whizdumb

Diaolgue, Part 2

I just went back and reread Part 1.  It feels forced, and like it was written by a planner, which it was.  I didn't mean for the creative to be so shortsighted, I guess it's just that there are a lot of creative minds out there (just as there are a lot of planners) and some of them think that way. 

If I wrote about a creative that was a complete likemind then we wouldn't have to have a conversation at all.  We'd just sit there in a room, silent, knowing exactly what should be done.  Gee, that actually sounds even more strange.

Continued from Part 1.

Setting: An internal creative review, Conference Room C

PLANNER: Yes, beautifully told.  Consciously beautiful.  Like, way too perfectly beautiful.  Not relatable.  We assume way too much here.  Like the people looking at this want to hear from us.  Like they will be paying full attention.  Like they really give a s**t about hearing a story from [brand] about [benefit].  I'm not saying it's not beautiful I'm just saying that beautiful is not going to cut through. 

CREATIVE: We tried cutting through before and you know how that one ended.

PLANNER: That's because we shouted louder.  That's a volume issue not a tone issue. 

CREATIVE: This is what they're asking for.  I think they'll buy it.

PLANNER: Do you buy it?

CREATIVE: F**k man, it's not about me, like you said before, I'm not the target audience.  They aren't buying [brand] because they can't justify the higher price.  We have to show them why they should.  Their lives are so busy and stuff that we have to reach them with something meaningful, like you said.

PLANNER: Right.  But what is meaningful in this context?  We can't talk to people like that anymore.  We'll get ignored.  Look, you've got a fantastic intuitive sense about people.  You don't need me to tell you about the human draw to a good story, about characters, about drama, hope, dreams, all that s**t.  You get it.  But those are also the things that are thrown around into bad TV and movies.  The thing is, the way things are going, that kind of blockbuster mainstream story is going away in favor of other things.  It takes a new kind of creativity.  It's a lot harder, I have to say.  I worry that we're taking the easy way out.

CREATIVE: We're just trying to sell more [category]. You make it sound like we're saving the world.

PLANNER: We're sparing the world from more crap.

CREATIVE: Maybe, but it is still advertising.  The other one we did that was similar to this tested through the f*****g roof.

PLANNER: Oh, so now you're a fan of our client's copy testing?

CREATIVE: No, but this will probably test well too, and that's the only way it will get made.

To be continued...

Dialogue, Part 1

I was wondering if sometimes it might be easier to write a conversation than to write a straight-on point of view.   

And I had some stuff knocking around to get out.  So how about some imagined exchanges between agency people. 

Is it an easier read?  Different?  Break things up a bit?  Whatever, here goes.

Setting: An internal creative review, Conference Room C

PLANNER: It feels like an ad.

CREATIVE: It is an ad.

PLANNER: I know, I know... it just feels conspicuously like an ad.

CREATIVE: Well it's supposed to sell stuff so...

PLANNER: It just feels false, I can't put my finger on it.  Like we're not really getting to the truth we talked about, the insight.

CREATIVE: What do you mean, it's all right there.  It's bringing that insight to life.

PLANNER: Yes but, ummm.  Give me a sec, I'm trying to figure this out. 

Okay, It's like I'm watching Pearl Harbor.  I'm totally aware that I'm watching a movie.  Like I'm on blockbuster ride that leaves a bad actor taste in my mouth.  There are special effects that I've seen a million times before.  I know what's going to happen, and when.  But we want this to be more authentic, like a Paul Greengrass thing.  The guy made the Bourne movies and, whether you like them or not, you didn't totally feel like you were watching a movie while you were watching them.

CREATIVE: But blockbusters make money.  It sounds like you're trying to impose your particular sense of taste.

PLANNER: In a way, yes.  Because the tastes of people are shifting.  Blockbusters aren't performing nearly as much as they used to.  People are turning to more imaginative and authentic kinds of entertainment, and doing it on their terms.  We need to make stuff that people would not instantly look at and say, "that feels like an ad."

CREATIVE: It is real though.  The art direction is beautiful.  The casting is perfect.  It's a genuine moment between the [subject A] and the [subject B].

PLANNER: Really?  Do you think people will look at that and feel a genuine impulse of human emotion?  Is it more like a Hallmark card or is it more like some high-impact kind of art? 

CREATIVE: Neither.  There's a story in there.  It's telling a story.  It's a beautifully told story.

To be continued...

[image from Doc Ross]

Coffee Morning 10/19 recap

First things first.  The pictures I took at Coffee with my new phone didn't come out well.  Actually what I mean is they came out fine but people just looked bad.  You're all nice people but indoors early in the morning with a camera phone, it's a crap shoot. 

So instead I did a Google image search for 'i need a picture' and took the first image that came up.  (Woah, I just tried it again and it came up second). 

There it is.  WTF?  It's a consumer submitted video for TreeHugger.com and Seventh Generation's Convenient Truth Video Contest.  So if you fancy getting lectured to about consumer consumption by a pipe cleaner, check it out.  Wow, talk about irony.  Is this karmic retribution for Coffee Mornings' consumer marketing jabber?  Who knows.

Back to coffee last Friday.  We were joined by Ameet, Jennifer, Monique, Dave, Anoud, Erin, Melissa, Ken (of the Pure Thinking blog.  He wrote his own coffee recap here), and newbies Joe and Tommy. 

Joe just moved to town and is looking to land in a corporate communications or marketing role of some sort (Joe, leave a comment with any other details or contact info if you like). 

