It’s also full of bullshit and baloney. Hokum and flim-flam. Phooey and poppycock.
These can either guide you over the hurdles and around the pitfalls. Or they can just plain leave you to your own devices and stand on the sidelines pissing themselves laughing.
Some will stick in your memory like a fast-acting dollop of superglue. Others will disappear into the distance with the wages and the rent money. Some will make you feel all the better for having known them. Others will make you feel like you were just in the wrong damned place at the wrong damned time when they came walking by.
There are millions of them. Everyone has their own favourites.
[Bryce} has 50 that, for one reason or another, have stayed around long enough to either make me smile and nod my head knowingly, or annoy the hell out of me. Whether they’re true or not is anyone’s guess.
Here are some of my (Jordan) favorites
Getting intelligent is never as much fun as being intelligent.
You are not the centre of anyone’s universe, including yours.
The greatest writing tool sits between your ears.
A large Scotch always tastes the same as a small one.
Verbal briefs aren't worth the paper they're not written on.
The Truth isn’t always out there...sometimes it’s in here.
2) Why All the Warby Parker Clones Are Now Imploding [Marker]
2a) Silicon Valley’s Self Fulfilling Prophecy Of Mediocre Marketing [Exponents]
Because you shouldn't be going out this weekend, I figured the least I can do is load you up on longform (and very interesting!) articles to read. It's an unwritten truth that the CMO is the least respected C- in the Suite, because real businessmen know that marketing is fluffy bullshit after thought. Except that of course it isn't. So please, read these two articles. Think critically about them! And then let's start asking the really tough questions about how we ended up here, and how we can give our and our clients' CMOs a real voice in the boardroom.
Ever since the godfather of the DTCs, Warby Parker, emerged on the startup scene in 2010, venture firms have funded hundreds of startups trying to mimic that model. We’re now just starting to see how quixotic this boom has been all along. Even before the Outdoor Voices revelation, the past few months have exposed major cracks in the DTC business model, as several high-profile, venture-backed DTC startups have struggled and others have completely closed their doors.
Maybe this explains why:Silicon Valley's anti-marketing bias has created a self-fulfilling prophecy. Here’s how the self-fulfilling prophecy of mediocre marketing fulfills itself in 7 stages:
Silicon Valley’s leaders believe marketing is lame, inorganic, and founded on lies, and make their beliefs loud and clear.
Great marketers don’t want to go where their skills are undervalued and maligned, so most of them focus their talents and energies on more hospitable industries and regions.
Great mentorship for junior marketers in Silicon Valley is scarce, and ambitious people who COULD be great marketers and want to work in tech choose other avenues for their careers.
The median quality of marketers in the tech talent pool stays low, and the tech companies who hire from it end up with marketers who underperform or even do damage.
Meanwhile, many of the industries that welcome talented marketers with open arms and big paychecks actually are founded on and perpetuated by lies. And because plenty of human beings who are faced with a choice between big paychecks and solid ethics choose the cash, much of the most effective marketing in the world ends up in the service of these lies.
Thanks to stages 4 and 5, The Valley’s pre-existing bias against marketing gets confirmed.
Wash, rinse, repeat.
You get the idea: thanks to the self-fulfilling prophecy of a negative bias, the tech industry’s stigma against marketing has created a desert of marketing mediocrity and called it “making the world a better place.”
3) Quick Hits: A few articles that are concise, important, interesting, impactful, and I'm not going to write long descriptions for them.
The Seven Deadly Sins of Statistical Misinterpretation, and How to Avoid Them [The Conversation] Dear lord read this. It's so fucking intelligent. And I am not which is why I couldn't summarize it. I've long suspected that every successful publisher-funded display banner ad brand lift study put in front of me reeked of bullshit, but could never prove it. Does data look fishy to you? It probably is. Please challenge it. Now you have the tools to.
The SXSW that could have been: brands share their lost activations and back-ups [The Drum] “What is going to happen with all SXSW White Claw?” asked John Bridges, the executive editor of the Austin American-Statesman. “Can it be repurposed into hand sanitizer?” Because you're not going to see the 30-foot-tall inflatable giant poo that Toilet spray brand Poo-Pourri was due to bring to the music portion of SXSW anywhere else, check out al the activations that could have been.
10 Breakthrough Technologies 2020 [MIT Technology Review] This is super fascinating. For example, An internet based on quantum physics will soon enable inherently secure communication. A team is building a network connecting four cities in the Netherlands entirely by means of quantum technology. Messages sent over this network will be unhackable. The technology relies on a quantum behavior of atomic particles called entanglement. Entangled photons can’t be covertly read without disrupting their content. What?!
Retail marks milestone: Storefronts peddling services overtake those selling clothes and other goods [CNBC] As more people shop online, stores need to offer something that cannot be bought or experienced on the internet. The number of service-based retailers (e.g. restaurants & gyms) surged 20.5% from 2002 to 2017, totaling 1.2 million spaces, a new report from commercial real estate services firm JLL found. Retailers selling goods fell 4.5% to 1.1 million shops during the same period.
