This Week in Strategy: Monsters don't like ghosts because they taste like sheet!
Hi Strat Pack,
Before we jump in, you know how infrequently I plug my own work. But, like, fuck man I am so proud of The Met Unframed which launched last week. While yes we did get covered by trade press, I'm most proud of the regular coverage we got, including this excerpt from Lonely Planet:
"It's an interactive virtual art exhibition featuring augmented reality versions of iconic Met masterpieces. Featuring over a dozen digitally-rendered galleries and nearly 50 works of art from across the Met’s collection, the website invites online visitors to explore galleries and play games. Objects come to life in augmented reality with the virtual layout displaying art from across millennia and from all over the world."
Goes to show you that marketing can absolutely have an impact on culture. This makes me so excited to work in the field we work in. Please check it out!
So we took some time off in January, didn't we. What can I say, there was...a lot going on in our little neck of the woods, and I honestly didn't have the mental capacity to put out both a light hearted, pithy, well articulated (lol jk) newsletter and simultaneously process a bunch of actual fascists trying to destroy democratic institutions from both within and without. But it's a new day in America and as much as I want to take up this entire newsletter with my opinions of the last 4 weeks / 4 years, I will not.
Except to say that if you haven't yet watched Amanda Gorman's inauguration poem 'The Hill We Climb' please stop what you're doing and watch this immediately. I think most people's perception of slam poetry is some version of Freddy Prinze Jr's rendition of hacky sack from She's All That. Which is maybe representative. But, fuck, Amanda Gorman really just showed us the peak of this form of artistic expression.
On one last political note, Andrew Yang is running for mayor of NYC. He is not, however, living in New York City at the moment. When asked why, he responded “We live in a two-bedroom apartment in Manhattan. And so, like, can you imagine trying to have two kids on virtual school in a two-bedroom apartment, and then trying to do work yourself?” Yes, Andrew, I can. I'm sure a lot of New Yorkers can too. Is this going to be Yang's Pizza with a Fork moment? Is this going to be his "lox her up" moment? Is this going to be his actually-a-Red-Sox-fan moment? (Jeez, how did we elect this guy...twice?) Only time will tell!
Alright, stop messing around trying to borrow A/R artwork from the Met Unframed (no actually, please spend as much time as possible in that experience, we're trying to max out avg time spent per visitor!) Let’s jump right in.
The one thing to read this week
1) “Marketing is what you do when you have a sh#tty product.” – Christopher Lochhead [The Marketing Journal]
There's a great anecdote at the beginning of this article that is worth clicking through (it's like a 3 minute read max) but here's the thesis.
I’ll never forget hearing [the quote from the title of this article] for the first time. It came out of the mouth of a software engineer turned entrepreneur/CEO. He ended up wrapping his company around a lamp post. His entire executive team left and his investors lost money. Now he’s king shit of turd island.
In spite of stories like this, a lot of people still believe that the best product wins. They believe it, like they believe in the availability of oxygen.
“If a great creator designs a legendary product but no one buys it… was it really worth it?
The perception of your product/service IS your product/service. You’re in the perception manufacturing business. And your product is an important part of how you make powerful perceptions, but it’s far from the whole sha-bang.
People do not automatically “know” something is highly differentiated, highly valuable, and worth investing in, until someone tells them.
It turns out, marketing is what you do, when you have a legendary product.
2) From Greg Hahn: Ads that influenced me. [Ad Aged]
[Greg is] going to put on my own shoes and take a step back to write about three ads that had a big influence on me as I was just starting out.
The three ads I chose are pretty different but do have one thing in common. they are grounded in simple logic.
They are not flashy or overly produced. They simply offer a strong compelling piece of logic that makes you think something new or different. They make their point much like a trial lawyer. When it's at its best, Advertising can be like the closing argument in the court of public opinion.
The three I am writing about are like that.
The first one is for Nike starring Charles Barkley from the mid-'90s.
I saw this before I got into Advertising, and was instantly struck by the writing, the simplicity, and the crafting of the argument.
I didn't feel like what I thought was an ad was supposed to be at the time. I didn't know exactly what it was, but I knew I wanted to do it. By the time it got to "Just because I can dunk a basketball, doesn't mean I should raise your kids" I was like, "Hell yeah, Charles Barkley." At the time, I'm pretty sure I thought Charles Barkley wrote this ad.
The second ad is from the highly influential but no longer in existence LA agency Stein/Robaire/Helm for the Los Angeles Contemporary Art Museum.
It's pretty hard to find on the internet so I'll describe it. The commercial (remember this was the 90s) is a simple lockdown shot, super-8 footage, of a guy watering his lawn for the full 30 seconds. It's compelling in its lack of attempt to compel. After about 20 seconds, type comes over the scene: "This is life". A few seconds later a second super comes up: "That's why there's art."
I remember seeing this as a junior when I lived in LA. Again, I was kind of knocked back by the simplicity and the power of the thought. It does what the Nike ad does but in a very different way. Rather than relying on long-copy to walk you through the argument. It makes you experience something, puts you in a moment, and then concludes with a few perfectly chosen words.
The last one is a legit classic. The "Snowplow" ad for VW-because you can't write an article about influential ads without mentioning VW. It's a law, I checked.
As a writer, I can't help but admire the skill and precision with which these ads make their point and genuinely affect the way you feel about something. The basic approach transcends time or technique or media. It's whatever-is-next agnostic. They're each based on a single thought that's perfectly obvious, but only after someone tells it to you. In today's terms this would be called an insight.