Monique is a planner at McClain Finlon, and she let everyone know that they're hiring.  So if you're a planner looking for a home check 'em out.  I believe Sarah Miller is the head of planning over there.  I've never met her I know she's trying to make it to coffee one of these days. 

Tommy has worked for some time at Comedy Works helping them to operate and expand their business and he had some really interesting perspective on comedy as an art and as a product.  For example, a good comic should have you laughing 4-5 times per minute.  I never really thought about that.  But it is a product and it's got, well I guess, metrics.   He also talked about the ratio of practice material versus tried and true material.  In a 15 minute set there may be 2-3 minutes of experimental stuff.  If you err on the high side that's 20% experimental.  Putting stuff out there to see if it sticks. You can see where I'm going with this...

What if brands allocated 20% of their ideas / product innovations / media spend to purely experimental stuff?  Things that might polarize.  New ground.  It's not unlike a regular innovation pipeline, but just put out there with the rest of it all, not researched in test markets and groups.  Just as there's nothing quite like a live audience in a comedy club, there's little to truly replace really going for it with a product launch in the real world.

Anyway, Tommy was also kind of segmenting comics among comics versus performers.  Dane Cook, for example, he considered a performer.  I'd probably put Robin Williams and maybe Bill Hicks in that category after watching a clip that Craig posted. On second thought, I think Hicks may be in a category all his own!

Incidentally, he's also a comic (performer?) himself.  Tommy, you've got to let us know the next time you're on stage.  I promise not to throw rotten tomatoes.

Ameet was sharing some thoughts from a presentation he recently attended on innovation by Tony Ulwick (Download the ppt here).  It makes the case for devising solutions that meet unmet consumer needs.

A few other topics came up but that's all I've got time for now.  Anyone have anything to add?

Holy Mary, mother of beautiful nonsense

Weatherproof Caveman Ad

The mini-controversy over the dumb Weatherproof Caveman ad has been dissected nicely by Seth at murketing.  I saw it in the NYT Magazine recently and, along with my pal Erin, was totally perplexed.  As Seth tells it, the whole thing was just drafting on the coattails of the Cavemen / Geico's success and had no formal agreement or permission from Geico or the Martin Agency.  It's based in the fact that one of the cavemen in the sitcom is a weatherman, the resident minority like Al Roker. 

It's a pretty thin thread to go on but hell, it's got us talking.

Slo-Mo Home Depot because...?

I'm all for disrupting the normal course of everyday life. Flashmobs fasinate me. Or at least they did when people were doing them. I remember reading about how hundreds of young people staged a Matrix Reloaded Mob event in Tokyo. They were all dressed as Mr. White. They were there because they were fans. It meant something to them.

I guess that's why I don't yet understand the point of Improv Everywhere and its public stunts. Harmless shock value? Sure. Aged drama students lusting after high school days gone by? Maybe. Attention-starved lonely hearts? Totally!

Interestingly there is enough interest in the scenes they create that they have sold a pilot to NBC. I guess it's kind of like Punk'd but instead of one celebrity, they're punking the general public. Yaaawn.

Weird and wonderful

I miss the Spongemonkeys.  Sure they were short lived, disgusting and divisive.  But they got people talking about Quiznos, and they could kick Baby Bob's ass any day.  (Talking babies.  Please, just don't.) 

But the Spongemonkeys represent one in a bunch of new cutter clutters.  Those brands seeking to root around in the backyard (basement?) of human emotions.  Disgust.  Confusion.  The creeps.  The willies.  That feeling when you can't help but watch a car wreck (voyeurism?).  You have Waking up with The King (BK).  The enigmatic bleeding doll (PS3).  Prehensile beards (Skittles).  First person car wrecks (VW).

As the depths are being plumbed of ways to reach people, the line of what’s acceptable is being stretched.  Some of these things are clearly one-offs.  I don't think it's going out on a limb to say that the Spongemonkeys were not part of some grand rebranding of Quiznos.  They were an executional gimmick with a lot of talk but little else. 

But when being a little off center, even weird, is part of your brand DNA that is a different thing. That's what I think BK has done:  Brought a new attitude to the brand and infused it throughout the brand experience.  And what Orville Redenbacher has not:  Created a bad one-off that took a risk on a CG technique and in my opinion ended badly (the new executions still don't add up to a cohesive thought).

I like weird because it forces the question, Why?  By its very nature there is more than meets the eye.  Which is why I like the above picture so much, even if it's not an ad.  It is a simple, yet kinda creepy idea that stops you in your tracks makes you think differently about the environment around you.

Not every brand can take a weird turn, nor should it.  The point is that there are more human emotions out there to explore.  And not everything has to be fully understood to be interesting.

Like, this is like, really interesting

Here is truly an interesting piece of video by Ira Glass of This American Life. I listen to the show a lot so naturally when I saw this bit by Russell on the video I took a look. The videos are broken up into several parts. There's a lot of wisdom there. A lot about how not to overlook the human side of storytelling and how telling stories is so much different than the traditional journalistic story format of laying out the facts. It should be almost like bread crumbs of anecdotes that bring you along a trail of someone's point of view, their experience. That is what the show has always done well.

But the overuse of the neutral filler "like" in nearly every other sentence drives me slightly nuts. It takes me back to high school, even earlier. I know that's, like, part of the charm and stuff but it's a bit wearing. Perhaps it's the American teen cousin of the British "sort of"?

Hello Kitty...

... has no mouth. Seriously.