KFC pauses finger lickin' ads in the UK amid coronavirus panic and 150 complaints [The Drum] A serious question: is the phase"finger lickin good" new to the UK? It's been in the US since, seemingly, the beginning of time. If it launched with their new campaign in late-feb, I can understand the concerns. If not, I feel like it's just the internet outrage machine doing its thing. I think most people understand the difference between a marketing slogan and a company trying to convince you to increase your risk of corona. /rant
“Our industry is drowning in maths and starving for ideas” [Richard Shotten - Twitter] The
@AdContrarian on data not being enough - in his excellent new book, Advertising for Skeptics. Love this.Ladies First - International Women's Day 2020 [Vikki Ross - Twitter] We always talk about the Advertising legends and the Copywriting greats, which is great. But often, we only talk about the men. [Vikki is] putting ladies first - female Copywriters who celebrated firsts in Advertising.
4) Department of Great Work
Older Women Celebrate Their Bodies And Sexuality In Campaign For Incontinence Brand Tena [AdAge] The spot, filed by The Favourite' director Yorgos Lanthimos definitely breaks category norms, to say the least. Maybe I like this because it feels like outtakes from The Lobster. Maybe because they're going to put the phrase "wee sneeze" on television. Hard to say. From AMV BBDO
Reporters Without Borders uses Minecraft to sneak censored works across borders [TechCrunch] The organization, collaborating with reporters, Minecraft pros and, of course, a creative agency, has produced an enormous in-game “Uncensored Library” that hosts a variety of suppressed reportage from places like like Saudi Arabia, Russia and Vietnam. The structure is a giant neo-classical complex hosted on its own server, which Minecraft players can access freely by pointing their game toward “visit.uncensoredlibrary.com” in the server browser.
Tiger and Colenso BBDO Easternise Western Bar Snacks with ‘East of What You Know’ Platform [Little Black Book] Tiger Bar Snacks are sustainable bites, selected to match perfectly with Tiger Beer. Launched in five flavours, including garlic grasshoppers, roasted scorpions, peri peri crickets, teriyaki mealworms, and roasted tarantula – they’re a new kind of experience-with-purchase. Says Dave Brady, creative director at Colenso BBDO: “We wanted to reconnect Kiwi drinkers with a beer that was born on the streets of South East Asia. That’s why Easternising the Western bar snack felt like a natural response, one that demonstrated our attitude towards the unknown in a way that got people talking – and crunching.”
Apple demos iPhone features in five-hour film shot in Russia’s Hermitage [Creative Review] Shot in one continuous take on an iPhone 11 Pro, Apple is striving to highlight its camera credentials with a lengthy new concept film touring St Petersburg’s Hermitage Museum. The film cleverly serves as a demo for the iPhone 11 Pro’s 4k capabilities and meaty battery life – even after the filming concluded, there was reportedly 19% battery remaining. Elsewhere, while weaving through the museum, Gog’s lens encounters a string of performance pieces, including a dramatic ballet sequence that neatly indicates the iPhone’s night mode capabilities.
Manslaughter - WorkSafe Victoria [Ads of the World] Very hard-hitting work highlighting the Victorian Government’s new workplace laws whereby, from July, workplace manslaughter will be a jailable offense. From McCann Melbourne.
Department of Bad Work
Shell will change its name to She'll for International Women's Day, effectively solving sexism [Mashable] Let's be clear about one thing. This headline is 10/10. Please appreciate this bizarre promotional video, in which Shell superimposes a series of disingenuous, vague statements over women's faces in a remarkable effort to be inspiration without saying anything at all. "She will be heard. She will be recognized. She will be respected," the video says, before morphing "She will" into "Shell." Best response: “We live in s’hell,” writer Maya Kosoff posted on Twitter. (The brand has unsurprisingly already deleted the original tweet)
Coronavirus Instagram filters criticized as ‘inappropriate’ [New York Post] To be clear, these are user generated filters and Instagram/Facebook Inc has no role in their creation. But jeez. Just dumb. Sometimes we all need to keep the dumber thought we have in our litte heads
5) Platform Updates
Google & Facebook Ban Ads for Face Masks As Coronavirus Spreads [SearchEngineLand] Good to see good news coming from these guys. Amazon also has taken action to stop price gouging of disinfecting wipes. Which was happening on a very serious scale and is disgusting.
Twitter gives brands advice on how to communicate in this coronavirus climate [AdAge] “Let’s be clear,” said Alex Josephson, global head of Twitter Next, and Eimear Lambe, director of Twitter Next, in the blog post. “This is not a ‘marketing opportunity’ to capitalize on, and we do not recommend brands opportunistically linking themselves to a health scare.” Hit your AdAge article count for the month? Here's a link directly to Twitter's blog post.
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!