3) A huge thread of Bill Bernhach's incredible advertising wisdom [Uncle Bernbach - Twitter]
It's 55 tweets or so. They're all great and I'm just cherry picking my favorites. Here's the threadreader for easier scrolling
“Be provocative. But be sure your provocativeness stems from your product. You are not right if in your ad you stand a man on his head to get attention. You are right if you have him on his head to show how your product keeps things falling from his pocket."
"There are a lot of great technicians in advertising. And unfortunately, they talk the best game. They know all the rules… but there’s one little rub. They forget that advertising is persuasion, and persuasion is not a science, but an art.”
“Our job is to bring the dead facts to life.”
On persuasion: "That little thing, sitting by yourself and getting an idea is far more important than all the technology in the world" https://twitter.com/unclebernbach/status/1341720302733172741?s=20
"Our job is to sell our clients’ merchandise, not ourselves.
Our job is to kill the cleverness that makes us shine instead of the product.
Our job is to simplify, to tear away the unrelated, to pluck out the weeds that are smothering the product message.”
4) Quick Hits
Neuroscience shows value of proactively diverse casting [Warc] Short, simple and to the point. Not only is there no downside to casting BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Color) individuals in ads, Caucasians respond more favorably to these ads than non-Caucasians. So, yeah, let's stop pretending that white people are all of America.
Facebook is the worst brand of the year [Fast Company] Come for this sentence: "The Grand Canyon-size gap between the company Facebook projects itself to be—and the company defined by its actual, real-world actions—is why Facebook is the worst brand of 2020." and stay for the next 15 paragraphs proving it out. Woof.
This Insane Uber Scam [Nandini Jammi - Twitter] The biggest story in tech no one’s talking about is Uber discovering they’d been defrauded out of $100M - or 2/3 of their ad spend. (There's also a great podcast with Frisch you can check out here)
5) Department of Great Work
I'm sure we all saw Burger King's beautiful rebrand? Yes? Ok good. It's great, I really like it. But I'm sure you also already saw it so no link to that this week
With 'The Met Unframed' From Verizon, the Museum Visits You [Muse by Clio] Shameless self promotion part two. What can I say this is maybe the coolest thing I've ever worked on. "The Met Unframed," a multifaceted interactive/AR activation from Verizon and UNIT9, made for mobile devices, lets you place priceless treasures from New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art in your own home. Or on the street. Or in any environment you choose. As long as you're glued to your smartphone screen when you view the paintings and sculptures, that is. Geared for our pandemic age, when a leisurely day at the museum doesn't fit into most folks' schedule, "Unframed," both compelling and playful, packs in a lot of material across multiple layers. At times it can feel overwhelming, demanding considerable effort to fully appreciate. That said, the soothing, spacey graphics and ambient soundtrack feel in step with the regal museum motif. Plus, you'll learn a lot. And it's a kick to see the art come to life in amusing ways. From us, Verizon's in-house agency, Produced by Unit9
Burberry's FIlm Release Celebrates the Chinese New Year [V Magazine] "There can be no sweetness without bitterness" If that doesn't capture the mood of 2021, I don't know what does. This film follows a few Burberry brand ambassadors as they explore both their inner and outer worlds. Fitting subject material, to say the least. Beautiful work from BBH China
Barilla and Publicis Italy have created a Pasta Playlist Timer on Spotify [Adland] So simple, so smart. I love this. The secret to cooking pasta to perfection lies in the right cooking time. This is why Barilla has created a "Playlist Timer" on Spotify: music collections whose duration corresponds to the cooking time of the brand's most loved pasta shapes. The names of the playlists that characterize the musical selection are also interesting: "Mixtape Spaghetti", "Boom Bap Fusilli", "Pleasant Melancholy Penne", "Moody Day Linguine", "Top Hits Spaghetti", "Best Song Penne", "Timeless Emotion Fusilli" and "Simply Classics Linguine".
This Swedish film festival wants you to binge 60 movies alone in a lighthouse [Mic] In what might be the ultimate social-distancing experiment for cinephiles, the Götenborg Film Festival is inviting one guest to spend a week alone in a lighthouse in the North Sea, with only the ocean and tons of films for company. The festival is setting up a few more “isolated cinema” experiences around Göteborg in spaces that’d normally host crowds. For example, one lone guest will get to screen films inside a cavernous 12,000-seat hockey rink. Fittingly, the theme of this year’s festival is “Social Distance.” Weird. Cool. On brand.
Asked to Draw Ketchup, People Around the World Drew Heinz [Muse by Clio] It's good to be the market leader, where your product is all but synonymous with the category. That brand strength is brought to life in a playful way in a new campaign from Kraft Heinz Canada, which asked people around the world to draw ketchup—and a majority of them drew Heinz. The experiment was conducted across five continents, and none of the participants were told of Heinz's involvement. Heinz says "most" of the subjects drew a bright red bottle with Heinz from memory. Others sketched the keystone label, a tomato hanging from a vine, or the number 57 on the neck of a glass bottle. Such a smart way to reinforce your leadership position through iconic brand assets. From agency Rethink
Dietmar Winkler’s MIT Posters [Artvee] Not new work but great work. A Selection of Posters by Dietmar Winkler who worked at the MIT Office of Design Services, one of the most innovative design practices of its time in the country. They popularized what came to be known as the “MIT Style” which relied on bold geometric forms, striking typography, and contrasting planes of color
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